If you don’t know how to spell something, the easiest way to have a bash at it is to say it out loud.  Mind you, that might not help if you have got a thick regional accent….

Nottingham is a funny place for accents.  Ask any impressionist to do a Nottingham voice, and they probably won’t be able to (in the way that you could do a Brummie or a Scouser, for example).  Saying that, having lived here for the best part of a decade there is a very distinct and very clear dialect spoken in these parts.

A friend of mine – the editor of Nottingham’s fine Left Lion publication – prides himself on preserving the Nottingham dialect.  He can be regularly heard using the local word “rammel” (which means ‘rubbish’ in the sense that a ‘rammel TV show’ would be something like Bargain Hunt or Cash In The Attic) and, of course, the local favourite ‘duckeh’.  Everyone locally is addressed as ‘duckeh’ – man, woman or child.

If you want to try and perfect the Nottingham voice, the phrase that pays is this one:

“Toneh Hadleh aht eh Spandah Balleh”.

(Clearly, the aforementioned Toneh Hadleh isn’t from Nottingham – it is a phrase which identifies some of the key requirements of Notts speak in one handy sentence).

My local Left Lion guru also runs a weekly pub quiz, in which his round entitled ‘On This Day In Istreh’ has become something of a local favourite….

Anyway. Why, you wonder, am I giving you a potted history of the Nottingham dialect?  Well, going back to my original point, when you can’t spell something, you might try and say it out loud.  That is the only explanation I have for the following sign which I saw in the window of Ladbrokes in the centre of Nottingham this week.  Someone has clearly not been 100% sure how to spell the central European country, and so has said it out loud in a thick Nottingham accent.

Priceless.

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Nick Parkhouse is a professional writer. If you need web copy, articles, books or press releases, get in touch with Nick now at info@nickparkhouse.com

Nick’s first book, 101 Forgotten Pop Hits of the 1980s, is also now available through Author House, Amazon and Waterstones.

For many, William Shakespeare is the greatest writer that ever lived. Whether you like the Bard’s work or not – I particularly liked him in that episode of Doctor Who with the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones – there’s no ignoring the huge impact the man had on written English.

Did you know that almost 10% of the words Shakespeare used in his writing were invented by the man himself? That is a staggering 1,700 common, everyday words that would not be in existence had he not used them first.

You probably know a number of these, but words first used by Shakespeare include:

apostrophe, obscene, bump, castigate, critic, dwindle, road, hurry, lonely, majestic and exposure.

Mad, isn’t it?

And so, who would you think would be the natural heir to Shakespeare, in terms of growing the fabulous English language with important, clever new words?

That’s right, folks. It’s Sarah Palin!

It’s difficult to know where to start with this one. Ignoring the clumsy Muslim references, Palin appears to have attempted to combine ‘refute’ and ‘repudiate’ into one new word – ‘refudiate’.  It is even worse when you consider that neither of the two words she has combined are really fit for purpose.

And it’s not a mistake, either. Oh no.

See? Palin wants to celebrate the evolution of English as a growing language with the introducing of the words ‘repudiate’ and ‘misunderestimate’ and the phrase ‘wee-wee’d up’.

I bet old Billy is turning in his grave (that’s not one of his, by the way).

(Thanks to TPM for the inspiration and to Copestone for the link).

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Nick Parkhouse is a professional writer. If you need web copy, articles, books or press releases, get in touch with Nick now at info@nickparkhouse.com

Nick’s first book, 101 Forgotten Pop Hits of the 1980s, is also now available through Author House, Amazon and Waterstones.

What’s the MOST important part of any article?

If you said it was the title, or the headline, you’d be correct.

So what’s the second most important part of an article or blog entry?

After the headline, the most important part of any sales letter, blog post or article is the opening paragraph.  Ezra Pound once said “The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.”

Grabbing a reader’s attention with a stunning headline only to lose the momentum when they start reading is like winning the lottery and then discovering you have lost the ticket.  Here are my top four tips for making sure you grab your reader’s attention.

Quote

Bo Bennett once said “There is a misleading, unwritten rule that states if a quote giving advice comes from someone famous, very old, or Greek, then it must be good advice.”

Quotes are great. Despite what Bo says, quotes are frequently wise, funny or accurate.  Joe Vitale, freelance writer and bestselling author of Hypnotic Writing advises the inclusion of quotes because readers want to see quotation marks in your writing.  Dialogue makes a copywriters’ writing come alive.  Find a quote that is short, relevant and by someone your readers will recognise and you will instantly make them take notice.

Why Not Ask A Question?

Opening an article with a question should do two things.  Firstly, if the question is directed at the reader it will have the word ‘you’ in it, which, as we have established, is the most important word you can use in copywriting.

Secondly, a rhetorical question connects with a reader.  It makes them curious and gets them thinking.  They’ll subconsciously answer the question…and then want to know what comes next.

Metaphors and Similes

Similes kick like a mule.  Using a common analogy, an easy to understand metaphor or simple similes put topics in language that readers can understand and relate to.  They are some of the most powerful methods that copywriters can use to grab a reader’s attention.

Shocking Stats

As long as you can find one that is relevant to your article, add an interesting or shocking statistic to your piece.  On average, British consumers use 290 plastic bags a year.  35% of Brits admit to using mobile phones whilst on the loo.  Nearly 90% of a food’s flavour comes from its smell.  Statistics have been proved to be 97.3% effective in illuminating an article.  Probably.

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Nick Parkhouse is a professional writer. If you need web copy, articles, books or press releases, get in touch with Nick now at info@nickparkhouse.com

Nick’s first book, 101 Forgotten Pop Hits of the 1980s, is also now available through Author House, Amazon and Waterstones.

As part of the launch of my new book, 101 Forgotten Pop Hits of the 1980s, I did an interview last week with my good friend Mike Atkinson for the excellent local Nottingham publication, Left Lion.

One of the questions I was asked – and one that I really should have been prepared for – was ‘Of the songs you have included in the book, which is your favourite’?

After a bit of deliberation, I picked Gold by Spandau Ballet as the one I would keep for the nation, and Love Changes (Everything) by Climie Fisher as the one I’d keep for myself (I appreciate that is a bit of a cheat of an answer, but there you go.)

Anyway, it got me thinking (as I also did later on when watching the season finale of the always entertaining series Glee) about what is the greatest contemporary pop record of all time.  Not my favourite – but the best in objective terms.

Clearly, there are gazillions of records that you could choose, and there’s no way of realistically determining whether one is better than another.  Is the Beatles Hey Jude better than Rule the World by Take That?  Hanson’s Mmmbop better or worse than Daydream Believer?  Is Bohemian Rhapsody a pop record, and is it better than Relax, You’re The One That I Want or Don’t You Want Me?

After some cogitating, I came up with Unchained Melody.  For the number of successful cover versions and its enduring popularity, it must surely rank somewhere high on the list.

And just when I thought I might have my answer, I remembered one more song.  A song that is so perfect and so well-loved across several generations; a song so beautiful that it sounds as good today as it did when it was recorded; a song that is famous and yet something you never, ever tire of hearing.

Is Somewhere Over The Rainbow the best pop record of all time?

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Nick Parkhouse is a professional writer. He provides articles, copy, press releases and books and marketing material to a range of local and international clients. He also specialises in sports writing for a number of international sports companies as well finance, property, politics and cinema writing.

Nick’s first book, 101 Forgotten Pop Hits of the 1980s, is also now available at www.authorhouse.co.uk

Have you ever dangled a participle?

Take this, for example.  “80% of married men cheat in America.”  The remaining 20% cheat in Europe, presumably…

We sort of know what this sentence is trying to say, but the participle  is misplaced because it seems to relate to the wrong part of the sentence.

There are loads of examples:

She was taken to casualty having been bitten by a snake in her underwear.

The bride was given away by her father wearing her grandmother’s wedding dress.

We always sell goods to people in plastic wrapping.

The reason I bring this up is that I noticed something similar in the charming village of Much Wenlock the other week.  On a short Shropshire break for a bit of fresh air, my wife and I were wandering around the village when we noticed two interesting things.  Firstly, Much Wenlock is, implausibly, the home of the Modern Olympic Games.  The village was the home of one William Penny Brookes, who created the National Olympian Games in 1866.  Brookes then began to engage in regular meetings at the Raven Hotel in the village with Baron de Coubertin, the man responsible for founding the modern Olympic Games.

Secondly, we saw this sign in the churchyard.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never ridden an exercise dog. I bet even Dr Brookes didn’t ride such a dog when he was coming up with potential events for the inaugural National Olympian Games….

What I think they meant was: “Please don’t exercise dogs or ride bicycles in it”.  It proves that even the clergy can dangle a participle here and there….

There are two simple rules that you can follow to avoid this mistake in your writing:

1. The (unexpressed) subject of the participle clause – the person or thing who is doing something – should have the same subject as the (expressed) subject of the main clause.

2. The modifying clause or phase should always come as near as possible to the noun or pronoun it modifies.

As Groucho Marx once said, “I once shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got into my pyjamas, I’ll never know….”

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Nick Parkhouse is a professional writer. He provides articles, copy, press releases and books and marketing material to a range of local and international clients. He also specialises in sports writing for a number of international sports companies as well finance, property, politics and cinema writing.

Having worked in retail financial services for fourteen years, assisting a client with the creation, design and content for a credit card comparison site was a job perfectly tailored to my skills.

Credit Card Rewards has quickly grown to become one of Australia’s most popular card comparison sites thanks, in no small part, to the 70 odd card reviews and almost 200 articles about cards, fees, banking and charges that I have provided the site to date.  Combining my knowledge of financial services with my writing ability has been almost the ideal job.

(Incidentally, and annoyingly, about the only thing on the entire site that I didn’t write was the homepage welcome text, which I don’t like very much.  My version was (in my humble opinion) *much* better…..!

The site continues to grow and is now quite the resource – as well as dozens of cards to compare it contains a huge amount of information.  I’m pretty proud of the way it has turned out, and my client is delighted with it too.

Having written countless articles about how to avoid credit card and identity fraud, I actually took some of my own advice today.  When an obviously fraudulent ‘phishing’ e-mail turned up in my inbox today, I researched the provider it was purporting to be and forwarded the e-mail to their security department.  Practice what you preach, and all that….

And now this project is up and running, the same client has turned his attention to an altogether more, er, ‘adult’ online market. More of that in due course….

Nick Parkhouse is a professional writer. He provides articles, copy, press releases and books and marketing material to a range of local and international clients. He also specialises in sports writing for a number of international sports companies as well finance, property, politics and cinema writing.

It started as a conversation in a London pub in early 2008. Discussing great pop records of the 1980s, a man called Adrian – who I only ever met on that one occasion – told me I was like ‘the Louis Theroux of 80s pop music’.

And so it began. I started writing about those great 80s records that never get any airplay on the radio any more. I e-mailed a few 80s pop stars – more out of hope than expectation – and received many warm replies. I concocted a list of 101 ‘forgotten pop hits’ and started fielding e-mails and telephone calls from the likes of Hazell Dean, Simon Climie, Nik Kershaw and Kim Wilde. I got a backstage pass to the 80s Here and Now tour and hung out in the car park of the NEC with Johnny Hates Jazz and Bananarama. I even got to meet my all time 80s hero – Tony Hadley – twice.

And, 90,000 words (give or take) later, and two and a bit years work, my ‘labour of love’ (if you’ll excuse the 80s based pun) 101 Forgotten Pop Hits of the 1980s is now available in paperback here (or here if you are not in the UK).

It is absolutely amazing to see the thing in print, finally. Years of work have gone into this, and I am immensely proud of the way that it has turned out. I may owe some apologies to friends and relatives who have had to suffer endless Eighties anecdotes and hit singles over the last couple of years, but it’s all been in a good cause.

I am delighted to say that 101 Forgotten Pop Hits of the 1980s is now available to buy. If you would like one, you can head online and buy one from the publisher’s website (here in the UK or here for the rest of the world), or you can buy one directly from me (at a slight discount). If you’d like one or several copies (give them to your friends and family as presents!) then please e-mail me at 101@nickparkhouse.com, and I can sort out a payment via PayPal.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped me get this book into print, from 60 or so brilliant Eighties musicians, writers, producers and singers, my friends and family who have tolerated and proof read the manuscripts and, for the original idea, Adrian. Wherever you are.

You would think that the actual writing of a book might be the trickiest part of the whole process.

OK, so it took me the best part of two years to finish my first book, 101 Forgotten Pop Hits of the 1980s. I’d blame the fact it took me ages to schedule interviews with the likes of Kim Wilde and Angry Anderson, but the truth was that it just took one heck of a lot of work to turn my giant notebook into something approaching a coherent book.

Once it was done, I thought that the difficult bit was all over. How wrong I was. For six months now I have been grappling with every aspect of the publishing process. For starters, there was the tricky subject of proofreading the manuscript. Reluctant to pay the £500 or so I was quoted by professionals, I must have read the thing half a dozen times myself.  However, it still took a couple of friends of mine to points out misplaced apostrophes, the odd spelling error and other wayward grammar. I still don’t expect it to be 100% perfect, as I’m sure we’ll have all missed something.

Once that was all done, I then had to format the book. Issues of spacing, paragraphs and margins all took some weeks, as did making sure that there was equivalent and consistent spacing between lines. Do the margins all match?  Are there equal spaces between the paragraphs?  (I must confess that was quite probably the most tedious part of the whole endeavour.)

And then, I was faced with all sorts of design issues. I spent days looking for decent images to use for the exterior and interior of the book. I had to pick a design for the front and back cover, and then write a ’salesy’ cover synopsis and a biography. I had to work out how I wanted the interior of the book to look – how big the chapter headings should be, how to format the acknowledgments page – how to italicise any song titles – and so on.

Once that was done, I then had to proof read the thing again to pick up any errors that had occurred when the publishers transcribed the manuscript (there were several, including, for example, them italicising the Auf Wiedersehen but not the ‘Pet’). I also had to re-space the whole document once more and alter a couple of the images.

To say that it has been time consuming would be an understatement. So, if you’re planning on getting your book published, don’t forget to add a few months and plenty of man hours for the administrative minefield you will encounter once your manuscript is completed….

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Nick Parkhouse is a professional writer. He provides articles, copy, press releases and books and marketing material to a range of local and international clients. He also specialises in sports writing for a number of international sports companies as well finance, property, politics and cinema writing.

The General Election writing work keeps coming thick and fast, although, if I am honest, I am about as enamoured with the whole campaign as the rest of the British populace (i.e. ‘not very’).

Of course, a lack of any enthusiasm for any of the candidates (it’s like voting for which member of the firing squad is going to pull the trigger) means that it is easy to be sarcastic, condescending and generally cynical about the whole affair.  Not that this is reflected in the articles I am writing, of course….

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Tuesday 13 April – Fire Up The Power Station

There’s an episode of the brilliant BBC drama Doctor Who in which the Cybermen launch an attack on the world using Battersea Power Station as their base. In much the same way, a room full of identical clones (this time wearing ‘We Are All In This Together’ T-shirts) launched their bid for power today from the exact same venue.

Yes, DaveCam launched the Tory manifesto today with the bizarre line ‘Fire up the power station!’ – a reference (we think) to DaveCam’s new favourite TV show, Ashes to Ashes. Either that, or the pressure is getting to him.

The BBC called the hardback Conservative manifesto “a brave departure from the manifesto norm or a bit dotty, depending on your point of view”. Richard Hughes from the popular band Keane also felt compelled to state his non-Conservative views after their song Everybody’s Changing was used to soundtrack the manifesto launch.

Whilst DaveCam and his Conservative team banged on about ‘change’ for what seemed like eight months, the worst line of the day award went to Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg who, when asked about the manifesto, retorted, “They’ve just launched it in a power station that doesn’t have any power!”

Kill me. Now.

Monday 12 April – Corrupt Octopus

We all know that politicians are all searching for a great soundbite and a great headline in a General Election campaign, but a claim from the UKIP leader this week looks particularly apocalyptic in its tone.

Lord Pearson, the leader of the UK Independence Party has said David Cameron winning a working majority in the election ‘is certainly the end of this country’.

Blimey. That’s a bit of a worry, isn’t it? Perhaps we should sit up and take notice. I didn’t read that in the Conservative manifesto….

Lord Pearson continued: “After five more years of integration into the corrupt octopus that is Brussels, we won’t just be enmeshed in its tentacles, as we are now, we will be in its bowels.”

Apparently, it is because the Conservative leader has ruled out a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union for five years.

So, reading between the lines, what UKIP is saying is that either:

a) The UK will be fully integrated in the EU, no doubt in a giant country called Europa like some sort of real-life game of Risk, or

b) the UK is going to be eaten by a giant octopus.

Not ideal choices, I think you’ll agree. If they are the two possible outcomes under DaveCam, perhaps we should review our voting intentions….?

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Nick Parkhouse is a professional writer. He provides articles, copy, press releases and books and marketing material to a range of local and international clients. He also specialises in sports writing for a number of international sports companies as well finance, property, politics and cinema writing.

I’m writing loads of election related pieces at the moment.  I am really enjoying it, mainly as it involves a heady mixture of satire and sarcasm (two vital ingredients for any enjoyable writing, I think you’ll agree.)

Anyway, the other day I saw an interview with David Cameron (DaveCam as he has become known in my series) where he was talking about a ‘hole in the finances’.  Now, all my brain could hear at this point was Bernard Cribbins’ 1962 hit Hole In The Ground and so I decided to write a piece on this basis.

I was really pleased with what I came up with, but I also appreciate that to some it must look like I have gone potty.  Still, make up your own mind….

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Hole in the finances

There was I, a-digging this hole

Hole in the ground, big and sort of round it was

And there was I, digging it deep, it was flat at the bottom and its sides were steep

When along comes this bloke in a bowler which he lifted and he scratched his head

Well he looked down the hole, poor demented soul and he said:

“My plan to reverse Labour tax rises was not covered by my already published proposals for cuts. I had to tell the BBC that the cuts I am proposing are still not enough to fill this hole. And then I made a series of interviews in which I didn’t look like I knew what I was talking about and I had to admit that there was this hole and that “I accept there is more that needs to be done”. Now the Labour Party are saying I have a £22billion ‘credibility gap’ and that there is a great big hole where a hole don’t belong.”

I ask what a liberty, eh? Nearly bashed him right in the bowler.

Well, there was I, stood in me hole

Shovelling earth for all that I was worth, I was

And there was him, standing up there

So grand and official with his nose in the air

So I gave him a look sort of sideways and I leaned on my shovel and sighed

Well I lit me a fag, and having took a drag I replied:

“Well, according to bookshop chain founder Tim Waterstone it is ‘irresponsible’ of you and your Shadow Chancellor George Osborne to claim there are £12billion of efficiency savings to pay for the tax cut. And Labour Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson says a Tory government would put the UK economy ‘back into the emergency crisis room’. Some would say that you lot are behaving like a kid in a sweet shop, believing that you can take sweets from every jar without paying for them. You need to find a something to fill this hole; otherwise you’ll be in trouble.”

Well there we were, discussing this hole

Hole in the ground, big and sort of round it was

But it’s not there now, the ground’s all flat

And beneath it is the bloke in the bowler hat.

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Nick Parkhouse is a professional writer. He provides articles, copy, press releases and books and marketing material to a range of local and international clients. He also specialises in sports writing for a number of international sports companies as well finance, property, politics and cinema writing.