Who's for an 'ambient sausage roll'? 23 hours ago
Peckish? The Plain English Campaign was certainly hungry for an explanation about this product description from the Co-op. It turns out that the ‘ambient sausage roll’ label isn’t part of a new range of chilled out meat products, but the result of a clerical error.
Plain English please
The Plain English Campaign also highlights more deliberate copy bloomers with its annual awards. These celebrate the best (and shame the worst) of written communications. The latest were given out at the end of 2009. See the comments on winners in the Plain English awards results for a quick insight into the organisation’s view on what makes copy clear and effective.
Useful things
The Plain English Campaign website is worth a visit anyway if you haven’t had a look already. Try out the gobbledygook generator or test your knowledge in the online grammar quiz. Try it. It’s fun. But I would say that.
Spelling out the cost 7 days ago
What’s the cost of getting the signs wrong? At the weekend it was revealed that no less than 14 local councils have paid hundreds of pounds to correct misspelled street signs. Several of these included the classic rogue apostrophe. I’ve written before about the value of well executed signs. I’ve also written about the impact of poor spelling on readability in copywriting and communications. But does this extend to street signs? I think so. They are public information after all. It’s just a shame these things weren’t done right first time. What do you think? Are the new signs a worthwhile expense – or a waste of money?
It's not a twittonary. It's a list. 12 days ago
As someone who already had an issue with words like ‘twestival’, this twittonary was bound to make me grit my teeth. Don’t get me started on words such as ‘tweetsult’ or ‘twittish’. These distortions of language trouble me. But the words are unique to the world of Twitter, so why should I have a problem with them? And shouldn’t language stay flexible? Things like the SarcMark are (sometimes literal) signs that the way we write content and copy is constantly developing. As Paul Gordon commented in a recent post I wrote on new words, technology plays a huge part in changing the way we communicate with eachother. But I still hope these references stay within Twitter instead of moving outwards…Whether you’re updating friends or explaining a service to new customers, language needs to include rather than exclude. And as I look through the twittonary (or list), I wonder – how many ‘special’ words does it take for a community to become a clique?
Introducing the future of sarcasm 14 days ago
Feeling sarky? Make sure the world never misses your dry wit – thanks to the SarcMark. That’s not something out of a dark comedy on the bizarre evolution of language. It’s an actual punctuation mark dedicated to the sarcastic. The drier side of humour doesn’t always translate in the written word, so perhaps a symbol to denote the ironic will create clarity. Do you think the SarcMark is a brilliant innovation – or yet one more step in the distortion of the English language? Will the combined squiggle and dot make our communication clearer or just add confusion to the way we write? Changes in language seem to affect the newer, more informal kind of communications first. So the SarcMark could well be coming to an email/text/tweet/blog near you soon. Perhaps later on it will become a staple of written copy. The exclamation mark? That’s so 2009.
How to choose for the right mood 19 days ago
Mood is not the most concrete of subjects. Yet it is crucial in creating results in writing. After all, most of us respond to atmosphere – positive or negative. Your choice of language sets the mood of your copy, with the potential to shut people off or draw them in. Here’s an example from a recent website rewrite:
Before
We will always keep you fully updated to the progress of your fulfillment project.
After
We’ll keep you up to date with how your project is going.
The first is more distant and formal, while the second is more direct and personal. A very different tone. But what may work well in one context could be out of place in another. The point is that it needs to work for your audience. No more, no less. What’s the mood you choose to create in your copy – muzak or something more appealing?
