Jacob Rees-Mogg’s infamous style guide
Well, who’d have thought it? One of the first controversies of the Johnson era hasn’t come from some unfortunate gaffe, but from an issue very close to writers’ and editors’ hearts: style guides. To bring…
Month: July 2019
Who needs About Us pages when there’s Wikipedia?
I often need to find out basic information about companies when I’m researching copywriting jobs – when they were formed, what they do, how they differ from competitors; that sort of thing. Obviously the first…
Stop WPForms emails being sent to your Gmail spam folder
If you’re having all your emails from WPForms sent to your spam box in Gmail, here’s a quick fix. The process will be similar for all forms plugins, but this post relates specifically to my…
Hyphens, en dashes and em dashes: how to use them
They might all look vaguely similar, but hyphens and dashes serve very different purposes. Here’s a quick rundown of their differences and how to use them. Hyphen ‐ The hyphen is shorter than both dashes…
Readability analysis: accept, consider, ignore?
Imagine the scene. A graphic designer submits some branding materials to a client. The client’s marketing guy feeds the image into a scanner and takes a sip of coffee as the computer does his its…
First impressions and the second chance
It’s funny how little sayings stick in your mind. I first heard the phrase “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” about 30 years ago at some careers event, and I’ll…