I was fortunate enough to learn my trade in a time and place where that trade was a mysterious black art. Getting a job was easy. Getting my own way was easier still. Imagine my alarm when it transpired everyone had become a writer, and that I was no longer special at all. All those…
If you spend any time trawling freelance job sites like People Per Hour or Elance as a seller or a buyer, you appreciate how shocking is the divide in communication skills between the haves and have-nots. Just this morning I clicked the ‘learn more’ link on a job abstract, only to see the message that…
We’re reminded today by David Aaronovitch in the Times of why care with English usage and knowing the rules is more than simple pedantry or being ‘cute’. And it echoes what I’ve been saying for years – some might say ad nauseam, that in allowing the governing clerical classes to get away with bad English…
With no small degree of alarm, I noted that I had failed to write on my blog since 2nd January. Having been told by social media experts that it’s vital to blog often (daily if you can) I’ve nurtured a nagging fear for a few weeks now that my brand will have suffered… my online…
Good Writers Will Lead Their Clients to Embrace Change We need to examine the state of the writing industry, so I’m looking for input from people who both commission freelance writing / content writing / proofreading / copywriting projects, as well as from writers of all disciplines, experience levels (newbies to heavyweights), industry sectors and…
When a fundamentally good and decent man is publicly savaged in an England that one used to associate with words like tolerance, understanding, courage and fair play, you have to question how long before that society begins devolving into paranoid and aggressive tribalism <a ref="When a fundamentally good and decent man is publicly savaged in…
This is a new term to me… one I heard on BBC Radio 4 earlier in the week, and it’s indicative of our times. For the life of me, I can’t recall who spoke the term, as it was largely in the background, but the passive/intrusive nature of radio embedded the term in my brain…