Give your company a voice
Top chef Marcus Wareing is known to be a perfectionist in the kitchen but he appears to pay less attention to his grammar. in the run-up to Christmas, he posted an error-strewn tweet saying: “If their is any young chefs who want’s to know what training looks like at top level take a look at tonight’s MasterChefUK.”
As grammar fans and, indeed, children everywhere will know, his tweet should have correctly read,
Poor spelling pushes you down the search rankings
In today’s online world, typos sometimes come with a hefty price tag. A BBC report[3] suggested that a single spelling mistake on an e-commerce website can harm credibility so much that online revenues are cut in half.
If that doesn’t convince you, consider that search engines look for strings of characters in sequence so if your website contains misspellings, it is unlikely to rank highly in search results.
Just like fashions, popular expressions come and go and 2017’s word of the year – or, being pedantic, words of the year – has just been announced as ‘fake news’. Popularised by the US President Donald Trump who accused it of influencing elections, fake news is defined as ‘false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting’. The phrase has risen by 365 percent since 2016 and its number one spot means it will be included in the next print edition of Collins Dictionary.
All businesses, whatever their size, should care about correct spelling and grammar because they create a professional, credible first impression. Think they’re unimportant in this day and age? Just look at the ridicule heaped on US President Donald Trump for his repeated mistakes – and not necessarily only from people who disagree with his policies. When President Trump branded Jeff Sessions, still his attorney-general at the time of writing, as “beleaguered” on Twitter, perhaps the most surprising thing was that “beleaguered”
There was much jubilation in the Words etc offices when we learned our resident copywriter Melanie Silver has been shortlisted in the Business Services category of the Business Women of the Year Awards 2017. A glass or two of wine may have been consumed and Winston, the office guard dog, enjoyed a celebratory treat.
Melanie set up Words etc Limited in 1996 after a successful career in marketing for well-known companies including DHL and Forte Hotels.
The offices of Words etc will be closed for a much-needed holiday from 31 July to 14 August 2017. We will return refreshed and brimming with enthusiasm on Monday 14 August when the office will reopen and we will respond to any requests.
Poor crisis communication makes airline laughing stock
United Airlines’ shares fell more than 4% in April as outrage over Dr David Dao of Kentucky being dragged off an overbooked flight finally caught up to the stock. The incident, exacerbated by poor communication, meant United’s shares were among the worst performers in the S&P 500. According to Andy Swan of LikeFolio, which monitors social media for financial applications, United’s chief executive Oscar Muñoz poured fuel on the flames with his insensitive and,
Regular readers of my blog will know that I care about grammar mistakes, particularly all-too-common apostrophe abuse. So I applaud this grammar vigilante who tours his hometown of Bristol in the dead of night, armed only with a ladder and stickers, correcting the most offensive errors.
https://www.facebook.com/bbcbreakfast/videos/1661567050524093/
It has long been quarrelled over by writers but the ‘Oxford comma’ now has a new champion in the unlikely form of Christopher O’Connor, a lorry driver from Maine, and 50 fellow truckers. The drivers emerged victorious in a court case with their employer over overtime pay. Unusually, it hinged on the absence of the Oxford comma (also known as a ‘serial comma’) in state legislation covering overtime pay.
Quick grammar aside: The Oxford comma is used before the words ‘and’ or ‘or’ in a list of three or more things to clarify sentences in which things are listed.
New words for a new year
If one of your New Year resolutions is to expand your vocabulary, 2016 saw many new and useful additions to the English dictionary. Early in the year, Judy Murray revealed her son Andy and his wife Kim call her ‘Glam-ma’ – a word used to describe a new breed of grandmother who is successful, glamorous and young-looking. Around Halloween, ‘Trumpkin’ was coined to describe a pumpkin made to look like Donald Trump,
