An occasional celebration of words and writing worth reading. Or best avoided.
Word love – Words to savour
Ennui. The word of lockdown 3. Is anyone not feeling a bit of it? I doubt it.
Tittle. Did you know that when we Brits say someone is like someone else ‘to a t’, the ‘t’ is short for tittle, the word for the dot in the letter ‘i’? It implies the two people (or things) are similar to such a degree that the difference between them is barely the smallest part of the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet. Yet again Susie Dent delivers a blinder on my go-to word love podcast Something rhymes with purple. Every episode is a joy.
Revision. I have revised my opinion of the word revision. No longer is it a lonely teenage anxiety but a process of renewal, of re-vision. I discovered recently that it comes from the Latin word ‘revisere’, meaning ‘to look again’. This past year has been a process of looking again – at what makes us happy when much is stripped away or at risk; at the choices we make; at the work we do, how we do it and why it matters. A bit of re-visioning can go a long way, even without the enforced impetus of a global pandemic.
Word less – Words we could do without
Zombie nouns. Thanks to The Writer for drawing my attention to Helen Sword’s coining of the term ‘zombie nouns’ for those nemeses of engaging corporate copy: the ‘ments’, ‘tions’, ‘isms’ and ‘ities’. If I had one piece of advice for someone writing for a big company, particularly in technology, it would be Beware the Zombies. (If I had two, the second would be: ask yourself ‘so what’ – why does what I’m saying matter to the person I’m writing to). Turning management into manage and formation into form is like plugging in the light. Do it and your writing instantly springs to life.
Words in context – Words worth a read or listen
Grammar Girl can always be relied upon for pithy posts on wordy matters. Her website and Twitter are a treasure trove of linguistic tips, stories and bugbears de-bugged. Her recent post on italics will give you a flavour.
Hucky and Buzz. We all need more positive at the moment, and every time the talented writer and illustrator Emma Dodd posts a Hucky and Buzz message I smile and feel just that little bit better. Follow Emma, or Hucky and Buzz, on Insta to feel the love.
Short, curated e-newsletters. Increasingly, the brand newsletters I actually read are all smart, short snippets of curated content that I find relevant, interesting and quick to digest. Reed Words, Destination Yes, and The CR Newsletter from Creative Review are good examples. None of them sell per se. They sell their brand through the content they choose to curate and how they talk about it.
other stories
I recently found myself rolling my eyes at yet another headline written in the same style by a B2B corporate brand I follow. I know why they’re doing it; the style fits with their
Word love: Anythingarian. Every time I listen to Something Rhymes with Purple I come away with a nugget of word love that makes me happy.
An occasional celebration of words and writing worth reading. Or best avoided.
Word love: Lugubrious. I mean, what’s not to love? Rolls around the mouth, sounds decadent, dangerous
Being your own client can be a tough gig. I learnt that lesson rebranding my own business and launching a new website last year. Now I’m the other side,
