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                                                      No, we’re not talking about tearing down statues. As bonfire night approaches, I’m referring to rewriting a plaque commemorating the Gunpowder Plot in language that everyone can understand. […]

There must be dozens of books out there on copywriting, all claiming to reveal exactly how you too can write killer copy. Some of them aren’t bad. Even so, when I’m asked “How can I improve my writing?”, I never recommend reading this kind of self-help educational guide. I simply say – read more fiction. […]

When I’m not writing, I love playing tennis. At best, I could describe myself as an adequate player. I’ve no real talent but I’ve been playing even longer than I have run ProseWorks. I know my way around the court and how to extract the best results from my meagre abilities. When I do pull […]

I’m often asked how we price up editorial work. I smile, shrug my shoulders and wryly say “It’s tricky.” They probably think I’m being evasive to guard some elaborate formula that we’ve devised over the years. I wish that was the case. The reality is that pricing editorial work accurately is very difficult, especially when […]

Writing. Kebabs. They have a lot in common. Really. Let me explain… With kebabs, the grilling over really hot sizzling coals is furiously quick. Yet before the skewers get anywhere near the barbeque there’s a lot of prep work.  It takes time and a lot of care to slice, season and layer up the raw […]

Copywriting is a business where deadlines loom large. All day, every day. There’s no escaping them. I can honestly say that we’ve never missed one. And I can tell you that the ability to meet deadlines isn’t a superpower (and nor is it about pulling regular red-eye all-nighters). We simply never accept a deadline that […]

In Ian Ewan’s book Amsterdam, the editor of a national newspaper labours to escape what he calls the ‘dead hand of the grammarians’. They are a faction among his sub-editors whose insistence on following the formal rules of grammar overrides all other considerations. I know the feeling. It’s not unusual for a client (or should […]

We copywriters and all our fellow creatives place heavy emphasis on asking the client to provide a comprehensive brief with as much detail and colour as possible. Naturally, we want to get things right. Investing in the briefing processes closes down the chances of a project starting out on the wrong footing. So, at ProseWorks […]

Writing is an art and not a science. What makes good copy is subjective and open to interpretation. Most clients understand this and accept that sometimes it takes time before even the most talented writer delivers copy that really hits the spot. Very occasionally, however, some clients don’t. They don’t value the creative process and […]

Over the last twenty years we’ve been blessed with great clients. I say that in all honesty (and not just because some of them might be reading this post). I’ve always been struck by their integrity and commitment as well as their honesty, approachability and all-round reasonableness. Obviously there have been a few issues to […]

There are many ways to judge a great copywriter. I love a great line. And after all these years I’m still struck by the power of words and the skill and creativity that’s needed to put together a great piece of copy. But they are just words. However finely crafted or highly polished, words serve […]

Language is always changing. Often it’s for the better. But business culture has a tendency to overuse expressions, so much so that they soon turn into meaningless cliches. In 2022, if you want to improve your writing and communication skills,  try to avoid using them. Below are ten of the worst offenders (although I’m sure […]

At the dawn of the 21st century, Innocent smoothies took supermarket shelves by storm and helped us overcome our aversion to healthy eating. Quite suddenly we all found shelf space in our fridges for weird-coloured smoothies made from fruits we’d hardly heard of. Distinctive branding played a massive part in this success – but it […]

We’ve all done it … glanced at the opposition’s websites. Marvelled at their social media, squinted at their dazzling banks of awards and accolades. When I’ve felt a little envious, my own internal dialogue has always come straight back with this reply: concentrate on your own game, do what you’re good at. And just don’t […]

I’ve worked with some brilliant people. And I’ve worked with some difficult people. Occasionally colleagues have fallen into both these categories, but not for long. Experience has taught me to walk away from even the most phenomenally gifted person if they’re hard to work with. It doesn’t happen often – perhaps less than half a […]

At ProseWorks we never quite know what we will be doing from one week to the next. There’s the regular stuff, and there are the jobs we get to plan well in advance; but a lot of what we do comes in with an extremely short lead time. Clients want a quick turnaround and it’s […]

It happened a lot in our early days. And some still ask for it even though we have a great track record. I’m talking about working on a trial period for free, or least doing some free specimen work so that the client can ‘judge you’. It’s tempting. It can seem like a very good […]

Everyone needs self-belief and confidence to work as a copywriter. Copywriting is the venerable ancestor of the gig economy; hiring freelance copywriters was around long before anyone had Uber-ed anything. Freelance writers have much more control over their time than their conventionally salaried counterparts – but they need a lot of nerve to juggle through […]

One of my earliest jobs was at the famous Foyles bookshop on London’s Charing Cross Road. I was sometimes on the sales point of the ever-popular Penguin Books section at the front of the shop and two memories of this department still make me smile. First, the wine box under the counter that we gently […]

We all have that sense of trepidation when we send a draft to a client. We hope they like it. Then our heart sinks a bit when it comes back criss-crossed with multi-coloured track changes detailing thousands of comments and amendments, many contradictory, from a whole committee of readers. We do, of course, dream of […]

    Ok…that headline is slightly misleading. Let me qualify it. Be wary of the writer who claims to be a general wordsmith. Over the last twenty years I must have been approached by hundreds of writers wanting to join the good ship ProseWorks and become one of our associate writers. Generally, if I hear […]

  I’ve heard it on BBC News. I’ve heard it used by Radio 5 Live presenters, and it’s frequently used by fellow Linkediners… It’s the word gotten, an Americanism that I always thought exemplifies how different US English is to the language we use over here. Things are changing. It’s now crept into everyday usage […]

  Something quite big happened on 1 March in the world of editing and proofreading. No…it wasn’t a St David’s Day knees-up. It was the fact that the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) became the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP). At ProseWorks we’ve been involved with the SfEP for a long time. […]

                            Writers hate them. Editors love them. And as we provide both services, I often sit in the middle and sort out the arguments. Many of the organisations we work for have their own style guide. They are given to us to […]

      “We are where we are.” “It is what it is.” You hear these expressions a lot. They crop up all the time. In fact, I bet you’ve used them yourselves once or twice during the last few days. I know I have. It’s because these self-repeating expressions seem to capture the downbeat […]

I only recently came across Powerpointless, a thought-provoking BBC Radio 4 programme by Ian Sansom about the history and rise of PowerPoint. The programme outlines why and how it has transformed business presentations. But it also suggests that its dominance shackles new ideas and hinders creativity. I have to say, I couldn’t agree more. We all […]

  In our business we get to see a lot of tone of voice guidance, editorial style sheets and brand guidelines. We’ve written and contributed to a fair few as well. The problem is, though, that there’s a lot of confusion about what they are, how they differ, and how they fit together. So, in […]

Years ago it was easy. There was no email. No texts. No social media…just old-fashioned letters that came through the post And all letters began with Dear… The only tricky bit was remembering whether to use Yours sincerely or Yours faithfully at the end (and my dad was usually available to advise on this). How […]

While on holiday on the Gower Peninsula, we dipped into Swansea to visit the Dylan Thomas Centre, a museum and arts centre dedicated to Swansea’s most famous son. Love the Words is the title of the exhibition dedicated to his life and works. It’s surprisingly inventive, interactive and informative. I learnt about his early life […]

Well, well, well…few people expected that election result. It’s a Hung Parliament with no one political party commanding an overall majority in the House of Commons. We’ve been there before in 2010. We’ve blogged about it before as well. But in case your memory fades, here’s our explanation of the term Hung Parliament… The term, […]

The NHS is under attack… Not from budget cuts, waiting times or staff shortages. This time it’s from the Plain English Campaign for the language it uses. It seems the NHS is suffering from a bad dose of jargonitis. According to the campaign, the NHS management has spawned its own lexicon of health service jargon. […]

    I’m sure there’s a business survey out there somewhere that tells you how many hours you spend during the working week reading… The answer must be quite a few. Most of us read the same kind of stuff. Business papers, reports, proposals, research and pitches. We read so much of it that – […]

For our Christmas message this year we explain the origins of that slightly strange phenomenon… the Christmas Cracker. Unless you collect plastic frogs that don’t jump or paper hats that always split, it’s hard to imagine the point of them. So, how did they secure their place at everyone’s Christmas table? London confectioner Tom Smith invented the Christmas […]

  In the copywriting business much is made of the different types of writing. Channels, platforms, concepts, voice and style are often all discussed, dissected and agreed before any writing begins in earnest. And so they should be. It’s what we do. Great copywriters have the ability to write in any style and voice, for […]

    We are creative people and we work in the creative industries. Why then is it so hard for us to produce our own creative content? When we recently embarked on a revamp of our website, we thought it would be a fairly straightforward exercise. As a leading copywriting agency we stand or fall […]

The exclamation mark is everywhere. Or perhaps I should write: The exclamation mark is everywhere! Its popularity continues to grow. It even appears to be threatening the supremacy of the full stop as the undisputed default sentence ender. According to my Google search, the word ‘exclaim’ comes from the Latin word exclamare which means ‘to […]

Passion is in fashion. Of course it is. Valentine’s Day is on Sunday. I’m also talking about the word passion – and its close associate passionate – which now seem ubiquitous in business communications. How many LinkedIn profiles have you seen saying they have a ‘passion’ for writing, marketing, web design, business services … window […]

The terms ‘news’ and ‘features’ are common currency in our business. We use them all the time. Recently, though, a client asked for clarification on the difference between a news piece and a feature. Good question, I thought. In fact, such a good question that I should share the answer. News… as it happens News […]

Most big companies’ blogs are as  faceless and uninspiring as their corporate headquarters. They do try. They have corporate blogs … a section of their website where they try to open up their businesses by giving readers a real insight into how they work and what makes them tick. Well, that’s the idea. Whether they are genuine […]

Politicians making speeches isn’t news. Three politicians making resignation speeches all in the same day, is news. Of course we are talking about Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage who – in the wake of the Conservative victory in the general election – all today announced that they were quitting as leaders of their […]

After five years of coalition government here in the UK, most of us know what a hung parliament is. It’s a parliament in which no one political party has an overall majority of seats in the House of Commons and therefore can’t pass laws without the support of MPs for other political parties. And with […]

At ProseWorks, Purdah and the political cycle always have a big effect on how we work and who we work for. The last general election in 2010 reminded me of sitting exams in my school days. The announcement of the Conservative-led coalition government was followed a few days later by dramatic cuts in marketing expenditure. “Put […]

An everyday tale about queuing for chips, abstract nouns and clear language… Queuing up for something to eat outside a popular south London chip shop recently, I glanced around to look at the other shops on the same parade. There was the usual array of fast food outlets, barbers and supermarkets that you’d expect to […]

A lot of people take a dim view of Xmas. Not the festival or festivities, but the spelling. The Times, the Guardian and the BBC no less all try to avoid its use, according to their style guides. They are part of a wide coalition who object to the term ‘Xmas’ for a number of […]

Apostrophes divide the nation. There are those who are not sure how to use apostrophes and seem to slap them down willy-nilly, and those who draw comfort from the fact that they know where to place apostrophes, whatever the circumstance, whatever the sentence. The problem is that the latter often cherish the apostrophe just a […]

I remember years ago sitting in a pub quiz in London, and being asked what the collective nouns were for various types of birds…. My memory is always a bit shaky. But one of those nouns I always remember is a murmuration of starlings. What a colourful and imaginative way to describe the quiet and […]

Sitting in our office it’s easy to forgot that the cultural context of what you read and write is so important. Although we have been writing and editing for more years than we like to remember (think pre-millennium and then add a few more years), sometimes we come across new words that throw us. This […]

Sometimes the very sound of a word gives away its meaning. ‘Plain’ is one such word. Say the word out loud and you realise that it’s very dull, monosyllabic and altogether uninspiring. So the term Plain English suggests very simple language that offers little colour, inspiration or detail. In a way, this is true. The […]

The offside rule is like a freemason’s handshake: to those ‘in the know’ it needs little explanation; yet to the uninitiated it remains beyond comprehension. It was introduced to prevent ‘goal hanging’; a common practice in school play grounds but strictly forbidden in grown up football. Attacking players must therefore remain onside. There must be […]

Verbiage…We read it all the time. Long sentences that take ages to get to the point and use so many words that the reader soon loses interest. Of course, what such writing needs is a good edit, cutting out the unnecessary words that extend and elongate the sentence while, at the same time, hiding or […]

When you hear phrases like ‘active verbs’ you are immediately cast back to your school days. Sitting at the back of the classroom hearing your teacher drone on about grammar. In fact, these types of phrases do the English language a real disservice. They switch people off and remind them that – whatever they are […]

If you’d mentioned the phrase ‘digital copywriting’ ten years ago, most people would not know what you were talking about… ‘writing with your fingers?’ they’d ask. Today digital copywriting is fast surpassing all other types of writing, but have the principles of good writing changed in the digital world? The answer is probably no. Five […]

For some of us English is an intricate set of detailed rules and regulations that govern how we speak and write. The multi-faceted ellipsis shows that language is more subtle and intriguing than that. The three-dotted ellipsis in the middle of a sentence usually denotes omission of words or a compression of a sentence to […]

Clients often ask us what we mean by the term ‘stand-first’. I kick myself when I hear this question. After all, we ProseWorks writers and editors are experts in plain English. We pursue a merciless mission to root out and destroy all jargon, wherever it raises its head. Being caught using a piece of jargon […]

Today the word Selfie was named Word of the Year. Until this morning I did not realise there was such a thing. There is though. This esteemed honour has been awarded by none other than the Oxford English Dictionary to the widely used term for taking a picture of yourself on your smartphone. There was […]

I’m not sure if it’s a blur or a very fine line…either way it’s often very hard to demarcate the difference between copywriting and editing. Of course, that’s not what clients want to hear. Quite understandably they often want a price list of clearly defined services. They can then pick what they want and do […]

A south London school has banned pupils from using slang, in an attempt to improve their communication skills and enhance their ability to talk to different types of people. A noble intention, but is banning language any way to make young people more expressive and articulate? I doubt it. The school in question is Harris […]

When it comes to using word properly, a good dictionary can usually put your right. Not so in the case of the heavily overused word ‘literally’, which is used in general conversation to provide emphasis, sometimes with comic results: ‘This will literally knock your socks off.’ But the Oxford English Dictionary now includes the following […]

Lots of words or phrases in English are used incorrectly so often that they start to look wrong when used in the correct way. One of the commonest such errors is using ‘comprise of’, instead of ‘comprise’. Collins Dictionary defines ‘comprise’ as ‘to include, contain’. So if you say ‘The board comprised of five members’ […]

I was retold a great writing joke recently by a friend who said he’d heard it on the radio. Alas, he couldn’t remember the show or the comic. It’s a good one though. It made me chuckle: “An editor recently lost his thesaurus…he was so lost for words, he couldn’t describe how upset he was.” […]

At ProseWorks, we’ve probably seen it all. Over the years we have undertaken all imaginable editorial assignments, ranging from scripting plays through to writing display notices. One of the most common requests, though, goes like this: ‘Here’s our draft. Don’t change anything. Just give it a quick proofread.’ Occasionally only a quick proofread is required. […]

So often clients tell us that writing newsletters fills them with terror. They say, “We don’t know what to write about”. They then go away and write about the things that are most pressing and interesting to them. This is not a great idea as they go heavy on the detail…and detail is one thing […]

Returning to the office from a week’s break in Cornwall, we notice that – in our absence – Oxford English Dictionaries have announced that its latest edition has around 1,000 new words. This seems a fair number of new entries. Apparently, similar numbers of words are entered each year demonstrating that English is not a […]

There’s a lot of confusion about what’s known as ‘split infinitives. Whenever I hear the word ‘infinitive’ I can’t help thinking of Toy Story and Buzz Lightyear… ‘To Infinity and Beyond….’ Maybe it’s the sense of escape and adventure that we writers and editors crave, as we sit tapping away on our keyboards, day in, […]

It sounds like the name of new computer virus or something you’d find in electrical wholesalers. At the very least you’d have thought you could dangle it off a shelf or ledge or even something more exciting like a flood light or giant stage set. Alas no. Dangling modifiers have a mundane role which, for […]

Last week a team from ProseWorks visited our client Eurofound, the European Agency which promotes understanding of working and living conditions across Europe. It was great to get out of the office and travel to Dublin to meet Eurofound’s editorial team. Talking points ranged from detailed discussions on technical editing issues, such as how to […]

OK. It’s confession time. How many of you are guilty of using jargon recently? You probably feel that your colleagues in other departments are the worst culprits, but – when it comes to jargon – we’ve all committed some pretty bad word crimes, and sometimes without knowing it. Lip service is given to plain English, […]

People have strong feelings about what they consider to be correct English. The strange thing is that language quirks that bother some people don’t even register as mistakes with others who, in turn, might be quietly appalled at something they consider to be very bad English. One prime example is the grocer’s apostrophe, inserted quite […]

We live in a visual world. To succeed organisations, businesses and individuals need to provide strong visual imagery and branding. Visuals, especially photography, are so important because they provide immediate impact. They explain, appal, excite, outrage, uplift and enlighten, sometimes all at the same time. They provoke a powerful emotional response from supporters in a […]

Do you sometimes get a sense that your sentence is not quite right, even though you can’t exactly say why? If you do, then you wouldn’t be alone. Using the terms less and fewer is one issue that causes this sense of unease and uncertainty. For instance, a lot of people would pick up that […]

Learning grammar is back. It’s on everyone’s agenda. Eleven-year-olds have been heads down at their desks this week doing grammar tests as part of the Key Stage 2 SATs. Even the BBC put up a grammar test on its news site to mark this event. Obviously we are delighted that writing issues are now under […]