thedanglingmodifier.co.uk

You would think that after at least ten or 15 years of the web people would know that brief is good and justified text is difficult to read online. I don’t want to get sued, but I have to say it’s just as well  this training company doesn’t teach web writing or plain English. And why are they called Sold Out Trainers – a name that suggests a faint tang of sweaty feet, without actually meaning old running shoes at all? › Continue reading

I went on a course this week – ‘Effective copywriting’ – all part of my plan to transform myself from grubby B2B sub to highly-paid marketing professional. It was a pretty good course and I think I may have picked up some useful tricks about lateral thinking. But, the tutor would insist that we should avoid using the same word twice. He called this ‘elegant variation’. › Continue reading

Of course I never trusted them after the window incident, but that is just a personal thing, and I hope I’m big enough not to let my personal experiences affect my judgement irrationally.

It’s just that I can’t square it. Either they were wrong, in which case they shouldn’t be teachers. Or they lied, in which case they shouldn’t be entrusted with the welfare of the little children.

There was the stuff about splitting infinitives and their irrational hatred for the word ‘got’. But then they had to tie us in knots with their insistence that writing is boring if you use the same word twice in a sentence.

“Think of a different word to make it more interesting.”

That’s what they said. Of course I never believed them (although I don’t like to boast). Why do people give teachers so much credit for knowing things?

Successive captains of the Starship Enterprise continue to split their infinitives. Surely that’s enough to make people question the wisdom of those who told us not to?

But no, people insist on looking for a different word to “make the sentence more interesting”. And the worst culprits are journalists – sports journalists, and especially in broadcast.

If only they would read this blog and believe me when I say:

“There is no shame in repeating the name of a football team. Why must you call them ‘the visitors’ or worst still, ‘the tourists’?”

They are not tourists, they are paid professionals and they have come to play football not to see the sights. And they are not visiting, not for long. As soon as the match is over they get back on the bus and go home.

Sports come on the radio during the news. They wait until I am running towards the cooker, busy with a pan of over-boiling milk. Or I might be watching television, and just as I step away to make a cup of tea the sports correspondent starts gushing about visitors and tourists in that over excited way they have.

I suspect they have joined the conspirators, the ones who laugh at editors everywhere. I can’t listen any more. I have turned off the radio, unplugged the television.

I sit alone in the dark wondering about the UN. Dare I look for news online? I need to know whether the conspiracy has reached the highest level of international governance. I know they are holding climate talks, so here it is…

The future of our planet is riddled with abbreviations and acronyms.