Writing tip: Use 1, 2, 3 for first, second, third
When writing a list, how do you decide whether to use dot points or numbers?
Blog: Content writing and content strategy insights
Design web sites for 34+ million migraine sufferers
Your website design could be triggering migraine attacks.
Is this a trivial issue? Should you care?
There's heaps of information about designing accessible web sites for people with disabilities, because for government agencies in many countries, this is mandatory.
WCAG 2.0 sets guidelines that prevent web sites from starting an epilectic seizure.
But I haven't seen anything in WCAG 2.0 about migraine sufferers, so I'm speaking up on their behalf.
How do content strategists benefit from Contented courses in accessible web content?
Content strategists will be guiding, supporting, supervising and training staff writers. Contented courses are invaluable for this role. Strategists need to be able to see the challenges of web writing from the point of view of staff who produce content for the organisation's web sites and intranets.
Business writing courses: how can you trust them?
I'm horrified at the antiquated business writing guides and manuals that are still being used today. How could students possibly take seriously an online text that looks like that? Yet Google delivered this Brief Guide to Business Writing as result #7 when I searched for a business writing guide. I wish that I could say this is unusual. But buried on many a university's web sites are such documents, presumably still in use
Plain language vs. ploddledygook: the worm turns
"Call the police. Ploddledygook is murdering the English language," went a headline in The Times on 9 May 2013.
Simon de Bruxelles quoted a hefty chunk of impenetrable blah posing as "instructions" for police officers entering Avon & Somerset's annual Problem Solving Awards.
That a British police authority should gush meaningless fluffy managementspeak is no surprise. That's the reality in every sector today, as Don Watson so eloquently explained in a Radio New Zealand interview yesterday.
What's amazing (and wonderful) to me is the indignant response of some of the police officers who tried to read this ploddledygook. (That word will be with us forever.)