Mike Hadley — Copywriting & Marketing Communications

Pronunciation

2012-01-08T17:28:00.001Z

From Poke

They say:

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

Getting the design work you want: ten pointers for success.

2012-01-05T17:55:00.002Z

Do you get the results you expect from your designer?

I've recently found myself involved with a couple of projects where the clients were not at all happy with the design proposals they had been given — yet didn't know what they could do about it.

Take Company A (a firm of accountants). They had a need to re-name and re-brand their business. Knowing next to nothing about the process they put their trust in a firm of 'designers' that they had found in a local telephone directory. They called me in to help with PR, but mentioned their concerns over the design proposals, and asked for my advice, given my background in design management and identity development.

It turned out that the designers had met the client once, at the designer's offices, so they had little or no understanding of the client's corporate personality. They hadn't put anything down in writing regarding approach or strategy, except to give a fee for the design work (and the client, naively but perhaps understandably, assumed that this would embrace all that was needed).

Although the designers had agreed to prepare three options, they emailed design proposals, rather than presenting and explaining the designs in person. They provided three design proposals that each adopted essentially the same approach, but with slightly different executions. Two of their solutions (one a hand-shake as logo, one a too-obvious rendition of 'money') were breathtakingly childish, and reminded me of a school project. There had been no attempt to indicate a process by which a multitude of potential avenues might have been explored around the services and benefits the company offered its audience. They had more or less created logo concepts on the back of an envelope and said "take it or leave it".

I offered to 'broker' the process for them, and when I met the designers they admitted that they had had provided two 'rubbish' concepts so that the client would choose the third. They were not prepared to provide any alternative concepts, but as it happens, the client did like one of the proposals, and so agreed to proceed. But as artwork for stationery was being prepared, they kept making basic mistakes and not following instructions. It became clear that they simply didn't appreciate the attention to detail required. With a deadline looming, and things beginning to spiral out of control, I advised the client to cut their losses and find a different designer who could provide more constructive support for the rest of the work required in this critical process.

They agreed a fee to end the relationship and keep the design they liked; I found them a designer who had a more professional approach, who ensured everything ran smoothly to launch date.

The tips I would pass on are these:

1. If you're paying a fee, you're in charge. Make sure things happen the way you want them to.
2. Prepare a clear brief. Write down your requirements and expectations. You could use my Briefing Form [ if you like.
3. Hold a beauty parade. Research possible designers: check local directories, ask colleagues, friends for recommendations.
4. Visit your shortlisted designers in their offices; get them to visit you in your offices.
5. Ask them to make a formal proposal describing how they would work and what they would provide for the fee.
Make sure you understand what's going to be involved. Ask your designer to explain the process.
6. I'm against expecting designers to provide design solutions as part of the pitch process. You should be able to judge their expertise from other work and their attitude; then reward them for the proposals they prepare. Reputable designers will always work with you to revise designs if necessary to achieve a result that works and, ideally, that you're happy with. It's true that sometimes personal opinions diverge, but this is where it's important to be clear about the terms for ending the relationship if necessary.
7. Once you appoint a designer, agree the process: be clear what happens at what stages; be clear that your approval is required at all key stages.
8. Agree costs for each stage of the work (initial concepts, first proposals, fine-tuning proposals, preparing final artwork, handing over all final material). Be clear what 'extras' might cost (and what might be counted as extra work). Be clear what you get for the fee you pay. That should typically include all development work and the final artwork that you can use in the future, as well as your ownership of the copyright for unlimited use (once the fee has been paid).
9. Make sure the designers present and explain their proposals in person
10. If you're developing a new name and logo, be sure that someone checks availability and that you are not in danger of infringing someone else's copyright.

Brand like an Egyptian!

2011-11-29T15:55:00.002Z

(Photo: Getty images)
Voting is under way in Egypt, in the first elections since President Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February. There is a long list of parties, each with its own logo, such as a food blender, a traffic light and a vacuum cleaner.

Michael Wolff

2011-11-15T11:53:00.001Z

Love Michael Wolff's pithy website

Get your cords on for 11.11.11

2011-11-10T18:40:00.002Z

The date which most closely resembles Corduroy, EVER,111111
is upon us!

SEO: waste of time?

2011-11-04T11:20:00.002Z

"Modern SEO is all about crafting content so compelling that other people want to promote it by linking to it or sharing it. "

Some interesting thoughts on LinkedIn (link above) about the merits of SEO. So glad to see a return to proper writing...

John Fountain • Agree with you 100 per cent Richard. The whole SEO debate about keywords is pretty much dead in the water thanks to Google and the way it now searches. Here's something I cut and pasted - '85% of the total factors that determine how a web page is ranked in a search engine is based on things that happen off the page itself.' By that they mean the amount of links to the site, bookmarking and tweets that mention the site.

Modern SEO is all about crafting content so compelling that other people want to promote it by linking to it or sharing it.

This kind of content is best provided by a professional copywriter. So what is the role of the SEO specialist today becasue I'm not sure.

Richard Owsley • I read an article recently where the writer had interviewed twenty top Google SEO people about keyword density. To a man they were agreed that keyword density has no effect whatsoever on today's algorithms. The searches are far, far more sophisticated than that and stuffing your pages full of keywords, apart from making the copy sound moronic and the design look cluttered, is akin to flat earth theory.

I have had many instances in the past two years of clients showing me the advice they got from their SEO 'specialists' which in my eyes was either worthless, or which I could have given myself in two minutes. There are a lot of snake oil salesmen around.

Typography

2011-08-16T14:23:00.001+01:00

An understanding of typographic etiquette separates the master designers from the novices. A well-trained designer can tell within moments of viewing a design whether its creator knows how to work with typography. Typographic details aren’t just inside jokes among designers. They have been built up from thousands of years of written language, and applying them holds in place long-established principles that enable typography to communicate with efficiency and beauty.

Handling these typographic details on the Web brings new challenges and restrictions that need to be considered. Below are a few rules of thumb that will have you using typography more lucidly than ever before.

...see full article on link in heading

Business cards

2011-07-26T10:52:00.002+01:00

Like some of these ...

The meaning of colour in different countries

2011-07-08T13:02:00.001+01:00

With thanks to Xerox: http://www.office.xerox.com/small-business/tips/color-guide/enus.html

International Color Guide

Colors mean different things in different cultures. Black, for example, signifies death and is worn during times of mourning in Western countries; black in Egypt, however, represents rebirth.

Three little words to avoid

2011-06-16T13:01:00.001+01:00

I liked this, from Kay White. (Hope she won't mind me re-printing: all publicity for her).

It’s easy to overlook the small things in life and here are three small words which can make a HUGE difference in your results as a freelancer, writes Kay White, founder of mentoring and training company Way Forward Solutions. I’m talking about the results you get from your relationships, the connections you make and the results that affect whether your clients – and your team – take feedback and suggestions from you; instructions even. Interested?

1. But

I call ‘but’ a banana skin, it’s literally a word that trips people up and affects the way people take on feedback. But is, in effect, The Great Eraser. What you say after the ‘but’ is what people remember and what you say before it is what is, effectively, erased by the word ‘but. “That report was great but it was a bit too long” or “The way we operate is really very easy but it takes some getting used to.”

I recommend you flip it – that’s the easiest way to step over it and avoid it tripping you up. “That reports was a bit too long but it was great” or “The way we operate takes some getting used to but it’s really very easy” – you can immediately notice the difference. If you start with the normal negative bit first, then put “and” in place of “but”. The “and” becomes a bridge and you avoid The Great Eraser.

2. Why?

Now the question Why is a tricky one. Using “why” to start your question immediately puts people on the defensive. It sends them to justify themselves. It does this because when we’ve been asked “why did you XYZ?” the first word that comes up for us is “because”.

Why implies judgement of some form and when negotiating or wanting to engage people we want to keep them open, not close them down by getting them to justify themselves or their choices. Start your “Why” questions with “What” or “How” or “When” instead – more open and more information-gathering rather than justification-seeking. Simple!

3. Not

Now this follows the principle of “you can’t think about what you don’t want to think about without thinking about it”. If I tell you “do not think about a pink elephant wearing a tutu” – I know ,and so do you, that the first thing you have to think about it “a pink elephant wearing a tutu” before you can really get what I’m asking you to do. The way to avoid planting negative suggestions, things we don’t want people to do, is to ask ourselves “what do I want them to do instead?”

Kay White is author of the Number 1 Bestseller for Customer Service “The A to Z of Being Understood.”

Doctor slang

2011-03-12T15:23:00.000Z

Doctor slang is a dying art

Is doctor slang on the wane?
The inventive language created by doctors the world over to insult their patients - or each other - is in danger of becoming extinct.So says a doctor who has spent four years charting more than 200 colourful examples.

Medicine is a profession already overflowing with acronyms and technical terms, and doctors over the years have invented plenty of their own. However, Dr Adam Fox, who works at St Mary's Hospital in London as a specialist registrar in its child allergy unit, says that far fewer doctors now annotate notes with abbreviations designed to spell out the unsayable truth about their patients.

TOP MEDICAL ABBREVIATIONS
CTD - Circling the Drain (A patient expected to die soon)
GLM - Good looking Mum
GPO - Good for Parts Only
TEETH - Tried Everything Else, Try Homeopathy
UBI - Unexplained Beer Injury The increasing rate of litigation means that there is a far higher chance that doctors will be asked in court to explain the exact meaning of NFN (Normal for Norfolk), FLK (Funny looking kid) or GROLIES (Guardian Reader Of Low Intelligence in Ethnic Skirt).

Dr Fox recounts the tale of one doctor who had scribbled TTFO - an expletive expression roughly translated as "Told To Go Away" - on a patient's notes. He told BBC News Online: "This guy was asked by the judge what the acronym meant, and luckily for him he had the presence of mind to say: 'To take fluids orally'."

Quaint up North
Regional dialects abound, even in the world of the medical abbreviation.
In the north of England, the TTR (Tea Time Review) of a patient is commonplace, but not in the south.

And the number of terms for patients believed to be somewhat intellectually challenged is enormous. "I can't believe what he just called me..."
From LOBNH (Lights On But Nobody Home), CNS-QNS (Central Nervous System - Quantity Not Sufficient), to the delightful term "pumpkin positive", which refers to the implication that a penlight shone into the patient's mouth would encounter a brain so small that the whole head would light up.

Regular visitors to A&E on a Friday or Saturday night are also classified.
DBI refers to "Dirt Bag Index", and multiplies the number of tattoos with the number of missing teeth to give an estimate of the number of days since the patient last bathed.

A PFO refers to a drunken patient who sustained injury falling over, while a PGT "Got Thumped" instead.
MEDICAL TERMS - A GLOSSARY
Digging for Worms - varicose vein surgery
Departure lounge - geriatric ward
Handbag positive - confused patient (usually elderly lady) lying on hospital bed clutching handbag
Woolworth's Test - Anaesthetic term (if you can imagine patient shopping in Woolies, it's safe to give a general anaesthetic)
This is an international language - Dr Fox's research reveals that a PIMBA in Brazil can be translated as a "swollen-footed, drunk, run-over beggar".

Doctor insult
And much of the slang is directed at colleagues rather than patients.
Thus rheumatology, considered by hard-pressed juniors one of the less busy specialties, becomes "rheumaholiday", the "Freud Squad" are psychiatrists, and "Gassers" and "Slashers" are anaesthetists and general surgeons respectively.

Dr Fox is keen to point out that neither he, nor the other authors of the paper, published in the journal Ethics and Behavior, actually advocate using any of the terms.

He said: "It's a form of communication, and it needs to be recorded.
"It may not be around forever."
He said: "I do think that doctors are genuinely more respectful of their patients these days."
If that is the case, perhaps the delights of a "Whopper with Cheese", "Handbag positive" or "Coffin dodger" could be lost forever.

Funny recruitment ad?

2011-02-03T09:16:00.000Z

SEO Executive

An SEO Expert walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor...

Salary:Up to £25K + benefits Location:Northampton Employer:Cranberry PandaSEO Executive

Email etiquette

2011-01-21T12:39:00.000Z

Should e-mails open with Dear, Hi, or Hey?

By James Morgan BBC News

Colour of the year 2011

2010-12-09T13:41:00.000Z

Pantone has announced 18-2120 Honeysuckle, ‘a dynamic reddish pink’, as its colour of the year for 2011.

Why simple language should mean lucrative profits

2010-11-22T14:12:00.000Z

Good use of language should mean lucrative profits for companies, says Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times.

The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs

2010-11-18T10:57:00.000Z

Like this: download the e-book.

A fresh approach

2010-11-16T10:12:00.001Z

Office jargon

2010-11-05T15:39:00.001Z

(From BBC website)

50 office-speak phrases you love to hate

Management speak - don't you just hate it? Emphatically yes, judging by readers' responses to BBC writer Lucy Kellaway's campaign against offcie jargon. Here, we list 50 of the best worst examples.
1. "When I worked for Verizon, I found the phrase going forward to be more sinister than annoying. When used by my boss - sorry, "team leader" - it was understood to mean that the topic of conversation was at an end and not be discussed again."
Nima Nassefat, Vancouver, Canada
2. "My employers (top half of FTSE 100) recently informed staff that we are no longer allowed to use the phrase brain storm because it might have negative connotations associated with fits. We must now take idea showers. I think that says it all really."
Anonymous, England
3. At my old company (a US multinational), anyone involved with a particular product was encouraged to be a product evangelist. And software users these days, so we hear, want to be platform atheists so that their computers will run programs from any manufacturer."
Philip Lattimore, Thailand
4. "Incentivise is the one that does it for me."
Karl Thomas, Perth, Scotland
5. "My favourite which I hear from the managers at the bank I work for is let's touch base about that offline. I think it means have a private chat but I am still not sure."
Gemma, Wolverhampton, England
6. "Have you ever heard the term loop back which means go back to an associate and deal with them?"
Scott Reed, Lakeland, Florida, US

7-8. "We used to collect the jargon used in a list and award the person with the most at the end of the year. The winner was a client manager with the classic you can't turn a tanker around with a speed boat change. What? Second was we need a holistic, cradle-to-grave approach, whatever that is."
Turner, Manchester

9. "Until recently I had to suffer working for a manager who used phrases such as the idiotic I've got you in my radar in her speech, letters and e-mails. Once, when I mentioned problems with the phone system, she screamed 'NO! You don't have problems, you have challenges'. At which point I almost lost the will to live."
Stephen Gradwick, Liverpool
10. "You can add challenge to the list. Problems are no longer considered problems, they have morphed into challenges."
Irene MacIntyre, Courtenay, B
11. "Business speak even supersedes itself and does so with silliness, the shorthand for quick win is now low hanging fruit."
Paul, Formby, UK
12. "And looking under the bonnet."
Eve Russell, Edinburgh
13-14. "The business-speak that I abhor is pre-prepare and forward planning. Is there any other kind of preparedness or planning?"
Edward Creswick, Exeter
15-16. "The one that really gets me is pre-plan - there is no such thing. Either you plan or you don't. The new one which has got my goat is conversate, widely used to describe a conversation. I just wish people could learn to 'think outside the box' although when they put us in cubes what do they expect?"
Malcolm, Houston
17. "I work in one of those humble call centres for a bank. Apparently, what we're doing at the moment is sprinkling our magic along the way. It's a call centre, not Hogwarts."
Caroline Garlick, Ayrshire
18. "A pet hate is the utterly pointless expression in this space. So instead of the perfectly adequate 'how can I help?' it's 'how can I help in this space?' Or the classic I heard on Friday, 'How can we help our customers in this space going forward?' I think I may have caught this expression at source, as I've yet to hear it said outside my own working environment. So I'm on a personal crusade to stamp it out before it starts infecting other City institutions. Wish me luck in this space."
Colin, London
19. "The one phrase that inspires a rage in me is from the get-go."
Andy, Herts
20. "'Going forward' is only half the phrase that gets up my nose - all politicians seem to use the phrase go forward together. 'We must... we shall... let us now... go forward together'. It gives me a terrible mental image of the whole country linking arms and goose-stepping in unison, with the politicians out in front doing a straight-armed salute. Is it just me?"
Frances Smith, Toronto, Canada
21. "I am a financial journalist and am on a mission to remove words and phrases such as 360-degree thinking from existence."
Richard, London
22. "The latest that's stuck in my head is we are still optimistic things will feed through the sales and delivery pipeline (ie: we actually haven't sold anything to anyone yet but maybe we will one day)."
Alexander, Southampton
23. "I worked in PR for many years and often heard the most ludicrous phrases uttered by CEOs and marketing managers. One of the best was, we'd better not let the grass grow too long on this one. To this day it still echoes in my ears and I giggle to myself whenever I think about it. I can't help but think insecure business people use such phrases to cover up their inability for proper articulation."
Leon Reilly, Ealing, London
24. "Need to get all my ducks in a row now - before the five-year-olds wake up."
Mark Dixon, Bridgend
25. "Australians have started to use auspice as a verb. Instead of saying, 'under the auspices of...', some people now say things like, it was auspiced by..."
Martin Pooley, Marrickville, Australia
26. "My favourite: we've got our fingers down the throat of the organisation of that nodule. Translation = Er, no, WE sorted out the problems to cover your backside."
Theo de Bray, Kettering, UK
27. "The health service in Wales is filled with managers who use this type of language as a substitute for original thought. At meetings we play health-speak bingo; counting the key words lightens the tedium of meetings - including, most recently, my door is open on this issue. What does that mean?"
Edwin Pottle, Llandudno
28-29. "The business phrase I find most irritating is close of play, which is only slightly worse than actioning something."
Ellie, London
30. "Here in the US we have the cringe-worthy and also in addition. Then there's the ever-eloquent 'where are we at?' So far, I haven't noticed the UK's at the end of the day prefacing much over here; thank heavens for small mercies."
Eithne B, Chicago, US
31. "The expression that drives me nuts is 110%, usually said to express passion/commitment/support by people who are not very good at maths. This has created something of a cliche-inflation, where people are now saying 120%, 200%, or if you are really REALLY committed, 500%. I remember once the then-chancellor Gordon Brown saying he was 101% behind Tony Blair, to which people reacted 'What? Only 101?'"
Ricardo Molina, London, UK
32. "My least favourite business-speak term is not enough bandwidth. When an employee used this term to refuse an additional assignment, I realised I was completely 'out of the loop'."
April, Berkeley, US

33. "I once had a boss who said, 'You can't have your cake and eat it, so you have to step up to the plate and face the music.' It was in that moment I knew I had to resign before somebody got badly hurt by a pencil."
Tim, Durban
34. "Capture your colleagues - make sure everyone attends that risk management workshop (compulsory common sense training for idiots)."
Anglowelsh, UK
35-37. "We too used to have daily paradigm shifts, now we have stakeholders who must come to the party or be left out, or whatever."
Barry Hicks, Cape Town, RSA
38. "I have taken to playing buzzword bingo when in meetings. It certainly makes it more entertaining when I am feeding it back (or should that be cascading) at work."
Ian Everett, Bolton
39. "In my work environment it's all cascading at the moment. What they really mean is to communicate or disseminate information, usually downwards. What they don't seem to appreciate is that it sounds like we're being wee'd on. Which we usually are."
LMD, London
40. "At a large media company where I once worked, the head of human resources - itself a weaselly neologism for personnel - told us that she would be cascading down new information to staff. What she meant was she was going to send them a memo. It was one of the reasons I resigned - that, and the fact that the chief exec persisted on referring to the company as a really cool train set."
Andrew, London
41. "Working for an American corporation, this year's favourite word seems to be granularity, meaning detail. As in 'down to that level of granularity'."
Chris Daniel, Anaco, Venezuela

42. "On the wall of our office we have a large signed certificate, signed by all the senior management team, in which they solemnly promise to leverage their talents, display and inspire 'unyielding integrity', and lots of other pretentious buzz-phrases like that. Clueless, the lot of them."
Chris K, Cheltenham UK
43. "After a reduction in workforce, my university department sent this notice out to confused campus customers: 'Thank you for your note. We are assessing and mitigating immediate impacts, and developing a high-level overview to help frame the conversation with our customers and key stakeholders. We intend to start that process within the week. In the meantime, please continue to raise specific concerns or questions about projects with my office via the Transition Support Center..."
Charles R, Seattle, Washington, US
44. "I was told I'd be living the values from now on by my employers at a conference the other week. Here's some modern language for them - meh. A shame as I strongly believe in much of what my employers aim to do. I refuse to adopt the voluntary sectors' client title of 'service user'. How is someone who won't so much as open the door to me using my service? Another case of using four syllables where one would do."
Upscaled Blue-Sky thinker, Cardiff
45. "Business talk 2.0 is maddening, meaningless, patronising and I despise it."
Doug, London
46. "Lately I've come across the strategic staircase. What on earth is this? I'll tell you; it's office speak for a bit of a plan for the future. It's not moving on but moving up. How strategic can a staircase really be? A lot I suppose, if you want to get to the top without climbing over all your colleagues."
Peter Walters, Cheadle Hulme, UK
47. "When a stock market is down why must we be told it is in negative territory?"
Phil Linehan, Mexico City, Mexico
48. "The particular phrase I love to hate is drill down, which handily can be used either as an adverb/verb combo or as a compound noun, ie: 'the next level drill-down', sometimes even in the same sentence - a nice bit of multi-tasking."
B, London
49. "Thanks for the impactful article; I especially appreciated the level of granularity. A high altitude view often misses the siloed thinking typical of most businesses. Absent any scheme for incentivitising clear speech, however, I'm afraid we're stuck with biz-speak."
Timothy Denton, New York
50. "It wouldn't do the pinstripers any harm to crack a smile and say what they really felt once in a while instead of trotting out such clinical platitudes. Of course a group of them may need to workshop it first: Wouldn't want to wrongside the demographic."
Trick Cyclist, Tripoli, Libya

Guarrdian style tips

2010-11-04T15:31:00.000Z

If the queen is the Queen, why is the pope not the Pope? And other questions

Q&A The Guardian style guide editors answer readers' queries – first in a series

he first in an occasional series of Mind Your Language blogposts attempting to answer some of them.

Big Society or big society?
Simon Hoggart rightly described this phrase as "surely the vaguest slogan ever coined by a political leader. Nobody knows what it means." Until they do, keep it in quotation marks, at least the first time you mention it in a story, and always lowercase – so it's "big society".

So it's "tea party" then?
If you're talking about cucumber sandwiches, scones and a pot of Earl Grey. If, however, you are referring to the Tea Party movement, use initial caps. The reference is, of course, to the Boston Tea Party of 1773, which did involve tea (though not sandwiches and scones).

Due to or owing to?
If you can substitute "caused by", due to is correct; if you can substitute "because of", owing to is correct: The train's late arrival was due to leaves on the line; the train was late owing to leaves on the line. This rule is so simple that it is astonishing how rarely people (including those who write in the Guardian) get it right.

..... and more

True size of Africa

2010-10-21T10:01:00.000+01:00

Comic Sans

2010-10-20T14:31:00.000+01:00

What's so wrong with Comic Sans?

Comic Sans, that unassuming jaunty typeface lurking inside millions of computers, has become the target of an online hate campaign. Simon Garfield explains why normally mild-mannered people are so enraged by its use.

Why are new biz people so bloody awful?

2010-09-24T11:40:00.000+01:00

Loved this rant from Carl Hopkins aka Uncle Carl in Drum [http://thedrum.co.uk/blogs/carlhopkins/2010/09/22/q-why-are-new-biz-people-so-bloody-awful/?utm_source=Interspire&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Drum+England+Newsletter+-+Fri+24+Sept+2010:]

Q. Why are new biz people so bloody awful?

I have always had a nightmare every time I have appointed a so called new business development manager. To be brutal most of them have been bloody awful. They show very little imagination and all they seem to do is send endless letters and emails to clients and they seldom get results. What have you found to be the best business development tools over the years and would you advise hiring another so called business development expert?

I have said this before but obviously you were not listening so here we go again. The best New Business person in your agency is…drum roll… you. No one understands the capabilities of your business and its people better than you; no one knows the collective experience of your business better than you. No one has more chances of getting to see a prospect or a client of a competitor than the owner of the agency, that’s you. No one can listen to a client’s issues and reply in a manner that is believable and deliverable better than, you.

I am not saying other people cannot fulfil this role and have some success but no one can do it better than, you – are you getting the message? And if they can, I would suggest they would start their own business – which they do. There are many New Business ‘administrators’ out there; people who understand your strategies and can manage those strategies with you and for you but it’s not conversion! This is what they all do on arriving at your agency as big-dick-new-biz-bod: they say you need a new agency website and that you need a new email/DM campaign – all eats into your already overstretched creative department. They end up posting out balloons or fruit cakes or some other random idea – littered all over reception for days on end. They write half-hearted, badly targeted letters to anyone who ever spent a pound in an agency like yours – because you and your copywriters are far too busy. They ask for new magazines and expensive subscriptions and then write to every client they read who has just announced a pitch – it’s too late by then numb nuts. They suggest you join any agency register available and that you start advertising – more time and money and the creative end results divide the agency. Then they piss off to any two bit networking event or spend thousands on stands at exhibitions where you are surrounded by other totally inappropriate suppliers for days watching old ladies and students collecting stress toys emblazoned with phone numbers and taking all your glossy brochures which your creative teams have spent hours of time producing…oh and they will probably suggest you enter more awards and hire a PR agency….and a facebook site…and a twitter page.

Truth is the top new business people are safely hidden in agencies and you cannot get them or they run their own agencies. You need to drive your own strategy with some of the tactics I’ve mentioned and hire yourself someone on about £18k with a brain to help you out and not on £80k with a large ego and expense account. Remember this one fact: ‘new business people’ are great in first meetings; its what they do – hence they are good in interviews. It doesn’t mean they will ever win an account one their arse hits your faux leather executive ergonomically designed chair.

Missing words

2010-09-01T17:50:00.002+01:00

Secret vault of words
One for the wordsmiths…A graphic design student doing a project for Kingston University, London, recently discovered a vault of words which have never made it into the dictionary. The vault is owned by Oxford University Press.
Examples of ‘words’ from the vault include

Furgle – to feel in a pocket or bag for a small object such as a coin or key
Nonversation – a worthless conversation, wherein nothing is explained or otherwise elaborated upon
Lexpionage – the sleuthing of words and phrases
Optotoxical – a look that could kill, normally from a parent or spouse
Polkadodge – the dance that occurs when two people attempt to pass each other but move in the same direction
After researching hundreds of the words, Luke Ngakane, 22, chose 39 to etch onto a metal press plate and print onto A4 paper for his graphic design degree.
Fiona McPherson, senior editor of the Oxford English Dictionary's new words group, said the words are not rejects and they may well be printed in the future.
She said: ''They are words which we haven't yet put in. I don't like calling them reject words because we will revisit them at some point and they may well go in.
''They are not yet considered suitable for the dictionary because there's not enough evidence that people are using them.”

Do typefaces matter?

2010-07-20T17:18:00.000+01:00

Professinol

2010-04-27T08:56:00.002+01:00

Sales Professinol / Marketing Professinol / Work From Home / Be Your Own Boss / Marketing / Sales
Polished professional to handle global sales. Flexible hours Team player Success implementing strategy.

Tips on writing

2010-02-26T09:13:00.000Z

Ten tips for writing (fiction, mainly) from The Guardian 20 Feb 2010.

"Get an accountant, abstain from sex and similes, cut, rewrite, then cut and rewrite again – if all else fails, pray. Inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing, we asked authors for their personal dos and don'ts"

Mottos

2010-02-22T15:47:00.000Z

My brand new motto: Nomina Rutrum Rutrum

By Lucy Kellaway Financial Times: February 8 2010

Acouple of weeks ago I wrote what I thought was the definitive guide on how to sign off an e-mail and was confident that I had laid the matter to rest. Yet I've just received an e-mail that has given me pause. It was signed off " Audere est facere " - which is the motto of the Tottenham Hotspur football club and means "to dare is to do".
I don't like football. I don't like men who go on about their football teams. I don't like cheesy exhortations. I don't understand Latin. But there is something about this that appeals to me.
In fact, I find myself strangely drawn to other football mottos. I like Bury’s motto: Vincit Omnia Industria (Hard Work Overcomes Everything) and I like Blackburn Rovers' Arte et Labore (By Skill and Hard Work) even more.
Schools have some stirring mottos, too. A couple of years ago Gordon Brown was much mocked for quoting his motto: Usque Conabor (I Will Try Harder). Yet it seems to me that this is the best possible advice for every school child – and for every prime minister.
An even better motto is the startlingly honest Nous Maintiendrons - which is French for We Will Keep on Keeping on.
These mottos, though wonderful things in themselves, have a lot to answer for. The Victorians who thought them up were unwittingly laying the foundation stone for some of the most questionable practices in management. They are to blame for mission statements and were the beginning of the self-help industry.
My own school motto at Camden School for Girls was Onwards and Upwards (which as 14-year-olds we thought screamingly funny). Yet this sentiment is responsible for thousands of self-help books that say in about 50,000 words what the motto says in three.
Traditional mottos are good not merely because they are brief but because they come from an age that was pre-touchy-feely and pre-bullshit.
The newer ones show a shocking falling off. A primary school in north London has recently dreamt up the tiresomely wet slogan: Together Everyone Achieves More, which spells Team.
Traditional mottos are also strong enough to survive ridicule.
At William Ellis, the boys school over the road from the house where I grew up, the (excellent, in my view) motto - Rather Use than Fame - was subverted by the cool boys, who inked over some of the letters so that it read: "Rather U than me."
Latin is hugely helpful in giving a motto some oomph. This is partly because it lends an air of sophistication, learning and tradition. But it is also because most people don't have the first idea what it actually means and so have to go to the effort of finding out. Once they have done this, any banality in the actual meaning is camouflaged.
But the biggest advantage is that it is quite impossible to be naff, vague or moronic in Latin. Consider one of the most naff management exhortations: Walk the Talk. Translate it into Latin and you get Res non Verba , which is elegant and profound and is the motto of a private school in Yorkshire.
Companies should learn from these school mottos. It is no coincidence that the best company slogan of all time - Avis's We Try Harder - is almost exactly the same as Gordon Brown's school motto.
The motto of Eton College - Floreat Etona , or May Eton Flourish - might be sickeningly self-serving for a school in which boys still mince about in tail coats, but would do nicely in the corporate world, where making a company flourish is what the game is all about. Floreat FT , has rather a good ring to it.
This leads me to suggest that all mission statements should be translated into Latin, and any that proved impossible to translate should be scrapped. "We aim to add value to our external stakeholders" would have left a man in a toga scratching his head and, therefore, has no place in the modern world either.
I have decided that I need a motto for the top of this column and the bottom of my e-mails. I've been toying with Vox Clamantis in Deserto , which means a voice crying in the desert and is the motto of Dartmouth College in the US. But I think it's a bit self-important and not right anyway as I'm neither crying nor in a desert.
So instead I have created my own. In English it is To Call a Spade a Spade, but I have just got someone to translate it into Latin for me, and am quite delighted by the result: Nomina Rutrum Rutrum.
lucy.kellaway@ft.com To post comments online, go to www.ft.com/kellaway

Kool Kulala

2010-02-12T10:15:00.000Z

Love this South African airline: Kulala

The captain’s window is marked with the big cheese (”captain, my captain!”), the co-pilot’s window with co-captain (the other pilot on the PA system) and the jump seat is for wannabe pilots.

In addition, the following descriptions of plane parts can be found:

    * galley (cuppa anyone?)
    * avionics (fancy navigation stuff)
    * windows (best view in the world)
    * wing #1 and #2
    * engine #1 and #2 (26 000 pounds of thrust)
    * emergency exit = throne zone (more leg room baby!)
    * seats (better than taxi seats)
    * some windows = kulula fans (the coolest peeps in the world)
    * black box (which is actually orange)
    * landing gear (comes standard with supa-fly mags)
    * back door (no bribery/corruption here)
    * tail (featuring an awesome logo)
    * loo (or mile-high club initiation chamber)
    * rudder (the steering thingy)
    * stabiliser (the other steering thingy)
    * a.p.u. (extra power when you need it most)
    * galley (food, food, food, food…)
    * boot space
    * ZS-ZWP (OK-PIK) = secret agent code (aka plane’s registration)
    * overhead cabins (VIP seating for your hand luggage)
    * fuel tanks (the go-go juice)
    * cargo door
    * aircon ducts (not that kulula needs it… they’re already cool)
    * front door (our door is always open … unless we’re at 41 000 feet)
    * cockpit window = sun roof
    * nose cone (radar, antenna, and a really big dish inside)

Written Voice

2010-02-04T14:03:00.000Z

Came across this recent reference to ‘Developing a Written Voice’ by Dona J. Hickey.

She has an exercise for students in her writing classes, requiring them to use only single syllable words and sentences of fewer than ten words. This forces the writer to place the key words in the sentence close together, and makes the writing forceful.

‘The most powerful position in a sentence are the first and last words. The closer these words come together, the more forceful the message is.’

‘When monosyllabic words end in a hard consonant, they form a power unit in English. When monosyllabic, consonant-ended words are placed at the end of a sentence (the most powerful position), their force is doubled.’

She notes that a succession of monosyllabic words, especially those ending in consonants, make the message emphatic and forceful.

Multisyllabic words, on the other hand, soften the language. They can make it more tranquil, compassionate and tender.

Hmmm. Must try harder to use shorter words, simpler sentences.

Innocent bottoms up

2010-02-03T15:50:00.000Z

Like innocent's competition for messages of 40 characters or less, to go on the bottom of their bottles. Here are a few...

wrong way up mate

.. -. -. --- -.-. . -. - love morse code

I'm feeling fruity! Take my top off...

You've got the lid on, right?

First time, right?

I can never find the sell by date either

Fairer National Insurance for freelancers

2010-02-03T15:26:00.000Z

A freelance writer’s is petitioning the governement to make the National Insurance system fairer for self-employed workers. Journalist and copywriter Anne Wollenberg says the NI system as it stands “is stacked against freelancers”. She points out that: “An employee earning millions loses their job after 2 years and gets 6 months’ contributory (non-means-tested) JSA. A freelancer signs on as their business fails. They can’t get contributory JSA and must apply for means-tested benefit, which they probably won’t get if their spouse or partner works.”

She also highlights the problem of freelancers being forced onto PAYE for casual work and having to pay Class 1 NI even though these sporadic payments don’t count but can’t be reclaimed.

She is calling for:

· Freelance NI to count towards contributory JSA or Class 3 top-ups to be eligible

· Better explanation of current rules to people registering as self-employed

· Those paying Class 1 NI for 2 years to retain eligibility for contributory JSA if they then go freelance

· A higher threshold for freelancers before paying Class 1 or a Class 1 exemption system

What qualifications do you need to be a good writer?

2010-01-29T09:14:00.000Z

This from Prospect Solutions: "....it is our company’s policy to accept writers with at least a 2:1 degree. This is not to belittle your capacity in writing, Prospect Solution is just committed to delivery excellent services to our clients, which is why we require our writers to provide us with a degree certificate in their specified subject area."

(I think they meant to say 'delivery of excellent services'.)

Surely having a degree in a particular subject doesn't itself make anyone a good writer; just as it would not necessarily make them a good teacher. Doesn't 20-odd years' experience count for anything? Aaargh!

TXTNG

2010-01-22T13:08:00.001Z

[From 26 website)

LITER8 LRNRS:

IS TEXTING VALUABLE OR VANDALISM?

Children who are heavy users of mobile phone text abbreviations such as LOL (laughing out loud), plz (please), l8ter (later) and xxx (kisses), are unlikely to be problem spellers and readers, a new study funded by the British Academy has found.
The research*, carried out on a sample of 8-12 year olds over an academic year, revealed that levels of “textism” use could even be used to predict reading ability and phonological awareness in each pupil by the end of the year.
Moreover, the proportion of textisms used was observed to increase with age, from just 21% of Year 4 pupils to 47% in Year 6, revealing that more sophisticated literacy skills are needed for textism use.

www.britac.ac.uk

Wally Olins wins London branding project

2010-01-21T09:43:00.000Z

This looks interesting ...

Dark Star Safari

2010-01-16T19:35:00.001Z

This week I have been mostly reading Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari. Excellent observation of Africa in the raw, by someone who used to live and work there, so has an insight beyond the tourist/traveller. Reminding me of when I lived there as a child. Rather impressive literary references throughout, as you would expect from such an author;certainly making me feel poorly read. Though I confess some sad pleasure at spotting a literary mistake. At one point (halfway through Chapter 8: Figawi Safari on the Bandit Road) he says, "In Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure, the doomed and starving village children leave a note, Because we are too menny ". My recollection of the story is that this is not described as some common practice by a number of children, but that Jude's young son kills his younger siblings, and then himself, leaving a note: "Done because we are too menny". But I don't suppose PT will be rushing to ask me to edit his books in future.

A writer's job...

2010-01-15T08:44:00.000Z

Design Week 14.01.10

Richard Owsley: " A writer's main job is actually to do the strategic thinking about the communication, the form of wording is really just the final touch."

Enbiggen? EMBIGGEN?!

2010-01-12T15:15:00.000Z

Ever seen the word embiggen anywhere else? This was on a Flikr site. I guess the meaning is clear, but is this a real word? AskOxford.com says "Sorry, there are no results for that search."

Dleiberate misspellings?

2010-01-11T09:53:00.002Z

5 Reasons to Use Misspelled Words in Your Ads

Todays post was contributed by Joey Bridges
Have you ever thought of using misspelled words in your paid advertising? It is one of the most overlooked and underutilized advertising methods in the paid advertising world. Thanks to many great word processing programs (and maybe just not paying attention) that auto correct typing many of us (myself included) misspell words when we are searching for something on the Internet. Our real estate customers are no different and often misspell city names, property addresses, general real estate questions. Let's look at some great reasons to advertise on misspelled words.

Your competitors aren't doing it - that's right many advertisers only use the correct spelling of the words they are targeting but customers misspell and their are opportunities here.
Your customers misspell things - Wouldn't it be great if when a word was typed you were the only advertiser to appear? That is what can happen with misspelled advertising.
There are more ways to misspell words then spell them correctly - Think about this. There is only 1 correct way to misspell a word but there are maybe dozens of different ways to come up with misspellings.
They are pretty easy to come up with - you can jumble a word around and come up with misspellings that you have done in the past and others are probably doing the same.
The bid prices are cheaper - since there is generally less competition on misspelled words you can have your ad place higher and for cheaper as a result. This is a great reason to start adding some misspelled words to your Google Adwords campaigns.

I recommend adding the misspelled words in separate ad groups so you can keep track of them and not get confused by the misspellings with your regular adgroups. If you have an ad that is working great with your correctly spell words use it with your misspelled words and see how it does.

Elephant words

2010-01-06T15:54:00.002Z

Just happened across this. Might be interesting ....

Menu psychology

2010-01-06T09:05:00.000Z

New York Times: December 23, 2009

Using Menu Psychology to Entice Diners

By SARAH KERSHAW

CHICKEN liver is what the restaurateur Danny Meyer calls a torpedo.
Left to its own devices, it may be unappetizing and unpopular, but when paired with what he calls an enhancer — applewood smoked bacon in the case of the chicken liver on the menu at Tabla, Mr. Meyer’s Indian fusion restaurant in the Flatiron District — it not only excites the taste buds but goes to work on the mind.
And the name of the Tabla appetizer, Boodie’s Chicken Liver Masala, draws even deeper from the growing field of menu psychology because Boodie is the mother of Floyd Cardoz, Tabla’s executive chef. People like the names of mothers, grandmothers and other relatives on their menus, and research shows they are much more likely to buy, say, Grandma’s zucchini cookies, burgers freshly ground at Uncle Sol’s butcher shop this morning and Aunt Phyllis’s famous wedge salad.
After Tabla merged with its downstairs sibling, the Bread Bar at Tabla, in October, Mr. Meyer and his team spent months pondering such matters before unveiling a new menu earlier this month. The price of Boodie’s chicken livers, for example, is $9, written simply as 9. This is a friendly and manageable number at a time when numbers really need to be friendly and manageable. Besides, it has no dollar sign. In the world of menu engineering and pricing, a dollar sign is pretty much the worst thing you can put on a menu, particularly at a high-end restaurant. Not only will it scream “Hello, you are about to spend money!” into a diner’s tender psyche, but it can feel aggressive and look tacky. So can price formats that end in the numeral 9, as in $9.99, which tend to signify value but not quality, menu consultants and researchers say.
Tabla is just one of the many restaurants around the country that are feverishly revising their menus. Pounded by the recession, they are hoping that some magic combination of prices, adjectives, fonts, type sizes, ink colors and placement on the page can coax diners into spending a little more money.
“There is constant tinkering going on right now with menus and menu pricing,” said Sheryl E. Kimes, a professor of hospitality management at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. “A lot of creative things are going on because the restaurants are trying to hold on for dear life to make sure they get through this.”
For the operators of most high-end restaurants, the menu psychology is usually drawn from instinct and experience. Mr. Meyer, for example, said he had developed most of his theories through trial and error.
“We thought long and hard about the psychology because this is a complete relaunch of a restaurant entirely through its menu and through the psychology of the menu,” Mr. Meyer said. “The chefs write the music and the menu becomes the lyrics, and sometimes the music is gorgeous and it’s got the wrong lyrics and the lyrics can torpedo the music.”
The use of menu engineers and consultants is exploding in the casual dining arena and among national chains, a sector of the business that has been especially pinched by the economy. In response, they are tapping into a growing body of research into the science of menu pricing and writing, hoping the way to a diner’s heart is not only through the stomach, but through the unconscious.
Huddle House, the family-dining chain with more than 400 restaurants in 17 states, is rolling out a test menu at 20 restaurants next week. The company hired Gregg Rapp, a menu engineer and consultant who holds “menu boot camps” for restaurants around the country. He said he had been “taking dollar signs off menus for 25 years,”
Susan Franck, vice president of marketing for the chain, said she was intrigued about the four types of diners Mr. Rapp had identified. The customers he calls “Entrees” do not want a lot of description, just the bottom line on what the dish is and how much it is going to cost. “Recipes,” on the other hand, ask many questions and want to know as much as they can about the ingredients. “Barbecues” share food and like chatty servers who wear name tags. “Desserts” are trendy people who want to order trendy things.
“We can’t do much of a price increase, yet we’re searching for ways to increase our profit for the franchises,” Ms. Franck said. “If you have a signature item, make a logo for it, put more copy to it, romance the description with smokehouse bacon, country ham or farm fresh eggs.”
She said the chain took dollar signs off the menu in 2007, and now on the test menu, instead of an omelet and orange juice, there is “the light and fluffy Heavenly Omelet” and “Minute Maid orange juice.”
In the “Ten Commandments for Menu Success,” an article published in Restaurant Hospitality magazine in 1994, Allen H. Kelson, a restaurant consultant, wrote, “If admen had souls, many would probably trade them for an opportunity every restaurateur already has: the ability to place an advertisement in every customer’s hand before they part with their money.”
And like advertisements, menus contain plenty of subliminal messages.
Some restaurants use what researchers call decoys. For example, they may place a really expensive item at the top of the menu, so that other dishes look more reasonably priced; research shows that diners tend to order neither the most nor least expensive items, drifting toward the middle. Or restaurants might play up a profitable dish by using more appetizing adjectives and placing it next to a less profitable dish with less description so the contrast entices the diner to order the profitable dish.
Research by Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University and the author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,” suggests that the average person makes more than 200 decisions about food every day, many of them unconsciously, including the choices made from reading menus.
Menu design draws some of its inspiration from newspaper layout, which puts the most important articles at the top right of the front page, where the eyes tend to be drawn. Some restaurants will place their most profitable items, or their specials, in that spot. Or they place a dotted outline or a box around the item, put more white space around it to make the dish stand out or, in what menu researchers say is one of the most effective tools, add a photograph of the item or an icon like a chili pepper.
(Photos of foie gras on the menus of white-tablecloth restaurants would be surprising, however. Menu consultants say those establishments should never use pictures.)
Unless a restaurant wants to frighten its customers, the price should always be at the very end of a menu description and should not be in any way highlighted.
A study published in the spring by Dr. Kimes and other researchers at Cornell found that when the prices were given with dollar signs, customers — the research subjects dined at St. Andrew’s Cafe at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. — spent less than when no dollar signs appeared. The study, published in the Cornell Hospitality Report, also found that customers spent significantly more when the price was listed in numerals without dollar signs, as in “14.00” or “14,” than when it included the word “dollar,” as in “Fourteen dollars.” Apparently even the word “dollar” can trigger what is known as “the pain of paying.”
Mr. Rapp, of Palm Springs, Calif., also says that if a restaurant wants to use prices that include cents, like $9.99 or $9.95 (without the dollar sign, of course), he strongly recommends .95, which he said “is a friendlier price,” whereas .99 is “cornier.” On the other hand, 10, or “10 dollars,” has attitude, which is what restaurants using those price formats are selling.
A dash or a period after the number appears to be more of an aesthetic choice than a psychological tool, according to one of the authors of the menu pricing study, Sybil S. Yang, a doctoral student at Cornell. Numbers followed by neither a dash nor a period are most common.
Mr. Meyer said that in his view, adding zeros to the price, as in 14.00, is not a good idea because “there’s no reason to have pennies if you’re not using pennies, and it takes the price from being two digits into four digits, even if the two last digits are zeros. It’s irrelevant, and the number could feel more important, which is not a menu writer’s goal.”
(Some prices at his restaurants do end in .50, and at Mr. Meyer’s Shake Shack burger joints, his foray into retro-casual dining, some end with .25 or .75 — but the prices are always rounded to the quarter. The Shake Shacks are the only of Mr. Meyer’s restaurants with menu prices preceded by dollar signs.)
Other research by Dr. Wansink found that descriptive menu labels increased sales by as much as 27 percent. He has divided descriptions into four categories: geographic labels like “Southwestern Tex-Mex salad,” nostalgia labels like “ye old potato bread,” sensory labels like “buttery plump pasta” and brand names. Finding that brand names help sales, chains are increasingly using what is known as co-branding on their menus, like the Jack Daniel’s sauce at T.G.I. Friday’s and the Minute Maid orange juice on the Huddle House menu, Dr. Wansink said.
Dr. Wansink said that vivid adjectives can not only sway a customer’s choice but can also leave them more satisfied at the end of the meal than if they had eaten the same item without the descriptive labeling.
Indeed, restaurants like Huddle House and Applebee’s are adding language that suggests a rush of intense satisfaction. At Applebee’s, dishes are described as “handcrafted,” “triple-basted,” “slow-cooked,” “grilled” and “slammed with flavor.”
BUT many higher-end restaurateurs say they are paring the menu by using cleaner and simpler copy. In those cases, many of the items are inherently descriptive, like the Roasted and Braised Suckling Pig at Craft in Manhattan. There, the left side of the menu lists the farms and other sources of its ingredients. Those names were removed from the individual item descriptions in a streamlining effort, and the serving staff is required to explain many of the accompanying ingredients, including sauces, so the copy is spare.
In contemplating the Tabla menu, Mr. Cardoz said he and Mr. Meyer decided there were too many unusual Indian terms that were alienating customers, so they kept only the most recognizable words, like tandoori, paneer and tikka.
Tabla experimented with several different fonts and colors before settling on the final version. At one point, the cost of the liver and other prices were shaded navy blue, and some menu headings were orange. While the final version is in black and white, Mr. Meyer said he was thinking about adding orange and red. He remembers, from a hospitality management class he took years ago, what he learned about the gospel on color: red and blue stimulate appetite, while gray and purple stimulate satiation. You will not find a shade of gray or purple on any of the menus at his 11 restaurants, he said.
Mr. Cardoz, who is also a partner at Tabla, said he considered the menu to be an important tool for communicating with his customers.
“I feel most guests want to know what my inspiration was for any dish, and when they realize there is a connection for me doing something, they want to try it and they want to know it,” he said.
And there was one connection he was definitely not going to take off the menu, whether it was on the chicken liver or the onion rings, which come with “Boodie’s Ketchup”: his mother.
Even brief descriptions on menus like Tabla’s and Craft’s seem verbose compared with those on the menu at Alinea in Chicago, which on a recent night featured esoteric dishes called Peanut Butter and Bubble Gum, with a few more words that did not provide much more illumination. Next to Lemon Soda, the menu simply said: “one bite.”
Alinea offers no à la carte choices, only predetermined tastings, so the menu is not a sales pitch. Instead, it is “a language tool, so we’re trying to uphold the philosophy of the entire restaurant with every component — the sense of nostalgia, the sense of humor,” Alinea’s executive chef, Grant Achatz, said. “With Bubble Gum, there is a kind of mystique to the lack of description. I came from the French Laundry, and each dish came with a paragraph-long description. We want it to be more mysterious as a clean, crisp, graphically laid out object.”
He said he wanted the menu to resemble sheet music, so it has a line of bubbles snaking through the copy. The bigger the bubble, the more bites it takes to consume that dish.
When Alinea opened in 2005 it gave out menus at the start of the meal, like other restaurants. But they were of limited use to diners, Mr. Achatz said, because “our food is so manipulated that even if I wrote ‘venison, cranberries, lentils and beets,’ it’s not going to look like they think it’s going to look anyway.”
Now Mr. Achatz has adopted a practice that turns the world of menu psychology upside down: his customers do not get them until after they eat.

Copywriter?

2009-12-29T12:17:00.000Z

From: "copywritink"
To:
Subject: Freelance Copywriter from India

Dear Sir/Madam,
Greetings from India.
I am K.K. Varma- a copywriter who has been working in Mumbai, India for the past 20+ years. I happened to view your agency's site and this has prompted me to correspond. I request you to go through my profile, which details the kind of assignments i have handled. I have been handling writing assignments for some of Inida's leading corporations and have a good portfolio of work. The mediums that i work for include print, films, multimedia & the internet. I have also recently been writing manuals for software programmes and applications.
I would welcome an opportunity to handle outsourced writing assignments.
Amongst the clientile i work for - I am known for my creativity and my communication skills - typically in strategising communication to meet specific goals.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Yours truly,
kk!

Creative Copywriting.
Within Deadlines,
Without Dead Lines!
Call
K.K. Varma
Tel: 9821122132.

Daily Telegraph 1892

2009-12-21T16:22:00.000Z

Just came across this, found behind an old mirror.

Santa makeover

2009-12-17T09:57:00.000Z

(From The [London] Evening Standard 17.12.09

Overweight Santa 'needs a makeover'

Santa is a public health hazard - promoting obesity and drink-driving, experts have claimed.

Images of a fat, jolly and somewhat tipsy Father Christmas send out the wrong message and could damage millions of lives, they said. Instead of sitting back in his sleigh and breaking the speed limit, Santa should get off and walk or jog. Obese Santa also needs to swap the brandy and mince pies left out by hopeful children for carrots and celery sticks stolen from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
Dr Nathan Grills and illustrator Brendan Halyday, from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said the current image of Santa promotes obesity, drink-driving, speeding and a general unhealthy lifestyle.

Santa's universal fame means he is used by companies around the globe to sell all kinds of products, including unhealthy foods, they went on. For example, there is very high awareness of Santa among young children - higher than the McDonald's fictional character, Ronald McDonald. Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), the authors said Santa used to also sell cigarettes but that has now been banned.

They went on to provide a full list of Santa's unhealthy behaviours, including encouraging fathers to step in and eat leftover mince pies, thereby expanding their own waistlines. With billions of homes to visit, Santa is also soon over the drink-driving limit due to too many brandies and sherries.
The authors conclude there is a need for Santa to undergo an image overhaul - one that promotes healthy living.

"We need to be aware that Santa has an ability to influence people, and especially children, towards unhealthy behaviour," they said. "Given Santa's universal appeal, and reasoning from a population health perspective, Santa needs to affect health by only 0.1% to damage millions of lives. We propose a new image for Santa to ensure that his influence on public health is a positive one."

Plain English

2009-12-15T14:22:00.001Z

Grateful to the Plain Language Commission (www.clearest.co.uk) for some interesting observations on the Plain English Campaign: http://clearest.co.uk/?id=34

Fibs, foibles and fallacies: some notes on Plain English Campaign Ltd

“Paying the price for crystal balls” (2007)

In the light of research by the National Audit Office, Martin Cutts offers some thoughts on schemes that accredit the clarity of public documents; describes how the Department for Work and Pensions was bitten by a plain-English guarantee that didn’t deliver the goods; and wonders why the failure of the Crystal Mark scheme to fulfil its promises has been so richly rewarded by the department.

“Pupils see through the Internet Crystal” (2007)

Great claims are made for the Internet Crystal Mark, a logo that appears on websites supposedly written in plain English. Recently, a teacher complained that sites bearing the crystal were full of poor English. This article reveals the remarkable results of our investigation.

“Plain English Awards scandal: It’s clearly no contest as trophies for plain words go to promoter’s own customers” (2007)

Behind the annual Plain English Awards contest is a web of business relationships worth at least £500,000 between the promoter and several winners of its competitions.

Online Grammar Quiz

2009-12-15T13:55:00.000Z

Check no-one's around, close the door, then try this quick grammar quiz.

Noughties?

2009-12-14T16:44:00.000Z

Can one word sum up this decade?

As we enter the last few weeks of the 2000s, the Magazine is enlisting readers to tell the story of the last 10 years, based on five themes. Wordsmith Susie Dent begins the series with some suggestions for "words of the decade".

Language, as an American lexicographer once neatly put it, "is an uncompromising mirror... an untouched record of the thoughts, feelings, successes, failures, and intent of the people".
We are what we say, and as a shorthand summary of a single event or period in time, a word or phrase that came into prominence is hard to beat.
This opening decade of the 2000s - for which the nickname Noughties ultimately pipped all others - has generated a wealth of new words, and their resonance is likely to provoke strong memories.
Some of them are inextricably tied up with single events: 9/11 has become the only reference necessary to describe the terrorist attacks against America in 2001, events which spawned many further expressions, including axis of evil and moral crusade as well as allegations of sexing up and dodgy dossiers. More recently the current Great Recession has spawned a bemusing lexicon full of toxic debt and quantitative easing.
Neologisms - brand new words - speak strongly for the times they were coined for, even the fun ones. Bling characterised for many the opening years of the century, the perfect description of a celebrity- (or nonebrity-) obsessed culture intent on being as flashy as the people it idolised. Social networking has added a new flavour to our language: Twitter alone has given us tweets, twitts - even tweet-ups among the Twitterati.
Poking, to take just one word from the Facebook lexicon, is not a new word - it has simply taken on a new sense.
In fact many, if not most, of our "new" words are born of the same process of reinvention, including what is undoubtedly one of the most prominent words of the century thus far: chav. Once a Romany word meaning "child" (chavi) more than 150 years ago, it was relaunched quite spectacularly in 2005 when it became one of the most powerful (and derogatory) social labels in recent memory.
Some little-known terms also gained higher profile: as 2004 ended, the Asian tsunami forced a word unknown to many into the everyday vocabulary of millions. Closer to home, few people would have known about water bowsers - or predicted their value to thousands of flood-affected Britons in the summer of 2007.
Green has been indisputably the colour of the decade, leaving its carbon footprint across its years and prompting, among so much else, the arrival of Britain's first eco-towns. The threat of ecological disaster has been joined this year by fears of swine flu - itself overtaking the nightmare possibilities of H5N1 - and of an epidemic of globesity.
These are just some of the words characterising the last 10 years - there are many more to choose from and this is where you come in.
We want you to choose your word or words of the decade.
There is some flexibility about what kind of words and phrases are allowed, as long as they are actually used (does anyone really say staycation or is just a journalistic invention?). Proprietary names are also fine - we are, after all, the iPod generation.
Acronyms like Asbo or initialisms like WMD are acceptable, but people's names are not admissible (you can have your say about people of the decade on Tuesday), unless they transcend their names, as in Blairism or the Jade effect.
Otherwise, the choice is all yours. As a meerkat would say, simples.

Depressed text?

2009-12-11T17:12:00.000Z

Are you ever stopped short by a word or phrase?

I've just recalled a phrase I heard a designer use a while ago. He wanted to "de-boss" some text. I guess this seemed the logical opposite of "emboss", so meaning text that is the opposite of raised. Is that "intaglio"? Which, admittedly, sounds a bit pompous. I haven't checked (nor heard it used again), but wonder what is used to describe text that is "impressed" or (perhaps) "depressed".

Came across this today, while struggling to learn how to edit my website (in Dreamweaver);

Text options:

Indent

Outdent........
Outdent? I guess that if "indent" takes text away from the margin, "outdent" means to take text towards the left margin ....
I also noticed this recently:

(Published by mediabistro, an online editorial site:)
Who'd a thunk the highly publicized new TV comedy series starring movie cutie Heather Graham would get axed in record time: one week?

Quite like that, in fact.

Boule aux épices et aux fruits secs

2009-12-11T16:59:00.000Z

Written by Martin Bentham and published in The Observer under the headline:

Garçon! There's a silly French word in my soup

Fed up with restaurant menus that talk about carpaccios, daubes and tagines? Well, at last, a backlash has begun against the proliferation of foreign words littering the menus of modern British restaurants.

The latest edition of the Caterer and Hotelkeeper magazine, the bible of the food industry, tears into the trend for using 'absurd' and 'fraudulent' words from French, Italian and other languages to describe what are often straightforward dishes that could be described simply in English.

Among the terms singled out for ridicule are 'millefeuille of aubergine' - which bears no resemblance to a puff pastry cake filled with jam and cream - and a 'capuccino of white beans' that has nothing to do with coffee. Scorn is also directed at a 'gateau of grilled vegetables', hardly suitable for those with a sweet tooth, and a 'bouillabaisse of sardines', which appears to have little connection with the Provençale soup or stew the name suggests.

The article is by former chef and restaurant critic Bill Knott, who says that such terms are a nonsense.

'The game of gastronomic Chinese whispers, in which a modish, foreign-sounding dish goes through so many incarnations that it has become completely meaningless, is all the rage,' he writes. 'Toast becomes bruschetta or crostini, a toasted sandwich is now a panini, a sauce is a jus or a coulis, and a stew is a daube or a tagine.'

He says that not only are the terms incomprehensible, they are also wrong. 'Many are thoroughly inaccurate and deeply misleading. Dishes I have seen on smart menus range from the faintly absurd to the distinctly fraudulent. Many chefs seem to think that food sounds better if it's not written in English.'

Michel Roux Jr, chef at London's Le Gavroche restaurant, which has three Michelin stars, said that he was also fed up with ludicrous descriptions.

'A carpaccio of courgette, what the hell is that? A carpaccio is of beef, not courgette. Similarly, you have a navarin of lobster, when it should be a navarin of lamb. It's totally inaccurate, and what annoys me even more is that nine times out of 10 the words are mis-spelt.

'I can understand and forgive a little bit of it when it's used in a clever way, by people who understand the terms, but if the words are just used as embellishment to dress up a rather sad menu, forget it.'

Marcus Wareing, chef at Petrus restaurant in London, said foreign words could be justified, but only if they were accurate and the quality of the food matched the description.

'I don't think there's anything wrong with using millefeuille or capuccino - it's quite nice - but it depends on what is actually being cooked. There is an element in cooking and restaurants that writes better than it delivers. It is very easy to put words on paper, but not so easy to put something exceptional on a plate.'

Knott said he had been prompted to speak out by the increasingly baffling menus with which he was confronted. Some, he suspected, used elaborate language in an attempt to justify higher prices.

'Some restaurants think that if you call something a daube you can charge £12, whereas if you said it was a stew you could probably only charge £8. At least with Italian and French menus you are supplied with a translation, but with modern British food many people just don't know what they are getting.

To help bemused diners, here are a few French translations which may (or may not) be helpful:

Hachis parmentier Shepherd's pie

Pot au feu d'agneau aux pommes de terre et aux oignons Lancashire hotpot

Saucisses en pote au four Toad in the hole

Boudin noir Black pudding

Feuilleté de boeuf et de foie Steak and kidney pie

Boule aux épices et aux fruits secs Spotted dick

Paid for not farming?

2009-12-11T08:23:00.001Z

Someone sent me this. I guess it's a spoof, but fun anyway...

NIGEL JOHNSON-HILL,
PARK FARM,
MILLAND,
LIPHOOK GU30 7JT

Rt Hon David Miliband MP
Secretary of State.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London
SW1P 3JR

16 July 2009

Dear Secretary of State,

My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs.. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business.

In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.

I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?

As I see it, the hardest pan of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?

My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a cheque
for not rearing any.

If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?

Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear?

I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an
e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?

In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits. I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.

Yours faithfully,

Nigel Johnson-Hill

Pigeon Island

2009-12-08T15:30:00.000Z

Continuing the turquoise theme. Pigeon Island in the South Pacific. Rooms to rent. You could be there in a few days. Just get in touch with Ben.

Turquoise

2009-12-08T13:33:00.002Z

Turquoise is 2010 colour of the year

Design Week: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 | By Helen Nianias

Pantone has announced 15-5519 Turquoise as its colour of the year for 2010.

The company chose the colour for the new year as turquoise ‘transports us to an exciting tropical paradise while offering a sense of protection and healing in stressful times’.
Pantone’s vice-president of strategic business development Helmut Eifert says, ‘Turquoise occupies a very special position in the world of colour. It is believed to be a protective talisman, a colour of deep compassion and healing, and a colour of faith and truth, inspired by water and sky.
‘Through years of colour word-association studies, we also find that turquoise represents an escape to many – taking them to a tropical fantasy that is pleasant and inviting, even if only a fantasy.’
Pantone has also included 15-5519 Turquoise as one of 200 ‘wedding colours’. Working with wedding dress manufacturers such as Dessy and Sandals Destination, Pantone aims to help brides colour co-ordinate their big day.

Readability

2009-12-08T12:45:00.002Z

I find this a fascinating process. Of course, I'm sure you can end up scoring highly on readability etc and yet have text that is not very readable even if sentences are short and words are simple. I recently had to achieve certain levels of readability and, while I could get it to what I thought was fairly clear, I found it took a while longer to drive the readability down to below 12. And I'm sure I've read somewhere that the average reading age of ADULTS is equivalent to that of a 12-year-old. Frightening.

http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp

Reading age:

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/About/FAQs.html

Less than one per cent of adults in England can be described as illiterate, although many people prefer not use such pejorative terms. Around 16 per cent, or 5.2 million adults in England, can be described as "functionally illiterate". They would not pass an English GCSE and have literacy levels at or below those expected of an 11-year-old.

Punctuation?

2009-12-02T15:12:00.001Z

The importance of punctuation

Both paragraphs use exactly the same words. But see how different punctuation changes the sense completely:

Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men.
I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy--will you let me be yours?

Gloria

Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me.
For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?Yours,
Gloria

Institute of Copywritting?

2009-12-02T14:58:00.002Z

I love this. Just shows ...detail, detail...

(As it happens, I am a Member of the Institute of Copywriting -- wondering about becoming a tutor. But this is rather embarassing, to say the least!)

Emphasis

2009-12-01T17:43:00.001Z

Found this on the beach a while ago. Part of a warning sign that originally said "Swimming beyond this notice is dangerous". Interesting how the writer chose the physical entity of the sign to be of primary importance, rather than perhaps the consequence or even the activity. I often find the same with clients wanting words emboldened, underlined and italicised or even used in a larger font, to ''jig things up a bit'.

New subject

2009-12-01T17:17:00.004Z

If you would like to add a topic, please do so here by adding a comment to this post.