words

NAB: if you want to break up, keep it short

Is it only me? Am I the only one who doesn’t get the whole NAB “It’s over between us” thing? Sure, the big bank launched their campaign with a big bang earlier this week, and sure, they have garnered plenty of attention. But what does it all mean? One of the challenges of selling something [...]

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Spin 2.0: When Words become Worthless

There is a Chinese proverb that says “talk does not cook rice”. Very true. But a lot of talk – and writing – takes place between the paddy field and the pot. Words are essential for making ourselves understood, getting things done and, of course, building strong relationships. When words become worthless, confusion reigns. Right [...]

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I Got it, You Got it, We ALL Got it

I’ve got a bee in my bonnet and of late it has got more and more active. Someone’s got to help! Now I pride myself on not being a pedant on subjects linguistic. Your pronunciation of pronunciation is no concern of mine. I’m as prone as the next person to completely overlook the odd split infinitive. If [...]

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Hurry Up and … Slow Down

Over forty years is a long time to work on a single task. Yet that has been the lot of the four editors of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. The massive 3,952 page double volume will be released this month, the culmination of the editors’ entire careers. In our world of fast, [...]

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Obama’s Cairo Speech Dissected: The Power of Language

So Barack Obama has made another inspirational speech. This is hardly remarkable: we’ve known for some time that Obama makes George W. look like a performing seal, and an inarticulate one at that. Yet even in this context Obama’s speech in Cairo was remarkable. In less than 6000 words he was able to strip bare [...]

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