Communications and PR
The ‘It’s Paddy’s not Patty’s’ argument
The It’s Paddy’s not Patty’s annual argument divides Americans and Irish every March. Here’s what it’s all about.
Communications and PR
Public versus private
Sometimes a word has more than one meaning.
I’m not talking about words that sound similar but have completely different meanings. Like: (more…)
Communications and PR
One space versus two spaces after a full stop
When typing do you press the space bar one or two times after hitting the full stop key (or period for our US readers)? Not sure? Go to the last document you have written and do a Ctrl+F (find) search for (or just hit the space bar twice). Priority spaces Read more…
Content
Content maintenance – just like a car service
Unless you know what exactly a mechanic does, knowing what happens when your car gets serviced is a mystery to most. (more…)
Communications and PR
Checklist for creating crap content
If you want to make your content unprofessional, amateur and for the most unreadable please read on:(more…)
Communications and PR
American English vs Hiberno English: why it’s Paddy and not Patty in Ireland
One of the most fun Twitter accounts to follow in the run up to St Patrick’s day is @paddynotpatty. The retweets from this account are classic – especially from Americans who insist that calling St Patrick’s Day ‘Paddy’s Day’ is wrong. (more…)
Content
Espresso or Expresso
Q What’s Another name for a shot of coffee usually served in a small cup? A Espresso Q Is it wrong to say Expresso, so? A No. Espresso is an Italian word. Expresso is a Spanish word.
Communications and PR
Trust with a capital T: a keyword in the copywriting process
T-shaped support holding up a 13th Century ceiling in a round tower. T is for trust.
Trust is the keyword in our business.
We know clients often choose to work with us because they don’t have the time or skills to write material for their websites in house.
Indeed many clients don’t even have the time to sign off on what we’ve written for them.
So where does trust come into all of this? (more…)
Content
Knowing your Osamas from your Obamas
The letters B and S aren’t that close on a keyboard, even writing them, it’s hard to mix them up unlike b and p for example which can cause problems for some people when writing something by hand (as opposed to typing).
However, there has been mix-ups in recent days. A Fox news channel in the US has made the mix-up between b and s by writing Obama instead of Osama, according to the Guardian. It was waiting to happen, and it’s no surprise given the difference of just one letter between the names of the heads of two opposing regimes, that there has been mistakes.
Remember the jokes about Iceland and Ireland when the banking crisis kicked off?
I concur with the Guardian that this happened in a number of newsrooms due to the speediness of breaking news. But if so many people rely on breaking news and so much news is broken via Twitter, how can we rely on it if it’s just going to be the norm for it to be littered with misspellings which in turn results in misinformation eg Obama shot (instead of Osama). Is it any wonder that Obama showed the world his long form birth cert last week – because somewhere along the way this week someone is bound to get Osama and Obama mixed up and think something a bit far fetched.
As an editor I’ve seen many a spelling mistake. Sometimes misspellings are cloaked by the Word document language being set to US English instead of Irish/British for some mysterious technical reason I’ll never understand. Sometimes it seems people are too damn lazy to check over their work or have never been taught that checking back over your written work before pressing send or save is always a really good idea.
If you think you may fall into the loose with written words category, here’s a few tips to get you writing words that are spelled the way they should.
How do you know if you are bad at spelling? Ask someone, I guess, or keep an eye on the squiggly red lines littering the Word document, email or CMS page you are working on.
Know the words you have difficulty spelling and check them in an online dictionary, a real dictionary or by keeping a list taped to your monitor.
Turn on the option on whatever system you’re working on to catch misspellings. Nothing like a squiggly red line underneath a word to give you an idea something is wrong.
Ask someone else to read your work – even your mother or your son. Anyone really, hopefully they don’t have the same problem with misspelling the same words as you do.
If you’re using Twitter or Facebook or some system to update such feeds for work reasons, definitely make sure you read back over what you’re about to broadcast to the world. Don’t have time, well it’s only a measly 140 characters innit?
•Use a sub-editor. Here, most of our work is ‘subbed’ or proofread before it appears on a client’s website. If you have something you’d like checked for spelling, grammar, punctuation, correct use of words, send it on and we’ll give you a quote.
What are your most common misspellings? Is it words with lots of letters or words that can be spelled two different ways?
PS I haven’t looked back over this piece, purposely. Please let me know of any mistakes by commenting below!
The letters B and S aren’t that close on a keyboard, even writing them, it’s hard to mix them up unlike b and p for example which can cause problems for some people when writing something by hand (as opposed to typing).
Photo: Ted Curran. “The New McCain Campaing Ad? This was a model for a project I created for my class. I was just having fun with some Republican rhetorical points.”
Communications and PR
Copyrights and copywrongs – what you need to know about stolen content
I try and avoid writing about copyright too much, mainly because I don’t want to seem to harp on about it. But when there’s a lot of chatter about it in a short space of time it’s hard to avoid helping others in their quest for answers when you have the knowledge. (more…)