Why?

They are focused on my target industry – digital and creative – in my target area (north west England).

They tell me in advance me who will be there, so I can do a bit of homework, look at delegates’ websites and their profiles on LinkedIn and Twitter.

I’ll find a personal note to start the conversation going. If I know they’ve just got an old Fender guitar down from the attic, the directors like HobNobs, or there is a stunning graphic on their home page, I know where to begin.

I tick a box saying who I want to see and return it before the event. The hosts Immy Deshmukh and Les Selby busily work the room with their clipboards making sure I don’t spend too long with any one person. They don’t need to blow whistles or time the interactions – they can tell when it’s time to move on. I’m never stuck there like a gooseberry, and I’m always talking to somebody relevant.

I met some great people. It’s focused, and it’s fun and the ticket price includes the beer – no bumped-up hotel charges at the bar!

Five years ago I went to one of Immy’s original Wired City events and exchanged cards and follow-up emails. Six months later, Mando Group contacted me and a huge contract fell neatly on to my desk. I’m still working with them. Then, I didn’t have the benefits of LinkedIn or Twitter to keep the relationship fresh. Now I do.

Fingers crossed for another great collaboration!

*Still haven’t ‘got the point’ of LinkedIn? Networking expert Will Kintish didn’t get it at first, either. See how he found his A-ha! moment, and follow his tips to build up your network

flagellant and flagellator

• noun someone who whips themselves or others either as a religious penance or for sexual stimulation.
16c: from Latin flagellare to whip  (Chambers 21st Century Dictionary)

Writing in The Times, Giles Smith said:

‘That’s quite a lot for a have-a-go cricketer to communicate with his arms during his first regulation Latin routine, you could say. But I suppose that’s the magic of dance….’

I hadn’t really thought of it before, but maybe going on a reality show is a modern form of self-flagellation. It’s painful, you don’t have to do it but you do it anyway, you can stop the pain any time you like, but the more you do it, the better you feel. Tuffers didn’t have to spend time in the jungle with Antony Worrall Thompson and Linda Barker but he did, and emerged victorious: In Strictly, Revel Horwood’s tongue – not Tuffers’ flailing arms – is the whip.

For me the sports people are the best to watch on Strictly – they listen to the critique, they learn, they apply. They are the ones who make the most improvement. More power to Tuffers’ elbow – and the rest of his flailing arms.

flail
• verb 1 swing wildly. 2 (flail around/about) flounder; struggle. (ask Oxford.com)

Style point: What do Craig Revel Horwood and Antony Worrall Thompson have (or not have) in common?

A: no hyphens, please.

Do or do not: there is no try.

(Jedi Master Yoda, Star Wars Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back, 1980)

I recently asked my new followers on Twitter ‘If you could delete one word from the English dictionary, what would it be?’

The most popular answer so far has been ‘try’ – and all its friends and relations

• attempt
• strive
• make every effort
• do our utmost
• endeavour

In rugby, a try is a job well done. You’ve crossed the line and earned five points. Get your fly-half to follow up with an accurate kick and you have seven points.

In car rentals, Avis have used the tagline ‘We try harder’ since 1963. The acknowledged market leaders at the time were Hertz, and Avis only had an 11% share of the car rental business in the USA. Within three years they had built up to 35%.

Trying harder worked a treat for Avis 46 years ago. But does it still work today? What do you think when  businesses promote themselves like this?

On this page, we attempt to answer your questions

(If you haven’t answered my question, why should I bother reading this page?)

We will use our best efforts to ensure that your supply is uninterrupted

(What is your success rate and what are you doing to improve it?)

Please take a moment to fill in this short form to assist us in striving to meet our goal of perfection and thereby offer you the very best service!

(Do you mean ‘Tell us what else you would like us to do for you?’ You will meet ‘your goal of perfection’ sooner if you stop striving and start writing more clearly and grammatically)

We go the extra mile

(What is it you do that is going to show me that you are better than all the rest?)

Time management expert Pauline Wright says that ‘trying sets you up to fail’. Pauline gets her clients doing and achieving, not trying and failing.

So don’t try – do.

At last, there is some common sense in Westminster as experts meet for some plain talking about the way politicians and civil servants use and misuse language. The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) meets today (9 July) to discuss different varieties of official language and ask:

• What does the language that people in government use tell us about the way they see and communicate with the wider world?
• How well do government bodies communicate with the public?
• How well do people in government communicate with each other?

Witnesses include:

• Matthew Parris, Times and Spectator columnist
• Simon Hoggart, parliamentary sketchwriter for the Guardian
• Professor David Crystal, academic expert on language and linguistics
• Marie Clair, Plain English Campaign.

As part of the inquiry, PASC made a public call for people to send in their examples of good and bad official language. We’ll be interested to see what they are. ‘Stakeholders’ and ‘predictors of beaconicity’ are sure to be there as jargon flavour-of-the-month.
My brother, the last holder of the Sir Humphrey position, leaked me his favourite clichés in one sentence:

‘To your point we will need more granularity going forward’

What are your favourites?

I was once transcribing  proceedings from a conference on caesarean birth. Several times I had to refer to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, but this fine professional body represented only ‘lobster kitchens’ and ‘guiding holidays’.  In the end it was easier to say ‘lobster kitchen’ or ‘guiding holidays’ and go through afterwards with cut-and-paste.

After a number of false starts, I left the software to one side and carried on thinking straight to page through my carpal tunnels. Then, earlier this year, I met self-publishing guru Dan Poynter (that’s him top right) who told me that  the newer versions of Dragon Naturally Speaking – 9.5 and onwards  – are considerably better than their predecessors – and a lot cheaper!

So I thought it was worth another look. I’m writing a lot of profiles and case studies for e-newsletters at the moment, and I need a shortcut to transcription. Wow! Things have certainly speeded up. And because I’m always advising people to ‘write as you speak’, I think my writing style may be changing, too.

Sure, there are still a few hiccups. Today I was talking about the film The Last King of Scotland in which Forest Whitaker played EDI Mean (at least that’s what Dragon said). And ‘a marathon photo’ (me in shorts from a long time ago) read ‘embarrassing photo’. I love that the mishearings still have an element of truth about them.

If you are anywhere near writing a book on your subject of expertise – from twinkle in the eye to jumble of disorganised manuscripts – you have to see Dan Poynter in action. His last UK gig for a while is next Monday 10 November at the Marriott Hotel, Forest of Arden, Warwickshire. It’s a two-hander with Mindy Gibbins-Klein, the inspirational Book Midwife™, and there are just a few places left.

When the OMM is in the Lake District, our friends from far away like to come and stay at Chateau Dacre on their way over. They find it hard to drag themselves away from Robin’s toast and marmalade on Saturday morning, but they make the effort.

They expect their endurance skills and their expensive lightweight kit to be tested to the limit, and this year they were not disappointed.  Well, our friends were, because the event was cancelled at midday on the Saturday. Andy was swept off his feet by the wind on his way back to the metal tent with four wheels – he’s away at the Infirmary having his wrist X-rayed as I write.

In a stunning over-reaction – and naturally not stopping to let the facts get in the way of a good story – the BBC reached for their lexicon of disaster clichés and plucked a four-figure number out of the sky. They said 1,700 runners were missing overnight. A panic-stricken Laura went into freefall on the OMM forum pages, worrying herself sick about her missing husband.

In fact, as Stanley Holloway once observed:

‘There was no wrecks, and nobody drownded – fact nothing to laff at at all’.*

Those seeking more rational commentary went for Rob Howard’s excellent on-the-ground reportage on Sleepmonsters.

‘Despite media reports of over 1,000 competitors being “unaccounted for” the true facts as of 02.00 in the morning were that 44 competitors had not been located, and by 12.00 this was down to just 8 pairs. (At any normal OMM there are usually this number not checked in after the race has finished at around 17.00 and more often than not they have set off home without checking in.)’

I’m with Sue on the OMM forum, who wrote this email to the BBC:

‘I am appalled by the inaccurate coverage of the OMM in the Lake District. Much of the information is misleading and the researchers need to get their facts correct. The reporting is causing unnecessary stress and worry, in fact it is a load of media hype and sensationalism. The competitors will be in more danger when they eventually get on the M6 on their homeward journey.’

The person I’m worried for is Laura’s hapless husband. What she thought he was up to this weekend I don’t know, but I think the poor fellow will be in for some stormy weather and a cold front when he gets home!

*Although some of the cars may be a bit hard to start

A young man came to talk to our Rotary Club about water use. He was careful to explain all the technical abbreviations he used, like WWTP (waste water treatment plant) SLA (service level agreement) and PPM (parts per million). But he didn’t call them abbreviations. Or even acronyms, which they aren’t. He called them anagrams. More than once. Which we found rather amusing, but of course we were far too polite to point out his error out loud. So here’s some help for those of you who can’t tell your acronym from your elbow.

acronym • noun a word formed from the initial letters of other words (e.g. laser, Aids).

- ORIGIN from Greek akron ‘end, tip’ + onoma ‘name’.

anagram • noun a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of another.

- ORIGIN from Greek ana- ‘back, anew’ + gramma ‘letter’.

abbreviation • noun 1 a shortened form of a word or phrase. 2 the process or result of abbreviating. (www.askoxford.com)

If you have to spell out the letters, as in Double-You-Double-You-Tee-Pee, that’s an abbreviation. The monosyllable KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is an acronym unless you say Kay-Aye-Ess-Ess. Some acronyms have vowels thrown in to make them a word that’s easy to say, for example, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). Others are rather contrived, for example Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways (CRASH). My professional organisation the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) has, confusingly, both abbreviation and acronym. People outside our organisation call it Ess-Eff-Eee-Pee, but most of us within have sharpened our tongues to get them round the monosyllable ‘svep’.

Tips

Whether you are writing or speaking, it’s a good idea to spell everything out the first time you mention it, unless your abbreviation/acronym is really well known to your audience. BBC or the NHS don’t need spelling out in the UK, but they may be unfamiliar abroad. For foreign abbreviations you are probably better saying ‘Ireland’s national broadcasting service’ or ‘the international governing body of amateur swimming’ when you explain RTE (an abbreviation) or FINA (an acronym).

And if you must use an abbreviation, at least make sure it’s correct. A rookie local councillor was invited to approve the council’s spending of £35,000 on HNNWs to solve the town’s parking problems. ‘I can’t!’ he said. ‘I don’t know what it means.’ And nobody in the council chamber could tell him.

The following week HNNWs came up on the agenda again. And again our friend said: ‘So what are they?’ No-one had bothered to find out, so they sent the clerk out to look it up. Rather sheepishly the clerk returned to announce that the item was not HNNW but HHNW, a handheld notice writer – the thing that traffic wardens use to write your parking ticket.

So if you don’t understand an abbreviation or acronym, for goodness’ sake, speak up!

Quality underpins everything you do. Doesn’t it? When you see a swan swimming, you see a rather handsome white bird gliding on the surface. You don’t need to see the effort it’s making under the water to move itself along.

Quality is an axiom in good business practice.

axiom
• noun a proposition regarded as self-evidently true.
— DERIVATIVES axiomatic, adjective.
— ORIGIN Greek axioma ‘what is thought fitting’ (www.askoxford.com)

Any phrase is an axiom if the smart answer to it is ‘Well, I should bloomin’ well hope so!’ Or if it’s laughable in the negative. Here are some well-used axioms:

• Your call is important to us – but we can’t be bothered to answer it
• We offer a quality product – ‘cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich and probably wouldn’t last as long’ (Gerald Ratner, 1991)
• We deliver on time – you take the whole of Tuesday off work and we’ll dump it behind your dustbin on Wednesday
• Our staff are friendly – you are on speakerphone to the whole call centre and they’re all laughing at you
• Our laser eye operations are carried out by experienced ophthalmologists – we guarantee you’ll have your eyeballs ripped out by rookie doctors who haven’t slept for 72 hours

How to impress

For me, as a consumer, you have three ways to impress and show me how quality underpins your business.

1. Show me that you’ve done everything that your industry sector expects of you. Show me your ISOs and the professional accreditations that set the quality standards for business and public life. Here’s mine.

Be sure to keep all your accreditations up to date – the new Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs) came into effect at the end of May 2008. One of the barred practices is displaying out-of-date quality marks and accreditations.

2. Show me your testimonials and case studies from happy customers. Let them blow the trumpet and show how you – and only you – met their needs and solved their problem. Here are mine.

3. Show me the one thing you do that you do better than anyone else. Here’s mine.

Thanks to Jan Bannister (London Coder) for the swan.

Plethora and Myriad: These two sound like a couple of heroines from a Greek tragedy. I’m sure they have their place in the richness of poetry and literature. But in business they get in the way of clear writing and slow down your readers’ journey through your website. People who don’t have the Latin, or the Greek, or whose first language is not English, will stumble on these words and wonder what the hell you are talking about.

Trust me: if you have lots of whatever it is you offer – ideas, shower heads, shoes, activities – all you need to say is ‘many’, and show a sample of your best ones.

In any case, plethora doesn’t just mean ‘many’. It means, according to Word Wise’s Dan Santow:

‘too freakin’ many’

and to askoxford:

‘an excessive amount of’

In medical terms, a plethora is an excess of body fluids, from the Greek plethore, meaning ‘fullness’. Yuk! Pass the AquaBan, someone!

Myriad has its roots in number. A very big number:

• noun 1 (also myriads) an indefinitely great number. 2 (in classical times) a unit of ten thousand.
• adjective innumerable.

So if you say, for example:

• We have a plethora of design ideas for you to consider; or
• We have a myriad of design ideas for you to consider…

either way, you’ve got too many there and you need to narrow down the options. Otherwise, your reader can still expect to be ploughing through your portfolio a year next Tuesday. That’s a lot of bandwidth for them to download!

Picture courtesy Karen’s Whimsy.

‘Can we get you on Mastermind, Sybil? Next contestant, Sybil Fawlty from Torquay, specialist subject: The bleedin’ obvious.’*

It goes like this. You get a nice big chunk of money to do something useful from which many people will benefit.
But hey, first, let’s generate huge amounts of paperwork on surveys and reports and strategy documents and road maps so that we can tell all those people…

…the bleedin’ obvious.

Latest candidate in the Sybil Fawlty bleedin’ obvious awards is the Institute for Public Policy Research, which commissioned the Centre for Market and Public Organisation to calculate the impact of teachers on pupils’ attainment. Guess what?

You’ll get a better GCSE grade if you have an excellent teacher than if you have a bad teacher.

So, er, what’s new? The report argues that teaching ‘does not attract the best graduates nor equip them adequately for the challenges of teaching in the 21st century’.

Please can somebody explain the sums to me? How much did this report cost to commission? How much does it cost to attract, train, and support a new teacher? How much work goes into paper that could be spent on people?

More pointless paperwork

Until now my favourite example of pointless paperwork was the findings of the Campaign for Rural England that pretty landscapes and small villages are tranquil heavily populated places aren’t. They even drew it on a map. The red areas are cities and the green areas are those of outstanding natural beauty. Neat. And my local farmers didn’t need a big fat report on the mental health issues following the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001. They needed solid, practical help.

Tell me:

Show me your best examples of crazy paperwork that goes round and round in circles and comes back to the bleedin’ obvious.

*Fawlty Towers, season 2, episode 6 ‘Basil the Rat’