Professional Services Copywriter - "Will politicians cut the jargon?"

Will politicians cut the jargon?

With a general election on the horizon, will politicians finally get the message that clarity trumps jargon every time?

Last year, the Local Government Association (LGA) issued a list of the 100 most over-used buzzwords, including such gems as “step change”, “holistic” “sustainable” and “synergies”, and asked local councils to stop using them.

LGA chairman Sir Simon Milton said that if councils did not explain things in proper English, “local people will fail to understand its relevance to them or why they should to turn out and vote. Unless information is given to people to explain why their council matters, then local democracy will be threatened with extinction.”

Extinction may be pushing it, but certainly, talking to people in clear, plain English instead of hiding behind buzzwords, jargon and bluster might help retain people’s interest, rather than turning them off politics at both the national and local level.

Posted by: Chris on Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Professional Services Copywriter - "Access"

Accessing new jargon

What is it with the word ‘access’ all of a sudden?

You can’t move these days without people ‘accessing’ education, ‘accessing’ information on the web, ‘accessing’ resources in the library, or ‘accessing’ lists of annoying words.

Whatever happened to good old entering, obtaining, getting, using, reading, or any other of the hundreds or perfectly good verbs? Verbs that actually convey something specific about the action being carried. Verbs that suggest a sense of movement, of deliberate choice, that people are actually doing something, rather than access, which to my mind is a vague, passive word and should be avoided at all costs.

Unless of course it is being used in its correct sense (according to Collins, ‘the act of entering or approaching’), which it very rarely is.

Posted by: Gareth Chadwick on Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Professional Services Copywriter - Newsletter July 2009

WriteWords newsletter

There’s been a few changes since the last issue of Write Words. We’ve moved offices (still in Manchester, just a nicer part), and we’ve had a personnel change (goodbye Sally hello Chris . We’ve also decided to change the frequency of Write Words to once every two months, to lighten the load on your Inbox.

On the client side, plenty of exciting new projects to get stuck into. We’ve been commissioned to plan and write the content for a new departmental website at the University of London, we won a tender to plan, write and edit a quarterly magazine for the Northwest Regional Development Agency, we’re working with Celerant Consulting on writing some sector brochures, and a we’re doing a monthly newsletter for Career Management Consultants.

That’s on top of the regular stuff from the likes of KPMG, Britannia and Savills, plus a whole host of smaller (but no less important projects), so plenty to keep us busy!

Archived in the category: General musings, Write words
Posted by: Gareth Chadwick