I’ve been a member for a year.  So far no-one’s asked me to speak, so when I got the email asking me to renew my declaration that I had no criminal involvement, past or present, I thought I wouldjust  let it lapse.  I emailed the founder and MD of Growing Ambitions, Sally Davis, who replied:  “We are looking to merge with another organisation in the autumn that has the ear of more employers, and the government and momentum will really start to pick up then. We are a non-profit, providing a lean and mean brokerage solution but we have no government or other funding.” 

She added, ”I do hope you can see you way to still point people to us”.  How could I refuse? 

I think it’s a great idea, telling kids how it really is, and by what tortuous route you’ve got where you are.  A lot of people have never heard of copywriting; I’m sure there are students who’d love to write for a living but think the only ways are the cut-throat world of journalism or the lottery of “writing proper books” of whatever sort and trying to get them published.  Certainly my careers mistress never mentioned it (but that could have been because I wanted to go to music college; it didn’t occur to me I could earn a living as a writer until much later).

If you’re interested in finding out more about Growing Ambitions and how you could become a Partner (it doesn’t cost anything, talks only last half an hour, and it’s good exposure for your business too), go to http://www.growingambitions.org/index.php and read all about it.

Thank you!

Well, no – I also have a part-time job at a tourist attraction during the summer (I officially left last October, but they get lots of Italian tourists and I speak Italian, so I’m quite busy there July/August) and I’m working there tomorrow and Thursday.  By the time I come home after a day of marshalling groups of multi-national tourists and their small children around the castle, my brain is fried and I really can’t produce good copy.  Which leaves this afternoon and Friday to write it.

So I need the information now.  It was supposedly being sent on Thursday, when they commissioned me to do it.  I was away for a long weekend and expected to find it in my inbox when I got back – but no.  So I’m left twiddling my thumbs and writing blog posts while I wait for the real work to come in.  I’ll get it done by Friday night, as promised, as long as they don’t wait ’til Friday afternoon to send it (I can’t type that fast!).

I’m getting quite good at this deadline lark.  The same company that wants the brochures asked me for 11 pages of web content (including research) within three days last week.  I managed it.  I’ve never thought of myself as a fast writer, but it is coming more easily now.  In fact I think deadlines are quite good for me because I don’t have time for my usual endless editing, so I have to think more clearly and write it better first off.  And I can’t procrastinate, nor rearrange the office, do my accounts or engage in any other of my favourite work-displacement activities.

Deadlines are good.  As King Charles I said of his impending death, they ‘concentrate the mind wonderfully’.  In a way they’re teaching me my job: to get the words written and not faff about being all “artistic”.  They make me use my time efficiently, research faster, cut out the timewasting and write more tightly.

Who needs deadlines?  I do!

First and most important: it means you don’t have to do it.  You have plenty of other claims on your time, mainly for things only you can do properly.  Writing copy (if it’s not something you do every day) takes time – effort – blood, sweat and tears.  It could take several weeks to get the necessary content for a website together: weeks of frustration when you can’t get on with doing what you’re best at.

Second: research shows you have just seven seconds to capture your readers’ attention on the internet.  Get it wrong and they’ve gone to your competitors.  Do you or your staff have the writing skills to grab them in seven seconds?

Third: a trained writer can write it faster than you can, just as a trained runner can run faster than someone who only jogs once a week.  They know the sort of questions to ask to create the unique copy you need; they’ll have a system for their research.  Your website will be up and working for you far sooner and you’ll see a return on your investment much earlier.

Fourth: a professional copywriter knows how to persuade people in print.  It’s not the same as selling in person: you need different techniques when you can’t use body language to get your point across.  You have to make things clear both for those who skim and for the detail-lovers – and you can’t tell which sort of person will be reading.  You have to write from the reader’s point of view and understand in advance what questions they need answered.  So many websites don’t do this and they’re basically a waste of money.

Fifth: a trained copywriter will work with your web designer to optimise your site for the search engines (SEO).  Keywords are vital to this process, but writing keyword-rich text that reads naturally is an art that takes practice.

Sixth: a good copywriter writes good English.  There are still plenty of people out there who get a jolt when they see an apostrophe in the wrong place or a comma where there should be a full stop – and they’ll jump to another site for a solution to their problem.  There’s a lot of competition on the internet and you can’t afford to lose customers for a silly mistake.

Seventh: it will cost you less.  That’s counter-intuitive, I know, but think about it.  If you add up all the time you’re sitting there, staring at a blank piece of paper or computer screen, plus all the time you’re struggling to find the right words to communicate your message, plus all the other things you can’t be doing while you’re writing (but still need doing) – and charge it all at whatever rate you pay yourself – a copywriter is going to seem a real bargain.

So: less effort + attention + faster RoI + effectiveness + smooth SEO + retention + cost-saving = perfect sense. 

In other words, using a professional copywriter for your website saves you time, hassle and money, just as using a professional web designer does.

The question I was burning to have answered concerned literacy skills.  So much of what one sees written these days is so badly put together it appears to have been translated from ancient Egyptian by a non-native speaker of English (or Egyptian).  Did the honchos think that was likely to improve?

The short – and to me very sad – answer was “No”.  There were references to txt lngage as a means of communication, and to the “death” of the apostrophe, but no hope was held out for the survival of one of the richest and subtlest languages on the planet.  Nor for basic literacy (the ability to string together a sentence that actually means what the writer thinks it does and that can be understood by readers), which is vital to most employees.

I know that English is a constantly developing language.  That’s one of the things that makes it so rich and so rewarding to study.  To limit people to the fringes of the language, which is effectively how it’s “taught” at the moment, seems to me depressing.  If you don’t teach children their own language why should they treasure it?  How can they roll words round their tongues like fine wine, savouring all the nuances?  Why – for heaven’s sake – would they even consider bothering to learn a second language?

Text language is very fine in its place, fitting a message onto a tiny screen and getting it across in the fewest possible characters, but its place does not include academic essays, company reports or any message aimed at a business reader.  It can have a place in advertising to a young audience but, I would argue, not to sell top-end cars or jewellery or even soap-powder.  It’s not persuasive, it’s abrupt tell-’em-and-move-on language.  I use it myself sometimes, but I’d never write web content or a brochure in txt.

And, while I would be the last person to require children to spend hours in the stultifying boredom of parsing, it is useful to know the parts of speech and the uses of punctuation – basic grammar.  Putting a comma in the wrong place can change the whole meaning of a sentence.  A missed apostrophe, or one in the wrong place, sets people’s teeth on edge; leaving it out can cause confusion.  If you’re trying to persuade someone to do or buy something none of these is a good strategy.

Good English is a subject (as you’ve probably guessed) that I feel strongly about.  I realise it makes me sound like that old fuddy-duddy, “Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells”, but I think it’s really important.  Without proper literacy skills children are less employable.  They are also being deprived of a huge chunk of their heritage.  That is unkind and unforgivable. 

And the claim that a curriculum that allows it is one for “excellence” is a downright, barefaced, brass-necked, lie.  

Excellence requires effort, not the path of least resistance – both from the teachers and from the students.  It’s worth it in the end.  There’s the feeling of satisfaction at something achieved; there’s the knowledge that you’re much more likely to get a good job, and a liveable salary to go with it; not to mention the fact that all the glories of English literature, theatre, poetry and culture will be open to you.

Please – let “excellence” mean exactly that, not the easy way to keep bored kids sweet through their school years.

Thank you -?

Rubbish!

I don’t believe people’s attention-spans really are shorter now than they were 50 years ago, or even 10.  I think that, if they’re interested in the subject, readers can cope with several sub-clauses, even a few digressions, without losing their places or going off to do something else completely.  (See – you made it this far, didn’t you?)  If you write (and read) as though you were talking (or being talked to), all of that becomes irrelevant because people don’t talk in short, simple sentences; they talk in paragraphs, mostly hoping-they-won’t-be-interrupted-before-they-can-finish-what-they’re-trying-to-say-and-have-to-start-listening-to-the-other-person-in-the-conversation.  Apart from the taciturn types who can hardly get a word out with any degree of comfort, of course.

The  reason this subject arose is the book I’m reading, Rose Macaulay’s The Towers of Trebizond.  Those of you who’ve read it will remember the gloriously discursive style of the writing, mirroring the heroine-and-narrator’s thoughts.  If you haven’t yet read it, do, especially if you know anything about the Anglican church (it’s not about that, but it does poke some wonderful gentle fun at it).  It’s very amusing, though I have to put it down after about an hour as the mixture’s pretty rich: one can have too much of a good thing at one sitting, even chocolate mousse.  But I digress….

The problem with long sentences is not that people can’t read them; it’s that many authors can’t write them.  If you’re going to produce a long sentence you need to be more Proust or Trollope (Anthony, not Joanna) than Nietzsche: use words that people recognise, in contexts where they make sense.  Then you can let your stream of consciousness range about like a mountain stream forging around and through the rocks and tree-roots in its way, as it leaps and tumbles down the hill to the river below. 

Or words to that effect.  (There is also a place for short sentences.  And yes, I know that the five words at the beginning of this paragraph don’t constitute a proper sentence.)

Don’t let the thought police dumb you down.  Long live the long sentence - written and spoken!

Why that should be I don’t know, as most of the names in those books are very cleverly chosen, often from Latin and classical Greek.  I thought that was because she studied Classics at University (I’m sure I read that somewhere), but I’ve just checked the biography on her own site and she studied French.  Another myth blown out of the water! 

I love both those words, though thestral is more onomatopoeic than caliginous, which sounds as though it should have something to do with body parts, as in cartilaginous.  And because thestral has connotations of death (the illustration given in the PDofCandIW is from Gardner’s Jason and Medeia, “… the mightiest mortal who’d ever reached that thestral shore …”) it applies very well to what I was doing last Sunday morning: diving my first wreck, the Breda, sunk near Oban in 1943.

It truly was thestral.  The water was slightly murky at 18 metres, there was all sorts of stuff lying around on deck that had once been trucks and other cargo, and there were great gaping holes in the deck.  Very spooky.  But very beautiful, too, with all the anemones, soft corals (graphically called “dead men’s fingers”) and other flora and fauna that had colonised every available surface.  Occasionally there was a sort of low booming roar which at first I thought was the sound of the sea against the hull.  I heard it later that day in open water with not a wreck in sight so I think it was just the noise of the support-boat’s engine, but it certainly added to the atmosphere.

I can see myself using thestral, in the right circumstances.  Caliginous?  Probably not – but it’s good to know it’s there, another of the nearly-forgotten riches of the English language.

Thanks to Oxford BSAC branch 0034′s Brian for the photo which I borrowed from their blog post “Mull 2008″.  It gives a good idea of the thestral qualities of the wreck.

Creating a website for your business is a big step and ensuring you get your website copywriting right is of paramount importance for your success. An online presence has the benefits of opening up your products or services to a global marketplace, however, it also means that your business is open to global scrutiny.

Poor website copywriting reflects badly on your business and unfortunately, for those who are not familiar with online copywriting, it is unlike any other writing form. Online customers read websites very differently from other written material and this must be accounted for when you create your web content.

Website Copywriting is not Linear

Other forms of literature are linear in their structure, however, online readers tend to read around the page looking for keywords or the key points. In order to make your website effective, it must be user-friendly and your website copywriting must take account of this. Always ensure that you use simply, friendly language and that your text is in small bite sized chunks.

Website Copywriting Must Be Well Written

Creating web content that is poorly written or littered with grammatical or spelling errors is worse than no web content at all. Remember your website is your sales man and should speak with authority. Any errors reflect badly on you and your business so ensure you proofread every page before your potential customers see it.

Website Copywriting Must Inform, Inspire and Persuade

People search the Internet for information, products or services. To this end, your web content must engage the reader, provide them with the information they are looking for and persuade them to buy the products you have on offer.

Website Copywriting Should Have SEO Value

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO as it is known, has massive importance to your online success. People use search engines to find websites that offer the information, products or services they are looking for. Web content that encompasses SEO techniques increases your website rankings with the leading search engines and ensures that when a search is undertaken in your niche, your website is returned.

The Benefits of Professional Website Copywriting

For some new website owners, creating web content which meets all of these criteria may be an incredibly daunting task. This does not mean that you should give up on your website, rather, it means that you need to seek the advice or the services of a professional web copywriter. There are many highly qualified, experienced web copywriters who can provide you with custom-written web content for your website and ensure your website presents your business in a professional manner.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jay_Neaves  This posting is © Jay Neaves, and re-published with thanks.

Public speaking is full of people making basic mistakes.  Luckily, you don’t have to be one of them!  Now you’ve successfully ‘opened’ your presentation, here’s how to avoid the 3 biggest mistakes people make when they start getting into public speaking – and selling from stage.  This article is a great refresher for both experienced speakers and oh so important for those just starting out.

Presentation Skills = Great Selling

You may or may not have considered this yet. But something you need to get clear in your mind is that if you want to master the art of public speaking and intend to make a real difference in the world, you need to become a great sales person.

I believe great leaders who inspired great change, such as Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, JFK were all amazing sales people.  What do I mean by sales?  Well, for me sales is when you create an environment of influence where you inspire people to take action in accordance with their vision.

I hold teachers in very high esteem.  However many teachers think their job stops after the information is imparted.  True leaders, or sales people, know that their job finishes only once someone has taken action toward their dream.

 So I invite you to start to think about yourself as a great leader.  I know you have a message that is close to your heart; whether you are conscious of it or not is irrelevant.  There is something that inspires you.  So begin to think about yourself as someone who is destined to change the planet for the better in some way.

Once you see yourself as a great leader then you are ready to start selling from stage.  But what you want to do is avoid the following selling traps.

Three Big Mistakes To Avoid When Selling From Stage

Here are some surefire “kisses of death” for selling from stage right up front.  I’m putting there here so you can avoid them!

Mistake #1: The speaker thinks a seminar is about imparting information only.
People learn through their emotions. Not their intellect. Emotions are the glue that make learning stick. So when you teach, how are you managing the emotions of your audience?

Mistake #2: Looking like crap on stage.
Honestly, if you are teaching or selling in your presentation, I don’t care who you are, please make yourself look at least half way decent when you’re speaking in public! If you can’t pull it together, get an image coach. Ladies, I’m sorry, this is even more important for you because yes, we do get judged more than men on how we look.  It doesn’t take much to get it together with the right contacts.

Mistake #3: Having no integrity or out and out lying from stage.
The sad truth is there are some presenters and companies out there who will tell you one thing and then do another. I have even witnessed speakers lying through their teeth on stage. Please don’t be one of them.

Summary

You are something special.  Do you get that?  So this week, in fact starting right now, begin to think of yourself as someone special.  Someone with a lot to offer and a mission to fulfill. You may already know what this is, or you may not.  But commit right now to becoming a great leader.  And commit right now to becoming  a magnificent salesperson.  Not just a conveyor of information, not just a teacher, but someone who sells from stage.  In public speaking, the bigger your vision, the easier it is to inspire people to take action.

  About the author:

Dr Joanna Martin

Dr Joanna Martin is an internationally acclaimed speaker and sought-after educator who has taught over 40,000 people on three continents. She is also the author of the new book “The Lifestyle Shift”.
Today, she trains entrepreneurs and professionals alike in key communication, leadership, and presentation skills. With her partner Greg, through their business, Shift Lifestyle they provide strategy and support for business owners who want a lifestyle, not just a living.

For more information go to: www.ShiftSpeakerTraining.com

I thought that a very interesting definition of “imperially”; most people would define it along the lines of ”having to do with acquiring and exploiting dependent territories” (thanks to the Penguin English Dictionary for that one).  Churchill obviously thought it was a much higher and greater thing.  He was, of course, a great believer in the British Empire and a master of the English language in a rather orotund way.  Some of his utterances make one think of Disraeli’s comment about Gladstone: “…inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity”.  You can imagine him rolling the words over his tongue like a fine brandy, or the Pol Roger champagne he so loved.

English is, by any definition, one of the (if not the) richest and subtlest language(s) in the world.  It isn’t governed by any Academy trying to keep it “pure”, so it absorbs from other languages, alters and re-invents itself constantly.  Words are minted, they go in and out of fashion, pronunciations change (what we now call a balcony used to be a balcony, which is appropriate since we pinched the word from the Italian balcone).  Britain and America may be “divided by a common language” but English is still - on the whole – understandable on both sides of the pond.  It has given us the greatest, most lively, prose and poetry literature in the world, from all over the world.

It is also one of the hardest languages to learn, I’m told.  There are so many nuances, variants, homonyms and the opposite - words that are spelt the same but pronounced differently, like though/through/trough (and if anyone knows the word for that, I’d love to hear from you).  Phrasal verbs are apparently a minefield: Amazon has no fewer than 636 books about them on sale at the moment.  Sentences that appear to mean one thing turn out to mean the opposite – and that’s before you start on sarcasm and irony. 

If you grew up speaking and reading English as your first language, give thanks.  Unless of course you’re trying to learn Polish – I gather it’s even worse!

* Through Winds and Tides by Colin Thornton-Kemsley, Standard Press, Montrose, 1974.

An easy thing to overlook, when the phrase is in most recipes in exactly the same place and the proofreader has checked dozens of recipes already that day.  You begin to see what you expect to see…  But I bet Penguin are proofreading everything twice now.  And the proofreader in question will probably not be used again.  I wonder how many of the cook-book’s users would have noticed the mistake – or really minded; I certainly doubt any of them would have thought it was intentional.

But it just goes to show how easy it is to make mistakes when you’re proofing a long or repetitive document.  It’s even easier when you’ve written it yourself, because you “know” what you wrote.  Very often you’ve re-written it to the point where you can practically quote it verbatim, and you simply don’t see the mistakes.

At least Penguin used a proofreader.  A lot of stuff published these days, especially on the web, appears to have used a spellchecker, if that: there are typos everywhere - commas, apostrophes and full stops in the wrong places - wrong versions of to/too/two and suchlike homonyms - and whole sentences where all the words could be spelt right but you can’t tell because the sentence itself doesn’t make sense.  And that’s supposed to be a good advertisement for a business….

If companies want readers to take them seriously they should do the job properly and get someone with a passing acquaintance with the English language to check what’s been written.  It may cost a couple of hours of someone’s time but it could make the difference between a prospect taking the business seriously or walking away. 

It could even save them $20,000. 

I think that’s worth two hours’ pay, myself; how about you?