Category: language & communication

the value of good writing

There’s a story up on the BBC website at the moment that quotes Charles Duncombe, “an online entrepreneur”, as saying that a single spelling mistake on a website can cut online sales in half. (For Spanish readers of the blog, there’s a Spanish version of the article available on “BBC Mundo”.)

Duncombe is apparently “shocked” at the poor quality of written English of staff recruited by his companies.

Spelling is important to the credibility of a website, he says. When there are underlying concerns about fraud and safety, then getting the basics right is essential.

Continue reading “the value of good writing”

‘genderally’ speaking

I mentioned two survey questions last week, which asked about reasons for reading and reasons for writing poetry. At the time, I didn’t say who was carrying out the survey, as I wasn’t sure it was relevant. But what is a survey without results? And now the results have been published, and they raise further points for discussion.

So I’d better go ahead and say that the survey was sent out by Mslexia, which is published with the tagline “the magazine for women who write”.
Continue reading “‘genderally’ speaking”

quibbles & niggles

Having picked up Pride and Prejudice to look up Bingley’s comments on accomplishments the other day, I decided to re-read the whole book.

Along with Kipling’s Kim, it’s one of my ‘comfort books’; this time, however, I wasn’t reading it while ill in bed, so perhaps I was more critical. Certainly it struck me that it would be hard to cite Austen as a role model for good writing.
Continue reading “quibbles & niggles”

written in stone

decorative tile

A while back I commented on an engraving at Nottingham castle as it didn’t make sense to me to create a work of art using a nonsensical text.

I compared it to the phrases embedded in the streets of Chepstow, which I’ve always rather liked; these seem to make grammatical sense, and are mostly associated with the commerce and history of the town.
Continue reading “written in stone”

dressing it up

Still with telephones – or, more accurately, still in search of phone and internet connections while travelling – I happened upon this:

About Telefónica: We open new pathways in order to continue transforming possibilities into reality, with the objective of creating values for our costumers, employees, society, shareholders, and partners globally.

In the same way that BT is ‘affectionately’ known as British Telecon, the Spanish company Telefónica is frequently called Timofónica. Perhaps this mission statement from their website explains it: instead of spending money on customer service, it’s going towards ‘creating values for [their] costumers’.

Perhaps someone should tell them that dressing it up nicely won’t help if the basic service is a pig’s ear.