Without Shakespeare, there would be no managers, no swagger, no addiction, nothing bedazzling, new-fangled or gloomy. And these are just a few of the words he invented. There’s nothing new about neologisms. We’re always coming up with a word for something we need to talk about. Freakshakes, fat-bergs, manspaining, covfefe, floordrobes and hygge, for example. […]
Periods. Period. What should we call it?
It’s a terrible cringe of a word – period. If a word ever wore a tight bun and kept its books in alphabetical order, it’s a period. This is the word that goes with the twee trickles of dyed blue water poured in gleaming ad-land laboratories. Period. Flow, stop. Period. We need something better. Humanity […]
Don’t put a g in my sandwich
OK, I listen to a lot of radio and if the radio’s not on, I’m probably eavesdropping. So I hear a lot of words. Perhaps that qualifies me to make the following observations. You don’t need to say ‘impact upon’ when you really mean ‘affect’. Changing tack means you are trying a different direction. Changing […]
What’s on my mind this week (the really not very exciting version)
Have you ever had so much to write about that you didn’t know where to start? And as a result didn’t start at all? That’s me this week. Not, of course, that any of it is very exciting. Nothing in the realm of ‘you’ll never believe this’ or even ‘wow’, just ordinary stuff, only lots […]
Pulling together to move forward with transparency…
And other equally irritating phrases. I was directed, the other day, to John Rentoul’s round up of banned expressions. A splendid celebration of the cliche, the slackardly sayings and the downright nasty newspeak – the kind of phrases that induce indigestion. His streaming heap includes “scalable”, “baby steps” and “scientifically proven”. To his linguistic gravy […]