The use of it’s and its seem to get a lot of people confused. I even saw this on a website recently – I swear this is true – ‘i’ts very good!’ Nope. It’s very bad. So this is the easiest way to remember: 

It’s is a contraction of it is. So

It’s (it is) a nice day. It’s (it is) a small world.

Its means ‘belonging to it’. So

The house has lost its value. Here’s the car but where are its keys?

See? It’s not difficult is it?

What’s the difference between a concrete noun and an abstract noun? What’s that I hear you cry? Who cares? Stay with me. I’m attempting to perform a public service.
 
A concrete noun is a noun that can be seen, smelt, tasted, touched, heard. So,

I wore a nice watch to the party. Watch is a concrete noun.

Trickier to recognise, an abstract noun is an idea or feeling such as love, happiness, confidence, grief, boredom, frustration. So,

The crowd was amazed at his bravery in front of goal. Bravery is an abstract noun.

 
 Now, aren’t you glad you know that?

Do you remember being told at school that you can’t start a sentence with a conjunction i.e. a joining word like And, But, Yet? Well here’s a shocker: you can.

If you want to be really formal you might want to use In addition or Nevertheless.

But for the rest of us mere mortals starting a sentence with And or But is perfectly acceptable. In fact copywriters do it all the time as it makes copy informal, snappy and really gets a point across.

Just try not to use a conjunction at the end of a sentence. Yeah..but..no..but..and yeah…but

I was amused by a letter in this week’s Design Week, in which Richard Murray, of London’s Williams Murray Hamm, grumbles about the rubbishy press releases he receives from design consultants.

He complains of meaningless statements like ‘the brighter red feels more contemporary’. And refers to ‘merging the word Air and France asserts Air France’s international status while preserving its traditional values’ as “absolute c**k”.

Murray goes on to say that “if this is how we talk about what we do, it’s no surprise the design industry often struggles to be taken seriously.”

Yep, couldn’t agree more. Some press releases I see are appalling. Not only are they uninteresting, unstructured, full of industry bull and right up themselves, they’re also littered with punctuation and grammar errors.

If your PR agency is churning out this sort of nonsense you might want to think about changing your PR agency. Just sayin’.

Ok, one more time.

Man is singular. If the wardrobe essentials belong to a man it should be a man’s wardrobe essentials. 

Men is the plural of man. If the wardrobe essentials belong to the men it should be men’s wardrobe essentials. 

Men apostrophe S.

Like this: men’s.

Not mens. Mens is not a word.

Interesting question this.

It’s generally thought the best time to send a sales email is between 10.00am and 10.30am and between 1.00pm and 1.30pm Tuesday to Thursday.

Monday is out of the question. Too many other things to deal with. Friday, forget it. No-one is thinking about work on a Friday. In the UK the weekend starts on a Thursday night. The only time you can send a sales email on a Friday is if you work for a holiday firm or a brewery.

So Tuesday to Thursday seems like a good bet. 10.00am allows people to have checked their early morning emails, looked at Facebook, and written a tweet. 1.00pm and you’re catching them in a post-lunch good mood.

But wait. There are things that are beyond your control. How is your server set up? You may press send at 10.00am but your emails may take hours to filter through. Or how about different time zones? Are you in Europe and sending sales emails to the US or Australia? Your sales emails will probably arrive in the middle of the night.

The important thing is to test. And keep a record of the time your sales emails were opened or replied to. Find out what works. And do more of it.