The Turner Ink blog contains rants, bloopers, observations and opinions. It also has handy tips on grammar and punctuation such as colons: semicolons; and full stops. As well as some very useful ‘how tos’. Feel free to leave comments. Be nice though.

Turner Ink

Copywriting Services London

Archive for May 2009

His finest hour: Churchill’s great speeches

29th
May
by Sarah Turner

Winston Churchill was a brilliant writer and one of the greatest orators in living memory, despite suffering from a slight lisp, an occasional stutter and a dread of speaking in public.

His understanding of classical rhetorical techniques made his war-time speeches memorable, emotional and truly inspiring. Here are some of the techniques he used.  

Anaphora: Repetition of words and phrases.

We shall fight them on the beaches. We shall fight on the grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.

(This style was also used in Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream speech’.) 

Assonance and Alliteration: Repetition of vowel and consonant  

Let it roll. Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant to broader lands and better days.

Epistrophe: Repetition of words at the end of successive phases

….the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace…

Epizeuxis: emphatic repetition

This is the lesson: never give in, never giver in, never, never, never, never…

Antimetabole: reversing the word order of a previously used phrase

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Paronomasia: Using similar sounding words or phrases for effect

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

 

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Tags: speech writing
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Shout it out: Why you should use an active voice

26th
May
by Sarah Turner

One of the easiest ways to make your writing zippity zip zip, is to use an active voice rather than a passive one.

So how does it work?

Ok, sentences have three basic elements: a subject, a verb and an object. With an active voice you have a person that performs an action, and something that is affected by that action:

David’s dad fixed his bike.

The subject is David’s dad. The verb is to fix. And the object is the bike.

Now with a passive voice, the bike has now become the subject of the sentence, to the point that David’s dad can be removed and it will still make sense:

The bike was fixed by David’s dad.
The bike was fixed.

Take a look at some more examples.  

With the active voice the subject does the action and the object receives the action.  

The teachers (subject) taught (verb) the children (object) in 3B hockey and football.
The shop assistant (subject) was helping (verb) the old man (object).
You (subject) should tell (verb) him (object).

With a passive voice the subject does nothing; it is now acted upon. 

The children (subject) in 3B were taught (verb) hockey and football (by the teachers – the original subject and now the object).
The old man was helped (by the shop assistant).
He should be told (by you).

Be careful of starting a sentence with an active voice and then shifting to a passive voice. 

We found the error in the accounts and the customer was notified immediately.

Should be:

We found the error in the accounts and notified the customer immediately.

So when it comes to websites; sales letters; reports; emails; presentations; and any type of business writing – always use the active voice.

It makes your writing shorter, more direct, and whizzes your reader through the sentence

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Tags: active voice, passive voice
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Back to skool for journos

22nd
May
by Sarah Turner

Spotted in a recent copy of the UK’s Sheffield Weekly Gazette

’schools facing a pinch on there finances’

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Keep Calm poster updated…

18th
May
by Sarah Turner

With thanks to Private Eye Magazine.

Keep indoors and carry on panicking poster

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Tags: slogans, straplines
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Is it less or fewer?

14th
May
by Sarah Turner

Take this sign at my local ASDA grocery store. Is it right?  

image011

 

Well, no it’s not. But it’s not the only supermarket that’s been having less/fewer issues.  

A couple of years back Tesco changed the wording on their fast-track checkouts to avoid any – as they called it – linguistic disputes. They replaced the ‘10 items or less’ signs with ‘up to 10 items’ signs. (So is that 10 items or 9 items? Hmmm…)

So back to the ASDA sign. What should it be? It should be fewer. As fewer means not as many. And less means not as much. If something is countable, use fewer. If not, use less. 

My bath uses fewer gallons (countable) of water than a shower
My bath uses less water (not countable) than a shower

Or an easy way to remember:

There’s less traffic on the roads and fewer cars.

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Tags: fewer, less
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