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

Cut the bull from your press releases. Please

26th
Feb
by Sarah Turner

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’.


Tags: business bull
Posted in Business writing, Press Release writing and PR | comments icon No comments yet »

Mens. Just so wrong

25th
Feb
by Sarah Turner

image025

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.


Tags: apostrophes
Posted in Bloopers, Punctuation tips | comments icon No comments yet »

When’s the best time to send a sales email?

22nd
Feb
by Sarah Turner

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.


Tags: sales emails
Posted in Business writing | comments icon No comments yet »

Apostrophes in Birmingham street names: shall we deaf it?

30th
Jan
by Sarah Turner

Birmingham City Council has decided, in their wisdom (ignorance), to drop apostrophes from all their road signs and place names.

Councillor Len Gregory said, “I don’t see the point of them. If it was to give more clarity to the people of Birmingham it might be something we would look at, but I see no benefits at all.”

Ok, the point of apostrophes, Mr Gregory, is that it shows a road, square, lane or street has been named after somebody. It shows that a road, square, lane or street belongs to somebody. And it shows that at least one person at Birmingham council has some grasp of English grammar. Presumably if Mr Gregory had a street named after him he’d be happy for it to be called Gregorys Street, rather than Gregory’s Street?

As it turns out, apostrophes have been disappearing from road signs and place names in Birmingham for the last 50 years. Which is why you see St Pauls Square, St Marys Road and Wheelers Lane.

Councillor Martin Mullaney said, “we are constantly getting residents asking for apostrophes to be put back in, and as a council we have got to make a decision one way or another.”

So, if you’re going to make a decision one way or another – why not make the right one? Why not decide that any new road signs will be correctly punctuated? And, as and when old signs need replacing the missing apostrophe is put back? It’s not difficult is it?  

Getting rid of apostrophes in street names has nothing to do with clarity. Or consistency. Or making sure the emergency services can find an address easily. It’s everything to do with apathy, laziness and a general dumbing down.   
 

P.S. Big thanks go to the ‘Talk like a Brummie day’ dictionary who taught this Londoner the phrase ‘deaf it’. (It means ‘not bother’, ‘forget it’.)


Tags: apostrophes
Posted in Business writing, Punctuation tips | comments icon 1 Comment »

Get with the program

27th
Jan
by Sarah Turner

Website or Web site? Tricky one this as technically they are both right. However, the Oxford English Dictionary is going for website, all one word, and so am I. But the Web on its own is capitalised. As is World Wide Web and the Internet.

Online should be one word not on-line. And email and enewsletter are now grown up enough to go without their hyphens. Can someone let The Times know as they still insist on using e-mail. So last century.


Tags: website or web site
Posted in Grammar tips | comments icon No comments yet »

« previous page  1 2 ... 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34   next page »
 

Definition of a blog: A blog or web blog is a website usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. (Wikipedia.com)