June 2009

If you're looking to optimise your website, and make it as easy as possible for the search engines to find you, you need to get your page titles absolutely spot on. It's true that Google take about a zillion things into consideration before showing your website on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Ok, I exaggerate; it's about 200 things, including...

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...

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

People often use I because they want to come across as being polite. Or a bit posh. Wrong! So when do you use me, myself or I? The absolutely easiest way to remember is to simply take the other person out of the sentence. Jack and I/me went to the cinema. I went to the cinema. The letter had to be signed by Sharon and I/me. The letter...