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Unspeakable

“Interfacing with targeted persons to leverage message potential and facilitate successful outcomes.” Does this title grab you? Thought not. What does it mean in plain language? “Communicating well to get results.” In our working lives we use the language of our...

It doesn’t add up

“Two-thirds of the 16 stores have closed,” said the marketing analyst. Wait a minute, two-thirds of 16 means that two-thirds of one of the stores has closed – that can’t be right. “More than nine out of ten people support this,” said another. More than nine just...

Child’s Play

Worries that some children in Britain haven’t learned to recognise written words by the age of six have led the government to come up with a scheme to test their skills. Except that the kids won’t be “tested” – they will be subjected to “decoding...

The Perpendicular Pronoun

It’s hard to beat the power of personal experience as a factor to convince a television audience. The redoubtable British businesswoman Nicola Horlick used it to great effect recently in a BBC debate on the government’s proposed changes to government employee...

On the Record – Out of a Job?

Many seasoned aid workers tell stories to each other that would make the hair of the donor public stand on end. Just this week I’ve been made aware, privately, and by angry people, of a novel method of growing food in hungry Turkana that isn’t getting any official...

Good News – for a Change

Famine, disaster, death, disease, hunger, malnutrition, starvation. These are words that appear in the first 50 words of most news stories today on the current Horn of Africa disaster – please don’t call it a food emergency.That’s an unexpected group of six for dinner...

Credit Where It’s Due

Describing a first shipment of supplies into beleaguered Tripoli, the UN’s World Food Programme spokesman said they had sent in thousands of bottles of water by ship “on behalf of UNICEF.” WFP insiders might smile ruefully as UNICEF’s name gets in on the...

Speaking Properly

Reem Haddad is certainly different. Too often the public face of an Arab government is an overweight man in an ill-fitting suit, stumbling out a semi-coherent official line in English which is thickly accented and sown with mistakes. The voice of Syria’s government...

Mind your Language?

American comedian Michael McShane was well into his stand-up routine from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when he forgot he was on a live Sunday morning radio broadcast, and threw the word “fucking” into his punchline. Cue a rapid apology from him and two from the...

All in a Word

“Pockets of our society are not just broken but are frankly sick,” said Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, echoing what many thought watching the street riots this past week. But to some of the very people responsible for the rioting, his choice of one word...