Far too many sales letters, web pages and other marketing material fail because the reader isn’t told what to do, what action to take, where to go or how to order what’s being sold.Imagine you read an advertisement for something you rea...read more...
I love fairs! Anywhere there's a bargain to be snagged, you'll find me rummaging through the boxes, tables and car-boots for undiscovered goodies. So, it was with great excitement that I received a flyer in the mail for a fair at a local college.At l...read more...
I phoned my girlfriend on Sunday night to see how she was after an operation. A strange male voice I didn't recognise answered with, "Hello?". I apologised, said I had the wrong number and hung up. I checked the number and redialled. Same response. S...read more...
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Context is important when it comes to making your written communications easy for your readers to understand. I recently came across this example of odd writing: The police officer committed an act of bravery.
Usually, the word committed implies something bad, like committing a robbery or a crime of some sort. People are also committed to psychiatric hospitals. Both these contexts are negative, whereas an act of bravery is seen as positive. When used in a negative sense like this you would more than likely have to read it twice before the meaning became clear.
It's not always easy, I know, to be sure of the exact connotations (meaning) of a word. And, often, the dictionary doesn't help because it's not exact enough. The same with a thesaurus. Especially so with a thesaurus. Even though many of the words it suggests are synonymous with each other, they cannot be used interchangeably. So double-check the correct meaning of the word you're using.
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