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Choose your words wisely
Posted by: Catie Holdridge
14 / 04 / 09
He’s a shrewd one, that Sir Alan Sugar. As he announced in the opening episode of The Apprentice, he realises that knowing every word to ‘Candle in the wind’ does not mean he is Elton John. Using our Suralan to Plain English dictionary, we see that his sensible – if somewhat obvious – point […]
09 / 04 / 09
We should all be eating more pollack, for cod’s sake. So say the environmentalists trying to save the perennial partner to chips from an early, non-watery grave: cod stocks in the North Sea are a mere fifth of what they were forty years ago. Sainsbury’s have given the humble pollack a makeover to boost its […]
Posted by: Rob Ashton
18 / 03 / 09
Council leaders have banned some 200 examples of the worst management jargon. But there are signs they’ve fallen into the lazy-writing trap themselves. A press release from the Local Government Association published today says that words such as ‘slippage’ (meaning delay), ‘benchmark’ (measure) and ‘procure’ (buy) are all out. So are management clichés like ‘thinking […]
18 / 02 / 09
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. So said Benjamin Disraeli (and later Mark Twain, who was quoting him). Yet the public (and that’s all of us, at one time or another) continues to be sucked in by reports based on spurious logic and ‘facts’ of dubious provenance. If you’ve ever […]
13 / 02 / 09
Microsoft has announced it’s to open its own shops, in a clear bid to grab a slice of the Apple retail action. Apple trades on its image as the quintessence of cool: all innovative design and sleek lines. Microsoft may face an uphill battle in this respect, at least if its press release announcing the […]
11 / 02 / 09
Kill the fatted calf: it seems we do now have a definition of the word ‘Depression’. (See ‘What’s in a word?’, below.) According to the Economist, it’s: … a slide in peak-to-trough of real GDP of 10% or a decline lasting more than three years. I’m glad we sorted that out. So we’re not in […]
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