Improve your writing and avoid the ‘Golden Bull’
Each year, the Plain English Campaign present awards for the best and worst examples of English. Their infamous ‘Golden Bull’ award injects some mischief, but has given us some great examples for you:
The following pieces of writing have all been awarded the Golden Bull by The Campaign for Plain English over the past few years:
Trilogy Telecom (an e-mail to a customer)
BT have started processing the first stage of our MPF orders i.e. the line test and production of a line characteristics report. However with the second stage (i.e. physically installing the metallic facility path between the customers line and the Trilogy equipment) they will only walk one or two orders through the system Thursday of next week.
(N.B. “Physically installing the metallic facility path” is better known as “laying the cable”!)
Jungle.com (The company was asked ‘Do you still sell blank CDs?’ Instead of simply saying ‘No’, they replied)
‘We are currently in the process of consolidating our product range to ensure that the products that we stock are indicative of our brand aspirations. As part of our range consolidation we have also decided to revisit our supplier list and employ a more intelligent system for stock acquisition. As a result of the above certain product lines are now unavailable through jungle.com, whilst potentially remaining available from more mainstream suppliers.’
Lloyds Pharmacy (Rather than simply admit an assistant had dispensed the wrong strength of tablet, and that this mistake had not been picked up by the pharmacist, they wrote this apology).
‘The cognitive process that staff will go through when interpreting prescriptions and selecting drugs is almost intuitive in that the prescription will be read, a decision is then made in the mind of the individual concerned, they will then make a selection based on what they have decided. When an error is made either mentally or in the physical selection process it is difficult for the individual concerned to detect their own error because in their own mind they have made the correct selection.’
Illumine Training offers a number of courses and workshops that can help you to improve your writing skills.
Writing Dynamics™
Today’s readers are overloaded; they have little time and will, at best, skim-read. Writing Dynamics™ shows you how to handle these challenges:
- Get your reader’s attention
- Ensure your key message is understood
- Save you and your reader time
The Writing Dynamics™ three-stage writing system helps you PLAN using creative and structured thinking; DRAFT in record time and EDIT for impact. It’s available as a public workshop (London and Manchester) or as an in-house course.
Grammar on the Rocks™
This is the practical approach to the rules of grammar. The rules that are needed to present a professional written image for yourself and your organisation. It will actively improve your understanding and use of grammar without bombarding you with too much information. Available as a public workshop (London and Manchester) or as an in-house course.
Or you could try our combination of the two… The Business Writing Workshop
This is our most intensive business writing workshop. By combining Writing Dynamics™ and Grammar on the Rocks™ together over 2 days you will not only save your organisation time but also money. This is currently only available as an in-house course.
Tags: Written Communication
