Content / 20 Apr, 2017

How you can use Orwell’s rules for
writing to make your copy more readable

It would be hard to claim that marketing content is always readable. Marketing language is so riddled with jargon and unnecessary complexity that it’s been vilified in newspaper articles and online listicles (and it isn’t as if journalists aren’t liable to throwing out a little of their own ‘journalese’ now and again). We articulated the…

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Content / 10 Apr, 2017

Why Orwell’s rules for clear writing are the gold standard for B2B marketing content

In 1946, George Orwell––novelist, essayist, journalist and critic––extolled the virtues of simple writing in the essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ and condensed his guidance to writers into six rules: 1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. 2. Never use a long word…

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Business / Diversity & Inclusion / Strategy / 28 Mar, 2017

Why Your B2B Marketing Content is Probably Sexist

Last week, while watching the video of Mary Beard’s excellent London Review of Books Winter Series lecture on Women in Power, I was struck by her focus on language – in particular on the way in which language that excludes women from power has become part of our everyday lexicon. Women, Beard points out, are…

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Being JPC / Business / Content / 07 Jun, 2016

Thought For The Month: “Effective language is clear, simple and well organised”

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where your words were totally misinterpreted? Have you thought you were saying one thing only to find the other person heard something entirely different?” I for one know my words have failed me on multiple occasions. I spent most of my school years trying to sound more…

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