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I can only wish that someday I might be able to write as well as Stephen Fry. Alas, I don’t hold out much hope.  Here’s an excellent video animation based on Stephen’s podcast.  I agree with most of what Stephen says here. But still, I can’t forgive too many apostrophe crimes.   Thank you  @canuckflack for the heads up on this.

Related posts:

An apology
Getting it write
Writing about writing

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For the last week, inspired by Kyle Flaherty, I’ve endeavored to follow a ‘one app at a time’ policy. That means I have one application open on my desktop any one time.  The idea is to try to cut down the noise and be more productive.
So TweekDeck stayed open only when I was using it.  If I was writing, only Word remained on my desktop.
So one week later, how is the experiment going?
It was a lot harder to do than I expected.  In fact, I found it almost impossible not …

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Every once in a while a journalist, a blogger or commenter will push things just a little too far. I’ve been accused of it myself once or twice.  Usually I’m happy to make things right.
Today the Independent on Sunday teaches us all a lesson on how to write an apology for publication (blame the reader!):
“As we are happy to point out, we, The Media, have been keen supporters of Mrs Beckham since day one, and any indications to the contrary have …

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Each month I do a roundup of the most popular Strive Notes posts.  This month I took a different approach. Instead of looking at traffic to the site, I looked at unique visitors that clicked through to posts.  It certainly shows an entirely different picture to the other method and demonstrates the ‘long tail’ of the Internet.  So here are the most visited stories for July 2008:
5. How to behave in a client meeting was first posted in January but saw a boost in popularity recently.  Could it be that …

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Strive PR account assistant Caroline helped out this week by shortlisting the five PR blog posts she enjoyed reading the most…

Simon Collister blogged about the pictures of the new Downing Street website are on Flickr due to their design team employing social media in their work.
Bob LeDrew explains how to expand blog contacts by personally choosing who to “follow”.
Here is a really interesting blog post about how to gender neutralise an article from Dan Santow
Susan Getgood continues her campaign with some examples of very bad blogger pitches.
Seth Godin …

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Image by Getty Images via Daylife

With the news that JK Rowling‘s 800 word short story was sold at a charity auction for £25k and that London Mayor Boris Johnson will pocket £250k a year for a weekly column in the Telegraph, I do believe it’s time I should have a chat with my editor at Isle of Man newspapers.  It seems a salary review is in order!

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Here’s some of the posts I enjoyed the most over the past week.  They are not in any particular order of importance but are all interesting to me. I hope they are to you too.
1.  It looks like the beleaguered Mr. Brown has been knocked back by Ogilvy UK.  They say his fees are ‘small beer’ and he doesn’t have clearly defined goals.  It will be interesting to see who queues up to get the brief.
2. eMarketer has published research on who is blogging. They say that blogging has gone …

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I found myself blasting out an email to the team today to remind them of some fundamentals.  It occurred to me that I should wrap it into a blog post for future reference.
If the target publication is a broadsheet, a news release can have up to 500 words.  For a tabloid, keep it to 300 or 400 words at a push.
For trade or technical media you can let it run up to 800 words if there is a lot of technical information that you need to include.
Sometimes a client wants …

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There is no getting around it. It’s down to the writer to make sure he understands the brief. Often, the client has no idea what he wants. Sometimes, the editor hasn’t thought it through either. On these occasions it behooves the writer to recommend an approach, clarify the brief and make sure everyone knows what to expect.
And this should be done before the first word is written, or you risk a lot of wasted time and rework. Here’s a list of what to check at the outset:
The purpose …

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Another top 5 from me, apologies in advance for Number 5. Bit of a rant. I could have gone on forever but you’ll be glad to know that I didn’t…
1.  A discussion I’ve been following for a while and, in the words of Neil Maclean, what a cat fight it’s becoming. It’s brilliant! I agree totally with Wilson Cleveland. Many hard workers seem to be taking the flack for lazy people. I sat up till 1:00am ringing Australian newspapers and publications trying to get the right contacts on two occasions …