Too many people fear the short sentence. In far too many cases sentences are pretty much the same length and that length is too long. And people think that’s the way it is supposed to be. Maybe that’s because teachers the world over still equate the long sentence with high IQ. Well they’re wrong. So Read More
Month: August 2011
ABC circulations: steady is good
The ABC circulation figures for UK magazines from January to June are good. A stable net circulation can, in these troubled times, be described as good. Children’s magazines are up. News and current affairs magazines are up. Kids like paper Who said children do not like paper? And when the world is in flux people Read More
Top tip of the week on SEO
#30 Search engines concentrate on the first 100 words of a page so make these work hard for you See more top tips here. Read More
Two fingers hover over the master switch
Google’s takeover of Motorola’s mobile phone operations may strengthen its hold on the master switch of the Internet, to the detriment of all users. The Cycle: Open then closed Communications technologies before the Internet have gone through an open founding phase and then become closed. One company or a select few have been then able to have Read More
Rioters or protesters? Words matter
The recent riots in England have hammered home something we already know: writers need to think carefully about the words they choose. The BBC found this out when it spent two days calling the looters in the disturbances that have rocked England in the past few days, protesters. It provoked a leader in The Daily Read More
Copyright: too long
The Government has given its welcome to the proposals of copyright reform in the Hargreaves review. Now let’s see how it acts. Will it have the courage, or the powers, to cut the length of copyright from its present 70 years after the death of the author or the date of publication? The incentive to Read More
Top tip of the week on blogging
#29 Always check the copyright situation with any content that you haven’t created yourself Just because someone else has already published something it doesn’t mean you can do so legally See more top tips here. Read More
The BBC: Dinosaurs can dance
BBC Worldwide is close to the sale of its magazines to private equity group Exponent. This will satisfy those critics in the magazine industry who have always wondered why the BBC is in magazines, not just spin offs from its own programmes. No supporter or enemy of the BBC should see this as a retreat. Read More