Sir Alex Ferguson took a £30,000 gold Rolex watch as a bribe to fix a football match at Manchester United, a court was told last week. Before you rush away and tweet this surprising piece of news look at the end of the sentence: “a court was told last week”. “The court was told” There’s a Read More
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Don’t forget about links in your writing
It’s easy to forget about links in your writing. Once you’ve overcome the first major hurdle and actually made a start, there is a tendency to assume that the rest will just flow. Not necessarily. Good writers spend as much time thinking about how to keep people reading as they do about hooking them in Read More
When does your employer own the copyright of ANY content you create?
Do you know? Is it: A) During the hours of your employment? B) Only when you are using your employer’s equipment? C) At any time when you are in their employment? If you’re not sure, just let us know…or check out one of our media law courses! Read More
Using the semicolon to power your writing
The semicolon is in your tool box of punctuation: use it to improve the power of your writing. It is heavier than a comma and lighter than a full stop. Here is one way to use it: As a divider in lists which are long and complex: “Three of them went on the picnic: Richard, Read More
Top Tip – Feature Writing
This week’s top tip: Learn as much about your reader as you can and when you start to write, imagine they are sitting in the corner of the room with you. Look at our Feature Writing course to find out more. Read More
Stokes story shows BBC needs to train presenters in privacy law
The Ben Stokes “news story” has revealed a gross lack of understanding of the privacy laws by the BBC Radio 4 presenter of the afternoon news program PM, Evan Davis. Her should really know better given the rising importance of this law. The BBC decided not to give the details splashed over the Read More
Opening up the copyright debate again
CC Greyweed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ unchanged You might have thought that the mighty Viacom versus YouTube case had settled all of the main issues about sharing platforms and copyright. YouTube won the 2007 case with the defence that it was an innocent platform that took down any infringing material when it was notified on it. This cleared the legal way for Read More
Threat of libel on social media drops again
Great news for creators of social media: the threat of libel has dropped again. Users of social media “read” its content in a casual way and did not pause to reflect. This new ruling of the Supreme Court says that dictionary definitions of words and elaborate analysis cannot be applied to social media. A new Read More
Write like a journalist to get through to journalists: 8 things to remember when you write a press release
I’ve seen a lot of press releases in my 40 years as a journalist. I’ve also helped both journalists and brands understand how to communicate more effectively as a writing trainer for 30 years. When it comes to press releases I’ve learned that getting the right content, in the right order is the single most Read More
Golden Rules for Email #1: Subject Lines
What is the core purpose of a Subject Line? [please choose one] 1. To inform the recipient of your email’s content 2. To motivate them to read the email Your Subject Line is the ‘headline’ for your email. So in some ways, informing the reader seems to make sense. After all, it’s there to give Read More