SO what DO you call a blog alert…?

 Isn’t our language fabulous?

When I deliver my copywriting training sessions, I always try to include the startling fact that although the Oxford English Dictionary accepts (for Scrabble?) and includes over 600,000 different words in the English language, our average written vocabulary in the UK is a paltry 4,000 words. Shakespeare in contrast employed over 15,000 different words to bring his world to life in our imaginations.

I’m old-fashioned enough to still wince when I hear nouns used as verbs: “How will that impact the business?” or the singular tense used incorrectly “We need to shift more product“. But then again, it is a fantastically useful and usually accurate early-warning about the person who’s just said it. It tells you a lot more about them than they probably intended…

But I am not, let me stress, an out-and-out die-hard reactionary. Some tweaks – or tweets? – I quite like actually. And they can be efficient. Why say “I’ll send you a text” when it’s just a lot easier, and just as clear, to say “I’ll text you” ?

So what should you call a Blog Alert? 

It’s obvious.

It’s a blurt.

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