Is humour appropriate to convey a serious message when writing a speech? Not always but sometimes, it’s the perfect choice.

When Sir Ken Robinson, in a TED talk, asked the audience to imagine Shakespeare as a seven-year-old child, they laughed and more importantly, they listened. He effectively used humour to convey a serious message, that schools ‘kill’ creativity.

When you write a first sentence, or a first paragraph, it’s seldom perfect the first time.

If you need to try again, to order your words differently, you are not alone. Almost everyone will rewrite the beginning of a piece.

Have you ever wondered why?

I was recently asked what made the JMP Writing Coach unique. The query allowed me to reassess what I’m doing and why.

You’ve been working on a project full-time for six months and now, you’re required to outline its entire content and purpose in 250 words. Does that sound challenging? Is it also familiar?

Writing short can be a challenge. It’s often more difficult than writing a long piece.

Using a spell checker when you’re writing is a great idea, right? Or is it?

An American professor reminded about the shortcomings of using a spell checker in a poem he penned. It contains no errors in spelling and yet, it just isn’t right.

Every serious writer will likely have a bookshelf full. To write well, they often recommend read a lot, see how others craft their words, tell a story, shape a message.

Take the author Stephen King, for example. He said, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

My 2022 goal is to empower you with language.

Can I ask you a question, ‘are you curious about whether learning to write well can make a difference to your career and to the way your life progresses’?

Has the silly season started?

I think it might have especially as I recently found a Christmas-themed word for every letter of the alphabet.

Here are five writing tips to help you with that pre-Christmas rush of deadlines.

If good writing is remembered, perhaps we should look at some of the world’s most memorable phrases to see what they have in common.

Here are three examples, each showing the skill in writing words that are remembered, not just until lunchtime, but rather, forever.