I am not talking about LOL-ing up your copy with txtspk, slang and swearwords FTW! But undoing the top button and taking off the tie will allow you to appear friendly, trustworthy, approachable and willing to interact. Here are 9 practical tips to soften up your style:

1. Use contractions

‘From a standing start back in 1998, we’ve grown into a successful online bank. We’ve done this by helping customers to understand and manage their money more effectively.’ Egg

We’ve is a contraction (of we have). Formal training says that you should not contract words in proper writing. That’s something to bear in mind the next time you write to a judge, but for describing your company or service online, this, along with point 2, is the most important trick for creating a more relatable style.

2. Be a person or group of people

‘We’ve been asked by a lot of people how we’ve grown so quickly, and the answer is actually really simple… We’ve aligned the entire organization around one mission: to provide the best customer service possible.’ Zappos

Technically this is about person: write in the first person (I, we) rather than the third (Zappos believes…). It is important to mention your company name occasionally, which you can do by saying ‘At Zappos, we…’, but overall the more it is about we and us the more human you will appear.

3. Embrace fragments

‘For years project management software was about charts, graphs, and stats. And you know what? It didn’t work.’ Basecamp

Fragments, bless them, haven’t quite got enough parts of speech to be called real sentences. Who cares? (Hey, there’s one). We speak in fragments all the time, and dropping them occasionally into our copy creates a natural voice.

4. Put in a single line paragraph

‘It’s my favourite place in the world.’ Seven Holidays

I love this bad boy. Just as your reader is following your thoughtful argument through well-constructed paragraphs you hit them with a single line like a poke in the eye. Don’t use it more than once on a page.

5. Use simple words

‘Twitter is without a doubt the best way to share and discover what is happening right now.’

Search for twitter in Google and this is what appears as Twitter’s own description of itself. Compare with Wikipedia’s description on the same page: ‘Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., that enables its users to send and read other user messages’.

Remember that you are not just conveying information, but personality. As soon as you begin sounding like the dictionary, you’re not being taken to the party any more.

6. Go casual with your phrases and metaphors

‘Hello. We are Ryan, Nick and Sam. A while back we got interested in the idea of lending. Sam had had a good experience with his next-door neighbours. They had been lending stuff to him – small stuff mainly (like a cup of sugar), but it got bigger (like a ladder) and in time he found he was actually hanging out with his neighbours who turned out to be quite surprisingly nice once he got to know them.’ Streetbank

This is a particularly casual way of talking about your organisation. Note the parentheses, like little vocal asides, and the otherwise woolly words like stuff, hanging out and quite surprisingly nice. How casual your company should sound is up to you. But one of the traits for cultivating a more relaxed tone of voice is the use of lazy phrases and metaphors.

Catch my drift?

7. Share a little joke

‘Can I be banned from commenting? Yes, if your comments are self-promotional, obnoxious, highly offensive, spam, or even worse, boring. There will be no warning, and little mercy.’ Gawker

Don’t force it, and don’t try to have your users in stitches. But a friendly joke or a bit of irony used sparingly and at appropriate moments – such as to relieve the tension of a long form or error page – goes a long way to make your company seem approachable.

8. Cut out the company blah bits

‘A large, high-resolution LED-backlit IPS display. An incredibly responsive Multi-Touch screen. And an amazingly powerful Apple-designed chip. All in a design that’s thin and light enough to take anywhere. iPad isn’t just the best device of its kind. It’s a whole new kind of device.’ Apple (UK)

Apple could tell you many things about their philosophy, values and marketing principles. Instead, they show you what you are looking for.

However informal you try to make it sound there is still something stuffy about ‘our core values’ and ‘we believe’ and ‘our history’ and ‘our mission statement’. Customers do not care. They will infer all that from your products and service anyway. What you choose to tell them is another essential constituent of your tone.

9. Start sentences with conjunctions

‘But here we are 24 months later and those predictions couldn’t appear more misplaced […] So occasionally at The World Tonight, we decide to devote special coverage to a significant issue and this Friday it’s this.’ BBC News, The Editors

To round off the generally-chill-out-about-grammar theme: start the occasional sentence with or, and or but.

In a word: conversational

Overall, instead of writing like you are providing a legal defence for your company, write like you are chatting to individual customers in person. Talk like you’re, well, talking. Read your copy to yourself in the mirror and try not to laugh.

How informal you get is up to you (I recommend keeping the shirt on). You could create a style guide to maintain the level that you want. But I hope that these practical tips help you to find ways to undo at least the top button, and write like you are human after all.

What other companies have a great informal tone of voice? Have you any other tips for developing a more relaxed style?

Them’s good rules.

They are the conclusion to his 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, in which he talks about the relationship between clear language and clear thinking. He ends his argument with 6 rules for sharp and accurate writing, in the hope that, not only will people express themselves more clearly, but that they might think more clearly too – that their communication might become meaning-full.

And yet halfway through the article, Orwell mentions another list for writers that gets me just as excited. This list is not talked about half as much (like omg it’s buried in a monster para surely you don’t expect me to like actually read this thing wtf), but it is pure platinum. Reading it is like discovering that The Godfather has a sequel or that Dannii’s sister can sing a bit too.

Orwell says that a ‘scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:’

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

‘And he will probably ask himself two more:’

1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

If more writers (of anything at all) were to ask themselves these questions, then the world would be a much clearer and more beautiful place.

Why not ask them about the next thing that you write?

Thank you, Eric Blair.

If required [Company name] can therefore provide an introduction to a solicitor.

This is what George Orwell hated. It is an unnecessarily inflated way to say something simple. Look at all the extraneous parts:

If required – the whole thing is if required. It’s a sales brochure. Just describe your service and let the reader decide if it is required or not.

Therefore is also redundant. There is no need to state explicitly that this sentence follows the previous one in logical argument. If I said: I like plums. Therefore can I have one of yours? – it would make sense. But take ‘therefore’ out and it still makes sense. Human-sounding sense.

Provide an introduction to is one of Orwell’s ‘false limbs’. Keep it simple. Choose the basic verb: introduce.

Orwell deplored this sort of language in politics. It is everywhere in business, inflating sentences to sound grandiose. I call it the faux legal style. It sounds like a contract or piece of legislation, yet is thin in actual meaning. Far from convince, it is more likely to put customers off, by forcing them to read more than they have to for little reward.

What the writer meant to say was:

We can introduce you to a solicitor.

Isn’t that better? Not just for understanding but for tone of voice too?

Writing in the faux legal style

Ten tips to say lots while saying nothing at all:

1. Use unnecessary phrases, such as this one.
2. Choose a protracted and more lengthy phrase where possible.
3. In addition, employ words that therefore reinforce the obvious logical connections, thus.
4. Let your verbs exhibit a tendency to complexity.
5. Capitalise certain Nouns whenever they appear.
6. Sprinkle in some Latin or Greek ad nauseam.
7. Talk about yourself in the third person as SmyWord here illustrates.
8. Qualify your assertions endlessly, regardless of necessity, whether they need to be qualified or not.
9. Omit all feeling that is what some would recognise to be emotional terminology.
10. Let the passive be used instead of the active.

In conclusion, therefore, a suitable area for the Reader’s comments upon this subject is afforded space below, should the Reader wish to remark, ruminate or give exposition to his or her thoughts upon the matters raised by the Author in this article.

That is, any comments?

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Legend. If discovering or being reminded of these rules is what you take away from this post – then my work here is done. However, if you want to know what Orwell was really getting at, read on.

Orwell’s 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, from which the above is an excerpt, makes a more fundamental point than simply how to write good. He is concerned with the effect of language on our ability to think.

He claims that not only do foolish thoughts lead to ugly, stale and inaccurate language – but that ugly, stale and inaccurate language ‘makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.’ He says: ‘if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.’

The more we use poor language, the poorer our thoughts become.

If we don’t have the words we can’t have the thoughts.

Orwell was writing about the language used by politicians. He was concerned, not just that they all get their points across clearly, but that they preserve the ability to have a point worth making in the first place. That, when alone in their minds, their attempt to formulate ideas is equipped with the best arsenal possible – in array, range, and accuracy. That they are able to have the important thoughts in the first place, before they even say a word.

It is easy to imagine that for politicians the thoughts that they have are a matter of life and death to others, because they consider and discuss policies concerning military action, social welfare, security, crime and health.

But what are the consequences of your thoughts? On your business, your relationships, your health, your future, your art, your contribution? The popularity of cognitive therapy suggests that the ability to change what you think about yourself and your environment is crucial to your ability to change at all. But from where will you get the language for those new thoughts?

What if improving your language could unlock a greater range of options for your work? That by learning to speak and write more accurately – as we all can – you might begin to think more accurately too?

Orwell wanted people to say more clearly what they meant. But he wanted them to mean something worthwhile to begin with. Behind his excellent editorial tips lie two principles that should underpin everything that we write:

1. Mean something before you say anything
2. The clearer your language, the better your thoughts

Something to think about the next time you use leverage as a verb.

What do you think?

If you have no idea what a vuvuzela is, I’m hazarding a guess that you don’t follow football. Switch on any broadcast of the 2010 World Cup and the first thing you hear is the blaring, persistent, invasive drone of what sounds like thousands of cheap plastic horns being raspberried into deafeningly by thousands of untrained lips all at the same time.

Which is what it is.

The vuvuzela is a monotone plastic trumpet adopted by football fans from all nations for the tournament in South Africa. The problem is that no matter what you try to perform on your particular horn, once more than a handful of people are farting away at the same time, the result is a constant, thunderous drone.

It does not rise and fall with the action. It does not rally one team against the other. It does not start a chain reaction or provoke a response from other fans.

It just drones.

What happened to roaring? Chants and counter-chants? Silence? Yells of relief? Rattles, whistles and airhorns? The end result of a thousand people blowing the same trumpet is a continual buzz that deafens the crowd and distracts the teams.

How your web site can sound different

Your web site makes a sound. It has a voice. Every piece of text that a visitor sees on your site she forms into internal sounds for comprehension. The more she has to read, the more noise you generate in her head.

Many websites fall into the vuvuzela trap. They try to say too much. They try to emphasise every point to the detriment of all. They give instructions or explanations for every little thing.

The end result is an ear-splitting racket where nothing stands out and visitors quickly switch off. Here’s how to avoid the vuvuzela effect on your web site:

1) Contrast

Resist the temptation to put copy on every page, or instructions for every action. If some pages absolutely must be read, let others rely on the graphical elements to get their message across. Where possible, show, don’t tell.

The paradox is that the more you explain, the less is understood. Why? Because people stop reading. Don’t blow your horn ever harder. Stop, and let them think.

Frame your copy with plenty of room, use fonts that are easy on the eye, well spaced, large, and high contrast.

Then, like an eye-catching football banner or a spur-of-the-moment chant, have a small handful of items that stand out from the rest. They could be offers, vital information, or your calls to action – the important thing is that only a few are emphasised.

What is the one thing you want each page on your web site to do? Emphasise that. And nothing else.

2) Uniqueness

The vuvuzelas sound the same, whichever fans are wielding them, all of the time. But footballers want their fans to be singing their songs, responding to their movement on the pitch, cheering them alone toward victory.

Put some thought into what makes your business unique and reflect that on your web site. Not just in what you offer but in how you sound. Even the smallest tweaks to the microcopy on your site can create a voice that people are not used to hearing online – friendly, honest, cheeky, elite, earthy, funny, suave – just anything but over-confident and corporate.

There is a Portsmouth Football Club supporter in England who has become famous for standing at the games ringing a hand bell. Why does he get the attention? Because it sounds good? No. Because no one else is doing it.

3) Serve the end goal

It remains to be seen whether the vuvuzelas have a detrimental impact on teams’ performances. Portugal’s Ronaldo has said ‘It is difficult for anyone on the pitch to concentrate … A lot of players don’t like them’.

The point is this: remember what the goal of your web site is, and create a voice and experience that leads directly to it. It may be tempting to get sidetracked into justifying your company, or write ego-boosting press releases, but if these things do not lead the site to succeeding – then cut them out.

Finally, if you really can’t do anything about the sound of the vuvuzelas don’t worry – you could always sell earplugs instead.

You know, the one crowded with far too much information, most of it out of date, and navigation like a drunk describing the way to the kebab shop.

The one where one line is emphasised in italics, the next one in bold, before the floodgates open and red and blue type competes with underlining, CAPITALS, and multiple exclamation marks!!!!!!!

BECAUSE EVERY LINE YOU WRITE IS IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO BE SHOUTED!!!

The one where the headings style is inconsistent and there are more font variations across the pages than across the Anglican church.

The one where you’re spelling and grammer, is wronger.

And sometimes just fragments of

The one where you started a blog but couldn’t keep it up, or perhaps just put company news or press releases in there to keep it ticking over.

The one with the bad photos that have been stretched to fit a space or are a file type that most browsers don’t read any more.

The one with the revolting colours.

The one where more and more features and icons and menu bar items get squashed onto the front page so that it’s hard to know where to start and quite frankly nobody has any clue what you were trying to say in the fireplace.

That’s the one

Who was responsible for it again?

Your last web team?

Then you have my sympathy. How unlucky to have got stuck with the only web team on earth whose vision for a web site is like something that Damien Hirst would produce given 8 cans of fluorescent paint, some live chickens and a meat cleaver.

It must have been all their fault.

However, in the tiniest of possibilities that you, the owner and guardian of the site, might just, perhaps, have had a miniscule mite of influence over the content and how it ended up looking …

Then we need to talk before you get a new site.

It doesn’t matter how much smarter the new car is, if you don’t learn how to drive and you leave your junk inside it’s going to end up a dirty wreck and stop working.

Just like the old one.

The biggest threat to clear, compelling and useful web sites is not rogue designers or web teams. It is clients who won’t learn how to look after their content.

Agreed?

Here’s what happened. Carol Ann Duffy is a talented British poet. She wrote a topical and smart little verse about David Beckham being ruled out of the World Cup because of an Achilles’ injury. The Mirror, one of the UK’s tabloid newspapers, published it exclusively on its web site last week.

And that’s where it went Goldenballs up:

Can you even see where it begins and ends at first glance? The problems with this layout are:

1. The title is not distinct enough. It is the same font size as the rest of the copy, and the italics make it look less, rather than more important than other elements.
2. The body font for the poem is not distinctive either.
3. The layout does not frame the verse in any way, with white space or indentation for example.
4. There’s a BLOODY GREAT BIG ANIMATED ADVERT right in the middle of it, breaking up a line.
5. There is a typo in the line afterward, ‘aspecial’, as well as a missing line break, still uncorrected 6 days after publication.

If you want people to value your content, present it in a fitting way

With poetry, these transgressions are magnified, because poetry is language arranged in such a way that it invites you to take a closer look: to enjoy, to be moved, to think. The frame is vital – from the title, the line and verse breaks through to the layout and choice of fonts and paper if the poem is published in print.

Shouldn’t as much care be taken online?

I’m not talking about fancy ornamentation. Just enough care to honour the material, draw attention to it and even enhance its meaning, because most poetry is written for the eye as well as the ear.

Would you be happy with a professional painting stuck on the gallery wall with no mount or frame? Or a meal at a decent restaurant slapped in a sloppy pile on paper plates?

Bad presentation says that you don’t value your content. And if you don’t value it then your customers certainly won’t.

Poetry suffers on the web

Although no other poetry site is as brazen as the stanza-splitting advert-loving Mirror, I am yet to find one that does poetry justice. Many of them put small font sizes in dense array for an overall dull effect. The Poetry Society are one example, who also use a low contrast font (being a lighter grey) that reminds me of financial small print.

Perhaps the Mirror needs a poetry style guide (because that’s going to happen). Perhaps it’s okay if they present their own copy as worthless, but for goodness’ sake when they’ve got the poet laureate submitting an exclusive verse they could display it in such a way to make readers take it seriously – or even read it in the first place.

The best example I’ve seen for laying out poetry online is Verbatim Poetry. I would say that, because I did it. It’s not perfect, but even as a fun little hobby on the side it puts whoever was paid to publish the David Beckham poem in The Mirror to shame.

How poems are laid out on Verbatim Poetry

What do you reckon?

Secondly, language is important. It is important because it is our main tool for communication. Not only to understand, love and conspire with each other but even to be able to think in the first place. It is very, very difficult to think something for which you do not have the words. Our abilities to think and to relate are bound to our grasp of language – and the integrity of the language that is available to us.

So it’s worth keeping an eye on our words.

Why can leverage not be a verb?

Leverage is the advantage gained by the use of a lever. Imagine a big rock. You ram a crowbar underneath it, push down on the bar and the rock begins to rise. You now have leverage.

The word comes by adding the suffix -age to the verb lever. When you lever (verb) the rock, you get this:

lever    +    -age    =    leverage

We are used to this in language:

spill    +    -age    =    spillage

dote    +    -age    =    dotage

advance    +    -age    =    advantage

The suffix –age transforms these verbs into nouns. That’s what it is used for. You advance (verb) your army, to give yourself an advantage (noun).

So if you want to use further the advantage that you have gained, how do you do it? Let me tell you how you don’t do it. You don’t advantage your troops. That’s nonsensical. Because a verb transformed into a noun by adding –age can’t suddenly be a verb as well.

It sounds completely wrong.

And yet bloggers, especially those who would like to be Seth Godin, are doing this all the time.

They say that the way to capitalise on your position – is by leveraging it. In other words, to leverage (verb) your leverage (noun).

It is a crude bastardisation of language. It takes a verb, to lever, that has become a noun, leverage, and twists the word into another verb even though it ends with the noun-defining ending –age. The suffix –age is the linguistic equivalent of streaking across the live final of The X Factor wearing nothing but a banner proclaiming ‘I AM A NOUN’. You can’t get more noun-like than a word made into a noun by the suffix –age.

You can’t spillage me across the floor or dotage me into delirium for suggesting that language does not work this way.

Because if leverage was a verb then we could create leveragage by doing it. And that’s just getting silly.

What do people mean by ‘to leverage’?

In most cases, I think people mean one of two things:

1. They just mean ‘to lever’

‘if you leverage the content that you have already created, you will be able to squeeze out a bit more mileage’

If the writer (it would be unfair to identify him as so many people do it) means capitalising upon the work that you have already done, then the correct word is simply lever:

‘if you lever the content that you have already created…’

And if this sounds dumb, it is because it is. Leverage has become a buzzword, yet there are few situations where it is apt. A much better analogy for capitalising upon previous advantage gained would be advancing your troops further, or investing in new ventures having worked hard to create money in the first place, to name but two.

2. They mean ‘using the leverage you already have to your advantage’

This is how Seth Godin often uses it. I wonder how he can be so convinced that spelling is important yet throw away basic grammar without remorse. He even quotes someone else on his blog:

‘The more you say leverage, the less you’ve probably thought about what you’re saying.’

It’s not just that it stomps all over obvious grammatical integrity. Using leverage as a verb is also confusing, because it means levering your leverage. That is not a simple concept to me.

A confession to finish

Let me confess that there is a recorded use of leverage as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary. In finance, leveraging is using borrowed capital to make investments that will provide greater profit than the interest owed. Maybe that’s where some people derive it from.

I hope that the reasons not to emulate the financial world are evident without having to spell them out, particularly when it comes to language. Do we want to shape the world for the better with our ideas, or shut it out?

The writers who imposed the greatest number of new words upon the English language had the greatest grasp of existing words. When you can write like Shakespeare, by all means make up whatever words you like.

Until then, look after the words you’ve inherited. You might need them for something important one day.

Do you use leverage as a verb? Why? What do you mean by it? What metaphors could we use instead? Do you think this might be a British/US English thing?

Imagine it. I want to give you money – by signing up to become a paying member on your web site. So I find your site and look for the quickest, easiest way to get to the sign up page.

But I can’t find it. Sometimes you’re talking about signing up, other times about registering. There are two links: one for becoming a member and the other one for joining. If they are different, I’m not sure which one I need. When I find a page called ‘How to sign up as a member’ it tells me both ‘Click the Apply for Membership tab’ and ‘Click here to proceed’.

Well, which one is it?

I take a risk, click one, and fill in the application form (even though the button says ‘register’, not apply). Then comes the most baffling part of the whole process. Your web site tells me:

You are already a member.

I am not already a member. I have never signed up or given you any money for membership before.

But just to make sure, I go back to your question ‘is your organisation already registered?’ and search for my company’s name. Nothing happens. You tell me neither that I am nor that I am not.

Am I going mad? Perhaps I am already a member? Perhaps your sales rep got me drunk one night and I signed up on the spot and Timothy Taylor erased the memory?

So I try to log in to find out. I get an error page.

Do I still want to give you money?

After the awful experience: a serious point about your brand

The point of this true story (I haven’t the heart to name the company here) is that I nearly posted on Twitter: ‘I am trying to give money to x. They make it very difficult.’ I realised that might seem a little unfair, and posted instead:

Can you spot the  crucial difference? The first equates the web site with the company. They make it difficult to give money. The second gives them the benefit of the doubt. It’s just their web site that is at fault.

But guess which way your average consumer will describe it?

They make it hard to subscribe. They see your web site – as you.

To your customers, you and your web site are one and the same

As a prominent interface between your company and the public, your site represents your company to people so completely that it is you. It is who you are.

If that is true – how do you feel about what is on it? Does it really describe what you are like? Is the experience visitors have on it congruent with what you’d like them to think about you? Do your claims stand up?

Having given up on trying to register on the web site above, I checked out their About Us page. Amid talk of ‘technology-enabled enterprise’ and ‘raising Cambridge’s game’, was the claim that they achieved their commitments using ‘technology’.

Yeah, right. Forgive me for laughing.

If you claim one thing but the experience on your web site suggests another, people don’t think, ‘I’m sure they take a lot more care in the other areas of their business’. They think: liars.

If visitors to your site find broken tools and errors, they don’t assume, ‘never mind, technology gets the better of everyone occasionally.’ They assume: these people are rubbish.

If there is a spelling mistake on your web site, customers don’t say, ‘oh look, an error slipped through the spell check on this page’. They say: this company is stupid.

And maybe they’re right. After all, wouldn’t an honest, competent and smart company take care to have a web site that proved it?

To most consumers, your web site is the same thing as your company.

Is there anything you would like to change?

I have one goal for SmyWord this year: to blog more consistently.

Last year was great – launching SmyWord, having a couple of big content cheeses drop by in the comments, receiving positive feedback from customers. But if I could change one thing, I wish that I had upheld my promise to post a new article once a week.

Increasingly businesses I do content work for want blogs on their web sites. A real, honest blog by someone who loves their work is a wondrous thing (especially if they’re not meta-careerists). And one of the fundamental pieces of advice I give them – one of the make-or-break keys to successful blogging – is to blog consistently.

Why? Because people are more likely to subscribe to, stick with, and read blogs that have a predictable delivery of content. Whether it’s an inspirational thought once a day (like Seth Godin), or a double in-depth post by different authors twice a month ( as on A List Apart), consistency shows reliability to potential followers and convinces them that you are worth following. People want to know what they will be getting.

So 2010 has me looking in the mirror and quoting ‘physician, heal thyself’.

Tips for consistent blogging

There is lots of good advice about for how to post consistently, including:

• Learn where your inspiration comes from and go there
• Read other consistent blogs to learn how they do it
• Make a regular plan and stick to it
• Split your ideas up into several posts – don’t give away too much at once
• Save good ideas for later (build up a buffer)
• Write useful material for you audience – not what floats your boat personally
• Reinterpret older material for new contexts
• Throw in a few lighter posts for variety and ease

But I know that my biggest obstacle is not creating ideas, because I’ve got loads of them. I shouldn’t admit this but right now I’ve got 41 articles for SmyWord on my laptop which are at least half-written. If I just finished those off I’d have nearly a year’s supply of posts.

But it’s not the ideas that are the problem – it’s perfectionism. I want my posts to reflect my education at Trinity College, Cambridge. I want my boss to think they’re great. I want to imbue them with the finest literary qualities of which I am capable. I want them to be above the criticism of other bloggers. I want my Mum to like them (fat chance).

Perfectionism is the biggest enemy to my goal

So here’s how I’m going to write in 2010: imperfectly. I’m going to value reasonable writing that gets published over theoretically astounding writing that does not. I’m going to be Enid Blyton not Gustave Flaubert. I will develop a thicker skin if criticised and acknowledge my mistakes. And I’m not going to show any of it to my mother.

Let’s tackle what stops us blogging consistently head on.

*Clicks publish*