UK Local Government banned words

This would be funny if it wasn’t so serious! Read this article from the BBC about the jargon words that the UK Local Government Association wants to ban councils from using.

The spin recycle

This month, following an FOI inquiry, the Queensland EPA was accused of ‘recycling old words’ to respond to repeated media enquiries on the same subject. (read more »)

Tempted to copy? – think twice!

While none of us like reinventing the wheel, this story illustrates the severe consequences of plagiarism in speech writing.

Who are you?

Recently I telephoned all councils in Queensland that have communications and marketing personnel to update my contact list. I was quite surprised that the majority of people on the switchboard had no idea who their Communications Manager or Officer was! By the way, this wasn’t just small councils with one communications person, a couple of the big ones had to do quite a lot of running around to find out who to contact.

As the first point of call for the media, it’s essential that the front counter and switchboard staff know who you are and how to contact you. Take a few minutes to go and introduce yourself and tell them a bit about what you do so they can put a face to a name and, when necessary, put the important calls straight through.

Honour Australia Day Award Winners

Once Australia Day is over those that won the local awards are often forgotten. Why not honour them by including them in your annual report? The inside back cover is a great place to put a photograph and a short paragraph about each of the winners.

Quiet those phones for your presentation

To avoid having your presentation interruped by mobile phones ringing, when preparing your Power Point slides for the presentation place a footer on the front page that displays while your audience is settling into their seats that politely asks them to remember to silence their mobile phones.

Double spacing

Before the advent of computers we were taught to put two spaces in between sentences when typing. Modern word processing has done away with the need for double spacing and it’s no longer necessary. (read more »)

Bullets

Nowadays punctuation is kept to a minimum. Bullet points are written in two ways: (read more »)

Undercapitalise

Anyone that takes an interest in writing and language will tell you that the misuse of capital letters causes them all sorts of angst! (read more »)

Getting government right

Many people get confused about whether the word government should be capitalised. In general the word government should be capitalised as part of a formal title or abbreviated specific title only and use lower case at other times. (read more »)