Your PR Department » Hints, tips and style

UK Local Government banned words

admin — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 05:09:09 +0000

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

admin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:26:52 +0000

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. The resulting publicity is a timely reminder of the need for honesty and transparency in communications with the media-no matter what the fall-out might be. Read the full article in the Noosa Journal.

Tempted to copy? – think twice!

admin — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:49:21 +0000

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

Who are you?

admin — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:14:05 +0000

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.

Quiet those phones for your presentation

admin — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:00:50 +0000

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

admin — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 04:44:44 +0000

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.If you want to remove double spacing from a document in Microsoft Word, hit CNTRL + F, click on the REPLACE tab, in the ‘Find what’ space, hit the space bar twice, in the ‘Replace with:’ space hit the space bar once. This will remove all double spaces and replace them with single spaces.

For grammar, punctuation and style, we refer to the Snooks & Co, 2002, Style Manual for authors, editors and printers (sixth edition).

Bullets

admin — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 04:41:39 +0000

Nowadays punctuation is kept to a minimum. Bullet points are written in two ways:

Sentences – where the point is usually more than one line long it should begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop.

Unpunctuated – short points need no punctuation. They do not begin with a capital letter and have no full stop or semi-colon at the end. There is no need to add a semi-colon and and (; and) to the second last point.

Undercapitalise

admin — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 04:40:57 +0000

Anyone that takes an interest in writing and language will tell you that the misuse of capital letters causes them all sorts of angst! The rules for capital letters are simple: Use them at the beginning of a sentence and for a proper noun or name (the names of specific people, places and organisations)—and that’s it. Don’t use a capital letter to emphasise the importance of something—use an underline or a bold typeface if you have to. An example that is often incorrect relates to councils:

Redland City Council…the city council…the council…council chambers, council meetings and council pound.

Getting government right

admin — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:22:29 +0000

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.

For example:
Queensland Government, Australian Government, local government.
The NSW Government proposes to increase taxes…the government policy will be to…The policy will be reviewed by the Australian Government, but is not expected to affect local governments.