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Culture

Hot off the press: our thoughts on what's happening in the world of brand language and business writing. Warning: may contain the occasional rant.

Culture

Waxing lyrical #1

The Ivor Novello Awards are coming up so we thought we'd share our favourite lyrics over the next couple of weeks. Whether they're from a musical, an anthem or a ballad, we're interested in the words, not the tune. ‘

Culture

More words for buzzword bingo

According to this Marketing Week article, four more business words will be hitting our boardrooms soon. And they’ve caused such a stir, the likes of The Times and the Guardian have been covering them too.

Writing

Culture

Who?

Let’s start at the beginning: when we write, we write about things happening.

Writing

Culture

Word of the day: upcycle

We’ve been blogging about how the people on The Apprentice use formal guff to sound serious and business-like.

Culture

TV shows in six words

Every now and then we set a little writing task for our Twitter followers.

Culture

Oh. A power outlet.

The Writer has gone global. We’re now in New York. We’ve been here a week or so and it’s just great. The people are friendly, the cabs are cheap and we feel like we’re on a film set about 60 per cent of the time. But it’s taking a bit of time to get used to the language difference.

Culture

Attack of the abstract business speak

Last week our apprentices, Maddie and Meg, blogged about the business speak coming out of The Apprentice. And because it went down a storm, they've done it again.

Culture

Your employment has been terminated

We've gone and got ourselves our first apprentices. Maddie and Meg were picked from Word Experience – a two-day work experience type thing where we invite 20 second-year uni students to Writer HQ.

Culture

Play on words take four

So we're still trawling on with our 100 word plays. If you want to read more, scroll down and read our last three thingamablogs.

Culture

Play on words take three

All this week we're trying our hand at 100 word plays. If you've missed why we're doing it, read this. Here's today's.

Culture

Play on words take two

Today's 100 word play, or thereabouts, looks like this.

Culture

Play on words

When we found out the Royal Court was asking people to write 100 word plays as part of the Young Writers Festival, we were intrigued. The idea is to write a play using 100 words or fewer, including stage directions.

Culture

The best covering letter ever?

Here at The Writer, we ask our potential recruits to write 300 words telling us why they’re right for the job.

Culture

Literally, 'literally' is in another galaxy

Nick Clegg used the word ‘literally’ in a figurative sense to describe high earners in a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph: ‘You see people literally in a different galaxy who are paying extraordinary low rates of tax.’

Culture

Good book, bad film? Day #4

Not many directors are as distinctive as Hitchcock, so this his first Hollywood film was always going to step out from the shadow of the (perfectly decent) book.

Culture

Good book, bad film? Day #3

You’d have thought Helen Fielding’s sharp, knowing, laugh-out-loud funny writing would be a gift to any screenwriter.

Culture

Good book, bad film? Day #2

Trailblazing in its day, this book introduced the concept of human extinction by zombie-like disease (and inspired Romero’s cult classic Night of the Living Dead).

Culture

Good book, bad film? Day #1

This week, all week, we'll be posting blogs about good books that spawned bad films. Or bad books that produced good films. It's all a matter of opinion. First up, it's two different interpretations of Atonement.

Culture

Never be bored on a train again

Did you know, half of all books in Britain are never read? And up to 13 million books are sent to landfills every year, while only a fraction of books are printed on recycled paper. The London Book Swap wants to change all that.

Culture

National Libraries Week: day #5

Books contain ideas, and ideas contain immortality. We need libraries to contain books.