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Three million reads about writing: check out the most popular here

March 12, 2019 By Leave a Comment

Just checking out my stats and found that HTWB has now had more than three million page views.

I’m “gob-smacked,” as we say in the UK: surprised, thrilled, delighted and humbled all at the same time. What a wonderful testimony to those of us willing to share our expertise for no financial gain.

3 million page vieww for HTWB

Celebrate with us: more than 3 million page views of HTWB

And what a wonderful testimony to the many writing and allied contributors who have made this humble site what it is. You all know how you are: too many to name individually but covering all aspects of writing that I can’t, from writing fiction to business plans to terms and conditions to bids and tenders to music to poetry and much, much, more.

No ads, no covert links in articles, no need to sign up, so no spam

(But you can buy some books from the Bookshop or right side bar if you like!)

Here are some of the most popular articles and tutorials you can choose from: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Blogging, Business English if you're not a native speaker, Business writing, How to Write, HTWB Books, Latest, local business, Milton Keynes, Publishing, small business, Social Media, Social writing, Tutorials, Writing humour Tagged With: , , ,

Is it wrong to say “write to me?” The terrible telephone

February 19, 2019 By Leave a Comment

You’re right in the middle of doing something that needs your full attention. You’re concentrating hard, just about getting to grips with it. You can see the A-HA moment ahead of you. The light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to wink at you. You reach out and almost touch it. Nearly there…

Then the phone rings. You answer.

why phone calls are disruptive

Miraculously the whizz-bang device of the 19th century, called the “telephone,” is still here with little other than the back-office technology having changed much.

“Hi Suze, it’s XXXXX. I was just having a read through of your YYYYY book and I’m not sure what you meant by your sentence about blog abstracts on page 178. Can you tell me more about it?”

Meltdown.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Business writing, Latest, Putting The World To Rights, Writing humour Tagged With: , , , ,

A poem about political willie-waving, plus a few…

February 17, 2019 By Leave a Comment

Feeling irritated by the political lunacy going on in UK and US politics? Me too. Here’s my reaction. Please share yours!

Political poem on How To Write Better

THE BREX-WALL SPECIAL 2019

Here in year twenty nineteen
Give this poem a good eyeball
Politics just make us scream
Brexit chaos, Trumpy’s wall [Read more…]

Filed Under: Latest, Music and poetry, Putting The World To Rights, Writing humour Tagged With: , , , ,

Valentine’s Day jokes and poems to make your day go with a, er, bang

February 13, 2019 By Leave a Comment

A few years ago I curated some amusing Valentine’s Day (rude in places) content, and wrote quite a lot of new content in its honour.

Updated humour about Valentines Day on HTWBIf you should find yourself not quite in the gooey-eyed, romantic mood you should be in, say “to hell with it” and have some laughs. Here’s that content again…

Valentine’s Day rhyming couplets

Romantic first lines, not-so-romantic second lines

Love may be beautiful, love may be bliss
But I only slept with you, because I was p*ssed

I thought that I could love no other
Until, that is, I met your brother

Of loving beauty you float with grace.
If only you would hide your face. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Latest, Music and poetry, Social writing, Writing humour Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Snotty words and phrases: why you mustn’t write them

January 20, 2019 By Leave a Comment

Do you ever write snotty (i.e. pompous, patronising, condescending) words or phrases … I hope, by accident?

Pompous language

Meet the Snotties.

It’s alarmingly easy to write stuff you think is precise and correct, only to find that as far as your target audience is concerned you come across as a pretentious old/young goat.

Who, moi? My writing is pompous, snotty and stuffy?

Could be. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Business writing, Latest, Publishing, small business, Social Media, Writing humour, Writing tips Tagged With: , , , ,

How to write some bantastic new words for 2019

January 13, 2019 By Leave a Comment

If you’re fed up with the English language and how its sheer lunacy can drive us all doo-lally, here’s a nifty thought or three.

Who says we can’t write our own new words in English?

Writing bew words for 2019English has been around since the fourth century BC. Well, some of its forms have been, anyway

According to Wikipedia … The earliest form of English is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon (c. 550–1066 CE). Old English developed from a set of North Sea Germanic dialects originally spoken along the coasts of Frisia, Lower Saxony, Jutland, and Southern Sweden by Germanic tribes known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.”

So why are we constrained in writing new English words?

Bottom line is, we aren’t. Why should we genuflect to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), relying on them to approve new words? Here are a few from its December 2018 list. Surely we can do better than this?  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Latest, Social writing, Writing humour Tagged With: , , ,
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