You'd think writing a business letter would be pretty much the same globally. Au contraire!



The differences between UK and US are quite significant.

Initially the UK and US are divided with the return address: in the UK it goes on the right, whereas in the US it can either go on the left or the right.

The recipient's address is left-aligned in both countries (phew, we agree on something!)

Date swiftly follows; the UK date would read: 25th December 2009 on the right or left of the page, and the US: December 25, 2009 always...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

  Every day we write to a broad audience and while it's fine in a fictional piece of work to be gender-specific, in our business communications we often have to be more general. And, using the combination "him/her" is cumbersome.

It is so important these days to remain gender neutral, especially when compiling manuals, office policies and procedures, and employee handbooks. Using 'sexist language' can be a costly mistake - even resulting in missing out on a job a sexist tem is spotted in a resume/CV.

Traditionally we've used third-person masculine pronouns (he, him, his, himself). Many 'jobs for the boys' had the suffix '-man' (fireman, chairman, foreman), while women were indicated by...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

I've just had a very peculiar response to an English proofread I completed for a German speaker.

She had written a letter thus:
 

Dear James,
 

                                                            it was lovely to see you at the weekend....

Naturally I corrected the 'it' to read 'It'; she responded ardently stating that this should not be capitalized; I checked around to confirm I was correct, looking at business letter templates and so forth and found no version that wasn't capitalized.
But in fact grammatically speaking it's right, isn't it? There is no other time we'd capitalize after a comma, so why do we in a letter?
 

What do you think? Has anyone ever seen the rule that states the beginning of a letter should be capitalized?

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

Before visiting the gym this morning, I popped into the paper-shop downstairs to have a quick flick through their planner options again ... and at the bottom of the pile I found this incredibly little innovation.

http://www.thisnext.com/item/1F3849C0/82EE3657/Open-Design-Planner

You get a week view planner with times for appointments across bottom/top half of a double page AND day planner on the opposite half sheet on the same page. So you have plan your day and see the week at once. Believe me, describing this...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

Wasn't it easy at school? You wrote a first draft, your teacher corrected it and told you how to make it better and that was that -- you got a good grade, (or you didn't!) but ultimately it didn't really matter ... not in the great scheme of things.

Now your words stand for you, they represent you in this massive cyber world that houses an infinite number of potential clients. It can be incredibly daunting to sit down and write, can't it? Have you written your website yet or is it lingering around awaiting the words to fall into the right place? Are you happy that your website's words create the image you want to project?

The wonder of words is that they can be shunted around, introduced to other words and make happy families; there's always a way to do it well, but it's not always an easy journey to get there.

One thing I learnt as a teacher was that working together on something (both with colleagues and with student) is a wonderful experience that often reaps rewards and enables you to...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

OK, whose turn is it? Playground laws dictate you have to have some sort of rhyme to choose who’s ‘it’, who’s hiding or who’s in the middle. Given that my brain recognised about 20 years ago that I no longer needed these rhymes, these once a daily requirements of my life shuffled off to somewhere in the back of my brain and I seem to have lost the key. Which rhymes did you use as a child and/or what do your children use today?

The only one I remember is:

Eeney meeney miney moe, Catch a tiger* by its toe, If he hollers let him go, Eeney meeney miney moe.

 

[The rest of this post has been removed as it caused offence to one visitor. While the discussion focussed on language and its changing use over time based on society’s expectations, it contained words that are considered as...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

I just spent the last couple of hours making a massive batch of fudge. And it’s glorious. Here’s the recipe

 

This is a simple fudge recipe using condensed milk, a can of Carnation condensed milk is 397g, but other brands can vary.

350-400g canned condensed milk 150ml (5fl oz) milk 450g (1lb) Demerara sugar 115g (4oz) butter 1. Grease and line an 18cm square baking tin. (I skip this step and just lay a sheet of baking paper out and push the fudge into shape (I tripled the ingredients though!))

2. Place all the ingredients in a large, heavy based, saucepan and using a low heat stir until the sugar has completely dissolved. It is very important to make sure all the sugar has dissolved.

3. Once all the sugar is dissolved bring to the boil, stirring continuously. Turn the heat down slightly and stir while it keep bubbling. The fudge mixture is ready when it...

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English Pro Blog Recipes

I was flicking through an old school book of mine earlier and stumbled across this little poem, the original was written by Cecil Hartley in 1818. I have a feeling I now know where this insane idea of having a comma when the reader should take a ‘breath’ has come from:



The stops point out the length of pause

A reader needs between each clause:

For every comma, a count of one;

The count for two at a semicolon;

Each colon prefers a count of three;

A full stop, four we all agree.

 

Marvellous. With that kind...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

It’s undeniable, things happen every day that can drive you to distraction. However, should venting frustration, annoyance or pain not be coloured in shades other than blue? I was always told that swearing merely displayed one’s limited vocabulary or ability to manipulate language.

Oh deary me!

Between being a teacher and a mum to 2 little people, my relationship with expletives ended quite some time ago. I have an affection for the far quainter ‘Grandma’ versions of cursing: Crikey! Oh lorkes! By jiminy! Oh fudge cake!; and to hear a glorious insult, like this one by Henry James on Oscar Wilde, is something of a treat:

‘”Hosscar” Wilde is a fatuous fool, a tenth-rate cad, an unclean beast.”

Personally I think Oscar is/was fab, but you can’t deny the insult, while deeply insulting, is beautifully...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing

For the last couple of months I’ve been using ‘Warmest regards’ to close my emails. With this phrase I was hoping to convey a warm and friendly, yet professional image. How can you get just a couple of words to speak for you when there are no physical signals to read as well?

This week I asked professionals on LinkedIn How do you close your emails? and got an astonishing response. My thinking behind this question was initially pretty selfish: I wanted to hear from the horse’s mouth, as it were, what the most acceptable and pleasantly received close is, so I could adopt it as my own!

For me Sandra Carden (http://www.cardenworks.com)  summed the issue up best when she said: “I vary my closing depending on the content of the e-mail and my relationship with the recipient. But sometimes I get bored with my usual closings, so thanks, everybody, for your replies -- I'll add a few of these to my mental list. Best wishes ~ Warm regards ~ Cheers, Sandra“

After thinking more about it, I was...

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English Pro Blog Language, writing and editing