| Topic: | Reply | |
| Posted by: | Michael Ixer | |
| Date/Time: | 06/09/26 20:15:00 |
An interesting deviation from the topic. I probably shouldn't comment on this as I just scraped through my English 'O' level (did quite well in English Literature 'O' level though) and often have my English picked over by a professional business writer ... However, it seems to me there's a lot of taste involved in written English, and a wide variation of contributers' backgrounds. Over the years I've learnt that in business brevity is key to getting things notices. So short, precise bullet points on one page are considered good by directors, senior managers, etc. But, of course, you need the backup details and data to justify the one page conclusion because there's always one pedant who wants to dive into the detail to check the veracity of the bullet points :-) So adopting a "drill down" approach in long reports seems appropriate? (For example, short summary, chapters expading and explaining bullet points, then backup data, glossary, definitions, etc in appendices ...) On the other hand, some academics I have known seem to write long sentences, with many complex/compound structures, within large paragraphs - and some academic institutions apparently condone, even encourage this! So, I guess individuals will use different styles based on their backgrounds, or, perhaps sometimes, even just jot something down quickly if they're in a hurry? The danger is long, verbose postings without any 'white space' will be ignored or only partly read? Still, that's a risk the writer has to take! Some of the punctuation and spelling can be amusing but I must admit I often get defeated by predictive text! (Interesting that predictive often confuses their, there, they're - you'd think AI would have cracked that one!) And I openly admit proof reading isn't one of my core skills! (I was once accused of proof reading with sun glasses on in a dark room even though the contents of my report were considered very good!) Anyway, let's face it, if some think President Trump's Truth Social posts are fantastic then why should anyone worry; perhaps I should start using more capitals in my posts' key points :-) |