Ian Cundell's website

Blimey. I forgot about this place. Life, eh?

I have updated my website. Feel free to have a read about my media training and other stuff.

And drop into Space Captain Smith as well.

Clarity begins at the top

Earlier this week I took over a job sourcing news stories for a client. Nothing at all fancy and one of those jobs that, once I'm fully tuned into the news flow, will be a straightforward source of modest income.

But I'm not fully tuned in and one of the things I've found is how utterly rubbish many news sites are at remembering to put the publication date on their web pages. In one case it took the best part of 20 minutes to establish that a story was six months old ("tuned it" it would have been five seconds).

Memo to webmasters: everything should be dated. Everything.

Not such a capital idea

The Web has a Lot to Answer for.

Just as the appalling tendency to Capitalise anything that could be construed as a Noun - or, for that matter, anything that Sounded Cool - was being squeezed out of the English writing Habit, the Web brings it back.

The trouble with electronic communications is that it is Instant. Experienced business people forget that the email just sent is a Business Letter and just type and send. But the Web - well, you would think the design process would weed such nonsense out, but apparently Not.

Except where starting a sentence, none of the capitals in this piece are either necessary or desirable. Redundant capitalisation is never a good thing.

On what basis?

I grumble about things in a regular basis. In fact, on a daily basis.

No, I don't. I think the "on an [insert word] basis" construction is the single most pervasive example of rubbish English. It is heard daily on broadcast media and written regularly in print media.

Tip: it doesn't make you sound sophisticated, it makes you sound like you are padding.

I'm very, very not not bothered

The one that common sense lost was when a bunch of Oxbridge knobs decided that common folk from various locales needed a lesson in logic. They declared the exclamation: "I ain't got no bleedin' money" a logical statement.

It wasn't of course - nobody who hears such an outburst would take as a claim to great riches, or even modest means - but it is the battle lost. The double negative is declared bad grammar and that is that.

Curiously, its opposite - the double positive - is simply declared a matter of bad style. Nobody would mistake "I'm very, very happy" as anything other than a little hyperbole. Structurally, syntactically and in terms of meaning it is no different from its Cockney cousin, yet the good working class usage gets condemned.

Of course, neither has much use in business writing, so your exercise for today is to consider the many different way to give emphasis and their strengths and weaknesses.

Infinitive improbability drive

Before last week I had never noticed that The Times has a blanket ban on the split infinitive enshrined in its Style Guide. Since I worked for The Times (albeit not for very long) I'm guessing I should have spotted this. But let's not dwell on that.

Part of me is surprised at the ban and part of me thinks "What do you expect?". HW Fowler published his now eponymous usage guide in 1926, but had already published his sane, common-sense and definitive essay on the split infinitive before, yet still The Thunderer holds a futile line.

Yet mostly I am reassured. The policy may be wrong - flat out, bug-bonkers, wrong - but it is a constant. The Times is owned by an uncultured Aussie who gave up his nationhood in pursuit of wealth and power and has never shown any sense of history.

Somewhere in his empire, at least, a line is being firmly held.

On a vaguely related note, this is rather cool of The Telegraph.

Situated in close proximity...

Coco Chanel said: "Fashion changes, style remains".

The 1920s edition of Fowler says of situate "The short form is still common in house-agents' advertisments, but elsewhere out of favour". The 1980s revision has hardened the line: "Used by estate agents. Has no place in common usage".

I'm not sure when house agents became estate agents, but I don't think that is what Coco had in mind.

The trouble with estate agents' redundant verbiage is that it is infecting all business writing (and writing generally). "On an annual basis", "situated in", "in the event that" and so on.

Think how much more information you could show if you cut the crap.