Summer greetings from Word Smiths
It’s Summertime and the Living is Easy. But skilled as George Gershwin was at writing jazz standards, his meteorological and global-economical observations now look a bit wide of the mark. Today, the living is certainly not always that easy and, as anyone who spent August in a caravan or late May under canvas at Hay on Wye can testify, the UK summer is about as reliable as a North Korean press release. Nevertheless, we’re almost halfway through the year and, despite the economic downturn, it’s far from doom and gloom here at Word Smiths.
One new line of activity for the partnership is that Jane is now a consultant
for the Learning Skills Network
(LSN), providing in-house training and
consultancy for teachers and other practitioners who are delivering the
14-19 education and skills programme (the Diploma) www.diploma.support.org.
This is an exciting opportunity for Jane to apply her knowledge of creative
and applied teaching and learning methods in the area where she first started
her career – secondary education.
A new title in the ‘… for Success’ audio book series, Business Writing for Success, will be piloted soon and is set to join the Word Smiths catalogue (which includes Speed Reading for Success, Memory & Learning for Success and Coaching & Mentoring for Success) in September. This product is a concise distillation of what has, over the past eighteen months, become one of Word Smiths’ most popular in-company courses. We hope that the title will become essential listening for anyone who needs to boost their business writing confidence or hone their existing business writing skills.
If you would like to be part of the pilot group for Business Writing for Success please email info@word-smiths.co.uk
Our autumn programme of open courses includes a selection of our most successful in-house courses, including: the combination Managing Information Effectively with Speed Reading and Mind Mapping; Mind Mapping for Memory and Creative Thinking; and for the first time, Effective Minute Writing. This course has already earned excellent in-house evaluations: with Jane’s help you can turn minute-taking from a nightmare into sheer delight. Well almost.
We very much hope that in your neck of the woods the fish are jumping and the cotton is high. But perhaps it’s too just much to hope that the UK economy is about to spread its wings and take to the sky? Have a great summer.
In this issue of Word Power
Autumn open course programme
We'll be running all of these full-day courses at Regus Temple Quay, Bristol (next to Bristol Temple Meades train station).
- Thursday 10 September 2009:
Managing Information Effectively with Speed Reading and Mind Mapping - Tuesday 22 September 2009:
Speed Read your Way to Success - Tuesday 13 October 2009:
Mind Mapping for Memory and Creative Thinking - Thursday 29 October 2009:
Effective Business Writing - Tuesday 10 November 2009:
Effective Minute Writing - Thursday 10 December 2009:
Managing Information Effectively with Speed Reading and Mind Mapping
Full details at www.word-smiths.co.uk/open-courses.php - right click for downloadable courses brochure pdf (1.2MB).
The normal open course delegate fee of £250* is reduced for readers of Word Power who book before the end of August 2009 to a discounted rate of £200 (ex VAT). To book a place or places at this rate, email info@word-smiths.co.uk quoting code OCWP06. We also offer discounted rates for individuals paying for themselves and for students.
* Course fee includes course materials, lunch and refreshments (ex VAT).
Summer programme
There are still a few places left on the last event of our summer programme:
- Tuesday 7 July 2009: Managing Information Effectively with Speed Reading and Mind Mapping
To book a place, email info@word-smiths.co.uk
Customer feedback
Word Smiths open courses are effective, enjoyable and great value for money - here is what some recent participants have said:
- Wish I had this training a long time ago. Excellent trainer – thank you.
- Very informative and enjoyable too.
- Very interesting and useful techniques, thank you
- Excellent pace and style. Very useful information with relevant practical exercises.
- Very much enjoyed it.
- It was good! It was fun!
- I learnt some excellent techniques and look forward to putting them into practice.
- Extremely well delivered – thanks.
- I will use some of the techniques and surprised myself that my memory was better than I thought
- A very interesting workshop.
- Really enjoyed the whole experience.
- I can’t wait to put it into action.
Txtng: The Gr8 Db8
Roy Johnson reviews David Crystal’s latest book which takes a look at the effects of text-messaging on literacy, language and society. David
Crystal is honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, Bangor.
David Crystal, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.239, ISBN 0199544905
Ever since text messaging first began there have been moans and complaints that it was lowering standards of literacy, corrupting our youth, and bringing about the collapse of Western civilization. Even the normally rational John Sutherland, writing in the Guardian, complained
Linguistically, it’s all pigs ear … it masks dyslexia, poor spelling and mental laziness. Texting is penmanship for illiterates.
David Crystal has answers for every one of these common objections. Texting isn’t even that new: writing in abbreviated forms has been around for a long time. Other languages (such as Hebrew and Arabic) do not use vowels as part of their writing system. In actual fact, the amount of abbreviating and acronyms such as ROFL is quite small. And most convincing of all to me, users in other languages all follow more or less the same ‘rules’ for abbreviation.
What’s more, the use of pictograms and logographs have been around for a long time; the rebus or word puzzle is an ancient tradition in UK and other cultures; and reducing terms to their initial letters is deeply enshrined in our culture - as in pm, NATO, eg, asap, OK, and GHQ.
The same is true for omitting letters, or ‘clipping’ as it’s known technically. Mr and Mrs are cases in point. Any form of word shortening makes complete sense in an SMS system, and nobody has any problem failing to recognise Tues(day), approx(imately), biog(raphy), mob(ile), gov(ernment), poss(ible), and uni(versity).
Crystal has a good chapter on the amazing literary aspirations of the SMS poets and writers - people who compose haikus, short stories, and even serial novels using this extraordinarily restricted form.
In terms of users, women are more adept and enthusiastic than men, and another interesting feature he reveals is that text messaging was late to take off in the USA - for two reasons. One was that phone calls were cheaper there, and the other is that many people need to drive to get about, unlike European countries and Japan, where the country is smaller and more people use public transport.
The content of text messages varies from personal greetings and co-ordinating social activity to political electioneering, advertising, and even schemes to quit smoking. Crystal lists plenty of examples which I imagine will be good stimulus material for students doing language projects who will find this book particularly useful.
At a more advanced level, he also looks at how other languages handle text messaging. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that all of them do more or less the same thing, though some even mix English abbreviations with their own language - which is called ‘code-mixing’. This is an example from German:
mbsseg = mail back so schnell es geht (‘as fast as you can’)
He ends by allaying the fears of all those who think text messaging lowers any kind of standards of literacy, or communication. In fact the reverse is true. And to prove that he’s done his homework he ends with a huge glossary of terms and multiple lists of text message abbreviations in eleven different languages. U cnt gt btr thn tht!
© Roy Johnson 2008, www.mantex.co.uk
The Orwell diaries
We recently came across a gem of a blog which is part of the Orwell Prize website www.theorwellprize.co.uk. The prize is intended to encourage writing in the tradition of George Orwell: clear elegant expression, original ideas and hard facts. But we love the pages dedicated to the diaries that the great man wrote between 1938 and 1942.
Seventy
years after he penned them, George Orwell’s entries are reproduced day by day
and word for word. The picture that emerges is that of a man who was concerned,
not just with world order and clear writing, but with earthing up his maincrop
potatoes and erecting a chicken house.