Category: words

Joan Didion said it best in her collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem:

At no point have I ever been able successfully to keep a diary; my approach to daily life ranges from the grossly negligent to the merely absent, and on those few occasions when I have tried dutifully to record a day’s events, boredom has so overcome me that the results are mysterious at best …

I’ve tried numerous times over the years to keep a journal or diary and each time failed miserably. Continue reading “Why I can’t keep a diary”

Today, I came across an Econsultancy post offering tips on writing content for a mobile audience.

There was nothing inherently wrong with the advice, in my opinion, apart from one crucial thing. Writing for a mobile audience shouldn’t be any different.

As ever more websites become responsive, and mobile-only sites disappear, surely the ability to write for a mobile audience should simply be writing for all audiences?

If you look at the tips given in the Econsultancy article, every one of them is just as relevant as for a pre-mobile audience.

Although the UX may need to change on a mobile device, the general content should work in all eventualities. So anyone trying to sell you on ‘writing for mobile’, is just pulling a fast one.

Thousands of new words have been added to the new Scrabble dictionary and their inclusion has predictably caused consternation among many fans.

The arrival of LOLZ, DENCH, WUZ and SHIZZLE to name but four has drawn howls of protest from some – which, to my mind, is simultaneously inevitable and baffling.

Continue reading “Lolz. We don’t like change, do we?”