Did Tesco get it right with its apology?

Tesco's online apology
Tesco’s online apology – click to see text full-size
Following the horsemeat beefburger story earlier this week, today Tesco has taken out ads in newspapers and implemented a full-screen pop-up [right] on its website to apologise to customers.

Tesco is clearly – and rightly – worried that the story is going to put off customers and lose them trade, so the speed and proportion of its action seems totally correct.

However, I’m more interested in the words and tone used and whether it really will resonate with customers.

Are Tesco ‘really’ sorry?

The first thing that strikes me is the headline – “We apologise”.

Now correct if I’m wrong, but that doesn’t really sound as if there’s any regret there. Not only does ‘apologise’ imply that they’re saying it because they have to, but it’s not very friendly.
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5 golden rules for aspiring journalists

Whether it’s at a careers conference, or via online mentoring services, I’m often asked for tips on how to get into the business that is journalism and writing.

It’s a bit of a loaded question because, unlike many more vocational careers, writing for a living doesn’t really come with an easily-defined path.

What’s more, different people will tell you different things, depending on their own experience.

So what are the guaranteed rules that everyone should follow, regardless of their intended route?

1. Start writing
Probably the most obvious one to start with, but actually putting pen to paper (or rather key to screen) and forming coherent sentences is something that many people overlook. Getting used to writing and discovering your own style and voice is crucial early on.

And with the advent of the internet, blogs offer a ready-made place to getting your own work out there and read.

2. Read, read and read a bit more
While writing is the crucial bit, experiencing the way other people write also comes in pretty handy. Whether it’s other blogs, newspapers, magazines, books, it doesn’t matter. Reading how other people construct their sentences and turn their phrases is a vital ingredient in forming your own writing.

It’s also a great way to discover how not to write in some cases, because not everyone’s writing style will be to your taste.

3. Get some on-the-job experience
If you think you want to become a journalist, it will pay immensely to find out what it’s like. Get in touch with anyone you know who has connections and beg them for some time in the office as an intern.

Yes, you may end up making the tea or be asked to a job lot of photocopying, but you’ll also start to get a feel for what it’s like to be a journalist. You’ll learn some new skills, make some contacts and also possibly learn where you do, or more likely, don’t want to work.

Moreover, any prospective employer worth his or her salt won’t look twice at anyone who claims they want to be a journalist without racking up any work experience.

4. Don’t expect to get paid much
You may have noticed that the world and his wife think they can write at the moment. That makes your job even more difficult than ever before.

Of course, if you want to give up now, that makes it easier for everyone else, but you have to accept that writing isn’t generally a well-paid profession. After all, anyone can do words, can’t they?

Well, no, obviously they can’t, but sadly the ability to turn out a well-crafted piece isn’t given the kudos it deserves.

So, if you want to earn big bucks, now’s the time to forget being a writer and retrain as a barrister or a dentist. If you can cope with your friends looking at you pityingly, when you can’t afford to stump up your tenner for a night out at Pizza Hut, then read on.

5. Be lucky
In a fair and just world, the best, most coruscating writers would be the ones that win all the plaudits, are feted the world over and get all the best gigs.

Sadly, we don’t live in a world like that. Plenty of fantastic writers are left slaving away for a pittance, while the most well-known are not always as brilliant as they think they are.

So if an opportunity comes your way, grab it with both hands. You can’t plan for luck, but you can be aware of it and make sure you seize on any glimmer. It’s then what you do with that slice of piece of fortune that counts.

Of course, there are more than those 5 and I’d love to hear any thoughts from others to add to the list.

Why you need to find your writing voice

Reading aloud
Photo: Andrew Robinson via Flickr
When it comes to writing, people often talk about ‘finding your voice’ – it’s a phrase that sounds a bit, well, up its own arse if you’re not someone who enjoys words.

Now when Christopher Hitchens writes, I listen. In the June 2011 edition of Vanity Fair, Hitchens examines what is meant by ‘a writer’s voice’ and, as always, manages it quite brilliantly.

Since his diagnosis of cancer, I have found his writing even more compelling than before. I don’t always agree with what he says, but the way he writes it makes it impossible not to read. And that’s because he has a great ‘voice for writing’.

It’s no surprise that the word ‘voice’ is used in writing, even though it sounds like a contradiction in terms. In fact, even Hitchens admits he got it wrong at first and ‘fesses up in the article:

I owe a vast debt to Simon Hoggart of The Guardian (son of the author of The Uses of Literacy), who about 35 years ago informed me that an article of mine was well argued but dull, and advised me briskly to write “more like the way that you talk”.

Now, let me go back to a sentence I wrote a couple of paragraphs ago: ‘When Christopher Hitchens writes, I listen.’ That’s not a mistake. I’m not getting Vanity Fair via an audiobook here, but when I read (as most people do), I play back the words in my head, effectively meaning I listen.

And that sums up where a writing voice comes from and it’s where so many people go wrong. I’m not saying for a second that my prose is the most eloquent in the world, but then my everyday speech isn’t littered with witty aphorisms, quotes from Shakespeare and Wilde and bon mots of which Stephen Fry would be jealous.

I talk ‘normally’, by which I mean I hold regular conversations with people about the weather, what was on TV last night, the weekend’s football results and the price of petrol. Consequently, when I write, by and large, that’s how my writing comes over.

Snobbery

In the UK, there’s a certain intellectual snobbery that comes with reading literary fiction or the ‘broadsheets’.

Tabloid newspapers such as the Sun are often looked down upon by supposedly-intelligent people for ‘being for thickos’, whereas the reason people don’t like them is because their views aren’t mutually aligned. Actually, the Sun is an exceptionally clever newspaper because it usually manages to get over quite complex stories and issues in an extremely short number of words.

If you want to get an in-depth political analysis of the situation in Afghanistan, you won’t get it in the Sun, but what it will tell you are the most recent developments and, more importantly, the salient facts in fewer – probably shorter and easier-to-understand – words than, say, the Telegraph.

But this snobbery doesn’t stop with newspapers – in fact, it’s anything that’s broadly popular. When JK Rowling published the first Harry Potter novel, it crept out under the radar and gained success by word of mouth among children and the parents of its devotees. By the time the series was on its way to world domination, a fairly sizeable ‘literary’ backlash had erupted.

Although popularity doesn’t always guarantee excellence, in the case of writing it usually means that the writer is doing something right. In other words, the writers are ‘speaking to their audience’. Critics may abhor clichés, but the simple fact is that we all use them every day, even if we try not to.

In our house we read a lot of books to our daughter, especially before bed and it’s noticeable that the ones that get the best reception are the ones that are sound good when they’re read out loud.

Julia Donaldson, the new Children’s Laureate and author of The Gruffalo, admitted when interviewed on Desert Island Discs by Kirsty Young that she reads all her books out loud to make sure they sound right before they’re published. Her continued popularity is surely no coincidence.

Internet = writing fail

Sadly, the the arrival of the internet has contributed to poor writing. You see, the web has turned everyone into a writer (come on, who hasn’t started a blog or, at the very least, contributed to one?). What this means is that many people, who previously only ever produced company reports, policies, strategy documents, spreadsheets (you get my drift, yeah?), have now found an outlet for their ‘creativity’.

The problem is that they don’t (well, I can only assume they don’t) read their work through before publishing. And if they do and think it sounds OK, then I’m not sure I want to meet them because, wow, they sound boring.

For some reason, a lot of people feel the need to cram as many long words and technical details into a sentence as possible – even if it’s not a technical piece. All in an effort to prove their intelligence, ability and relevance.

There’s a worry that by not using three-syllable words and lots of relative clauses, they will be considered somehow ‘inferior’. However, what it simply shows is that they haven’t yet discovered their ‘writing voice’ and are simply lacking in confidence.

If they can convince themselves to read their work out loud and make it sound as if they’re talking, they might yet do that.

Does that sound like you? Are you up for the challenge? OK, deep breath, get your words in front of you and speak…