WORDS etc Limited

Great to see some old faces (Jeremy Freeman and Lord Neil Giller - Radiator) and make many new connections this morning at the #JewishBusinessConnect meeting in Borehamwood. I particularly enjoyed hearing Rosalind Bluestone MBE share the amazing work done by her charity Goods For Good and Donna Obstfeld of DOHR Ltd who talked about how to tackle the elephant in the room ??. Thanks for organising such a well-attended networking event and bringing us all together Jeremy. Looking forward to the next one! #networking #jewishbusinessconnect #goodsforgood

Who said there's no such thing as a free lunch? ?? Great to attend my first SHE Means Business event today hosted by Hillier Hopkins LLP. Lovely to meet you Zoe Sykes, Victoria Bell, Maxine Sharrington, Katie Harvard Taylor, Deb Hitching (nee Botting) and good to see you again Lisa McCallum - Personal Travel Specialist! (Apologies to anyone I've missed) #networking #lunchandlearn #copywritersgottoeat Image credit: Lisy - Pixabay

THE CLOCK IS TICKING! ? If you're looking for a new career that allows you to work the hours you want from home, check out these Salesforce training opportunities! But be quick, the closing date for two of these courses is this Monday 4 November! ? #flexibleworking #Salesforce #upskill

TELL A STORY TO BRING YOUR BUSINESS TO LIFE ?? Paul at reLOVE Photos (link in the comments) asked me to share the story of how their photo digitisation service helped a grieving family. It was one of the most moving case studies I’ve ever written. I had the privilege of interviewing Jodie Mattey, who was just nine-years-old when her beloved dad Alan died at the age of 40, leaving his wife Leanne and their three young children bereft. ?? During the six years following diagnosis, Leanne took photos of the family obsessively to capture precious memories of Alan and his zest for life. While the Mattey family had carefully catalogued all their photos into hundreds of albums, they wanted to be able to enjoy them on phones and computers, whether they were at home or anywhere in the world. That’s where reLOVE Photos?came in. reLOVE scanned their paper photos into high quality digital images that could be safely stored and shared electronically in the same way as digital photos on a phone, tablet or computer ??. They are arranged into modern, private digital galleries that not only bring these old but treasured memories to life, but also take advantage of state-of-the-art, secure cloud facilities to safeguard these precious and irreplaceable memories. Best of all, the?photos are readily accessible – available to view on a password-protected online gallery using a phone, tablet or computer or on a memory stick. It means Jodie, her mum and her two brothers all have access to the entire photo collection whenever they want, wherever in the world they are ??. Jodie was delighted with the easy-to-use service. “What the reLOVE Photos team have done is absolutely incredible,” she says. “They’ve allowed us to have those photos with us 24/7 and they’ll always be in perfect condition, which I find a great comfort. I love having them so easily accessible, which real-life memories aren’t always with the passage of time. And they’ll always be there.” ?? A case study can be a highly effective sales tool. Instead of merely TELLING people what your business does, a case study SHOWS what you do. If you’d like to discuss how case studies can showcase your business’ services, get in touch! ?? #casestudies #marketing #copywriter

??TOP TIPS TUESDAY?? ?WHICH IS CORRECT - COMPRISES OR COMPRISES OF? ?? Many people are confused by how to use the word ‘comprises’. It’s a?verb meaning “to be made up of” - so you don’t need the extra “of”. When you write “comprised of” you’re effectively saying, “made up of of”. The problem tends to arise when people confuse “comprise” with “composed of”, resulting in the phrase “is comprised of”. This can be replaced with?“comprises”,?“consists of” or?“is made up of” - all valid alternatives. But “comprised of” is never correct. What words catch you out? #grammar #copywritingtip

??TOP TIPS TUESDAY?? WHY THAT SPELLING MISTEAK COULD BE COSTLY ?? Research shows it takes?about 50 milliseconds?(that’s 0.05 seconds) for visitors to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not and whether they’ll stay or leave. ???? So although we commonly say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” we’re only human and just as likely to make a snap judgement about your website ??as we are about you as a person. Mistakes inevitably influence our perceptions of credibility. Many people rely heavily on our computers’ spellcheck function but this isn’t foolproof. The problem is most spellcheck functions don’t check spellings in context so won’t flag an incorrect spelling – ‘brake’ instead of ‘break’, for instance -?if it’s actually a real word. Spelling mistakes push you down the search rankings. While poor spelling isn’t currently a direct factor in the Google algorithm, search engines rank websites according to quality. ??This means those with up-to-date, relevant and accurate content are considered more authoritative and will appear higher up in the search results. The moral is if you can’t spell, find someone who can! ?? For some of us (and I immodestly include myself here) spelling comes naturally. I don’t need a red squiggly line to tell me I’ve mistyped something in haste – it jumps out at me because it just looks plain wrong. But if you’re one of those unfortunate people for whom correct spelling does not come easily, ask a member of your team – or better still, a professional writer like me - to cast their eyes over your work before sending it out into the big wide world. ?? ?Fess up, what’s the most embarrassing spelling mistake you’ve ever made? ?? #spelling #spellingmistakes #grammartips

??TOP TIPS TUESDAY ?? CHECK AND CHECK AGAIN! Could this be the most expensive typo in history? ?? In 1962, at the height of the space race, NASA attempted to launch the Mariner 1 spacecraft to carry out a planetary flyby of Venus. ?? The mission cost $18.5 million back then – more than $184 million today. In an era that's virtually prehistoric in computing terms ??, the underlying code behind space missions wasn’t typed into software and revised on screen as it is today. It was an era of manual programming, with punch cards representing what we call script today. A typo in the punch cards supporting the?Mariner 1?mission meant that should the spacecraft suffer a hardware failure it would lead to an immediate disaster??. An onboard guidance antenna failed just a few minutes into the flight, meaning the supporting software was needed to guide the spacecraft into position. Yet a missing ‘bar’, represented by a humble hyphen in the punch cards, meant the spacecraft veered off course and engineers could not correct it. The bar in the written code was key as it represented the bridging delay between two radar systems on board –?totalling 43 milliseconds. Without it, the radars were out of sync, causing the spacecraft to malfunction. As the spacecraft headed towards “the North Atlantic shipping lanes or in an inhabited area”,?NASA made a critical decision. Just six seconds ?? before?Mariner 1?separated from its launch vehicle – at?which point?a manual destruction would no longer be controllable –?NASA engineers had to abort the first planetary space mission. All for the lack of a hyphen. ?What’s YOUR most expensive mistake? #hyphen #mistake #typo Image credit: Mariner 1 launch courtesy of Internet Archive

??TOP TIPS TUESDAY?? AVOID THESE SPELLING SLIP-UPS ? However expert you are in your specialist field, basic spelling mistakes will cast doubt on your professionalism and could harm your credibility. Here are some words that commonly cause confusion: 1) THEY'RE, THEIR AND THERE One is a contraction for "they are" (they're), one refers to something owned by a group (their), and one refers to a place (there). ?If you stop to think about it you probably know the difference between the three but it’s easy to slip up under pressure. Correct use: “They're going to love their presents when they get there.” ?? 2) YOUR AND YOU'RE With these, it's the difference between owning something and actually being something: You made a delicious cake - you're a great cook! ?? See the difference? "Your" is possessive and "you're" is a contraction of "you are." 3) ITS AND IT'S I’ve covered this one before as errors are so commonplace. "Its" is possessive and "it's" is a contraction of "it is." Many people get tripped up because "it's" has an 's after it, which normally means something is possessive, but it's actually a contraction. 4)?PHASE AND FAZE I’ve seen even professional writers get these two words mixed up. ‘Phase’ refers to a stage (for instance in a product’s lifecycle or child’s development) whereas ‘faze’ means someone is daunted by something they face. 5) EFFECT AND AFFECT The easiest way I’ve found to explain the difference between these two words is that ‘effect’ when used as a noun generally means to make something happen - a result - whereas ‘affect’ refers to the impact of an action on something or someone. For instance, “Many people were affected by the hard-hitting programme, which had the effect of dramatically increasing charity donations.” ?? ?What words do you often have trouble with? #spellingtips #grammartips #howtospell