Writing for an international audience

People who write for an international audience need to be particularly careful about who will be reading their messages and where those people are locatedI'm often frustrated by emails that promote interesting workshops and events, but fail to clearly state where those events will be held Typically, they're in a different part of the world from meI subscribe to several email lists, and all of them promote events for their members And most of the people who promote these events forget that the...

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Powerful examples and stories

Have you ever noticed the way that examples and stories can add power to a message Examples and stories make abstract concepts concreteThey grab attention, encourage readers/listeners to get caught up in the content, and make messages seem real and relevant They're also highly memorableIn their short paper 'Making your presentation stick', Chip and Dan Health describe stories and examples as the building blocks of a presentation They argue that stories and examples make the big picture...

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And & But as sentence starters

The other day my 9-year-old son looked up from his book and said: 'Ms M says that you're not allowed to start sentences with 'and' and 'but' So why do they start sentences with 'and' and 'but' in every book that I read'What a fabulous thing for him to notice And it started the most wonderful conversation at home About why his teacher tells the class that they shouldn't start sentences with 'and' and 'but' (my theory is that children are introduced to this 'rule' to encourage them to...

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