If you want to, as the Reader's Digest says, "Increase your wordpower", try this daily e-zine: A Word a Day. You also get a longer newsletter with subscribers' reactions.

One of my favourite quotes, "Nobody ever lay on their deathbed wishing they'd spent more time at work."

Conversations with a client. No. 1 in an occasional series.

Andy: So do training courses work? I run lots and the more I run the less I'm sure. I think you can raise awareness of skill gaps but the only way to secure long-term behaviour change is through coaching.

Miss B: If they don't, why do so many people in business continue to run them?

A: Maybe it's because there's not enough time to do the right thing, so people fall back on doing the quick thing. I think writing is a craft skill, like joinery. Are we seriously saying we can teach someone to be a great joiner (actually, this is a great metaphor - joining words/wood to make lovely sentences/furniture) in six hours? You might get them to recognise the difference between a dovetail and a lap joint, but not much more than that.

What's missing from the equation is practice and thought.

I'm a partner in a writing training business called Write for Results. Together with Scott Keyser, I've developed a set of principles that define good business writing. Chief among these is the need for plain English. What do we mean by plain English?



Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs help. So does a preference for Anglo Saxon over Latin and Greek. Saying what you mean without recourse to metaphor, simile, euphemism and other figures of speech is important, too.

The answer to last Friday's puzzle: children, brethren and oxen.

Are you interested in igniting growth in your business? (Maybe not if you run a fireworks factory.) Check out my friend Charles Kingsmill's site for his strategy consulting business. Charles is from Mars (OK, not the red planet, the sweetie company: he worked there in seriously heavy-duty European strategy roles) and knows more about how to develop high growth business than anyone else I know.

How bad are Romeike, publishers of the PR Planner media directory? Let's put it this way - I am posting this while listening to their sales department's phone ring. I paid the best part of a thousand pounds for this product (on behalf of a client) and they aren't answering the phone.

Do they want my business? I have to wonder.