The team at Blueprint Media is highly experienced in managing editorial content for corporate magazines and newsletters.
The team at Blueprint Media is highly experienced in managing editorial content for corporate magazines and newsletters.
As journalists, we get a lot of pleasure from what comes naturally: taking a brief from our customer, then agreeing editorial content and running order for news stories, insightful features, revealing profiles, sharp analyses, attractive photography, entertaining diary stories and an overall editorial package which informs and, we hope, entertains readers.
We like words; we luxuriate in them. The truth is, we are slave to the words of the masters of English: Jeffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Keats, WB Yeats and Philip Larkin.
But we believe, above all in clear expression and telling the story of our customers’ successes succinctly.
We subscribe to the great George Orwell’s rules for writing well which appeared in his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language.
You may have read some of them:
This is a brilliant piece of guidance for anyone who aspires to write interesting words; journalists call it “copy”, that seeks to speak to any audience. Wonderful aspiration, but not so easy to apply. An updated gist of the master’s guidance is that savvy writers should avoid such phrases as:
“No problem”,
“Awesome”
“I didn’t sign up for that”.
“At the end of the day……”,
“The elephant in the room”.
“Skin in the game”.
“Kick the can down the road”
“(Who has) an axe to grind?”,
“Unpack….”
Personally, I cannot say that I have always stuck to the great man’s strictures, but as he admits, neither did he. We all love striking, newly-minted phrases, often assembled by our always inventive global world-English pals, the Aussies, the Kiwis, the Indians, the Mexicans or the Americans, and often we get stuck in a groove. You get the point – avoid, avoid, always avoid clichés. Good high school English teachers told you this but we all, occasionally, must remember to stop ourselves from slipping back into bad habits.
Our wonderful English language – part French/ Latin, mostly Germanic, is the world’s best expressive linguistic tool. It is ever-responsive, adaptive, always willing to incorporate new meanings and expressions from Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Portugese, Cantonese, global speak, and advertising-talk into its ever-loving maw.
All British Commonwealth speakers of English should give thanks regularly that the 18th Century United State Congress voted, narrowly, to make English, not German, the official language of the USA. Its wise decision saved our civilization from, oh, you know, the upturn of things like, rule of law, Habeus Corpus and parliamentary democracy.
Any words that don’t contribute meaning to a passage dilute its power. Just as in architecture, the visual arts and home furnishings, “less is more”.
If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
You might think you have written something wonderful; but sit back and take an editor’s view; one that needs to distill the essentials of the piece into the available, art-director dictated space. It’s usually overblown and needs editing. Good writers with valued editorial commissions always write to length.
As you can see from the accompanying series of issues we provided to the then Lanarkshire Chamber of Commerce, the result can be highly effective in communicating our customers’ message to its target audience.
We do not, however, design, produce or print the publication; we leave that to skilled specialists.
Similarly, we don’t sell advertising, but if you are seeking informative, well-written and attractive editorial content which grabs and holds readers’ attention, you know where to come, get in touch.
Registered in Scotland
ECJ Management Limited
VAT 3081 932 13
Company No. SC435904
Suite 2/3, 48 West George Street Glasgow G2 1BP, Scotland, United Kingdom
48 Charlotte Street, London W1T 2NS, England, United Kingdom