I received a text from my 19 year-old cousin the other week. It said, “Thx 4 bday gift gr8 2 cu lol. cu soon xxx.” I nearly disowned him on the spot. How, I thought, can so many grammatical errors be perpetrated in so few words? Of course I replied in three times the number of characters, without so much as substituting ‘and’ for an ampersand. That’ll teach him.

Until now I have viewed ‘text speak’ as a harmless lexicon of youth… so imagine my dismay to discover that LOL, FYI and OMG have made it into the canon of the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary. LMAO. Seems it might be time to reassess.

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Sometimes the best ideas are done down the pub scribbled on the back of a fag packet. Or at least that’s what I was told when I started in this business. Who would have thought that someone would take that idea and turn it into a lucrative business… well that’s just what Hugh MacLeod did back in 1997.

When he first arrived in Manhattan to undertake a 2 week freelance Copywriting gig he had no friends and spending an evening back at the YMCA where he was staying did not appeal. So he basically sat in bars doodling on the backs of business cards just to give himself something to do.

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I really like reading. My problem is I buy books faster than I can read them. The drawers on my bedside cabinet are buckling under the weight of unread hardbacks, paperbacks, novels and non-fiction. I’ll be honest it’s starting to get me down a bit. Too much to read, too little time. Your customers have the same problem…

They’re bombarded with things to read every day. So if you’re planning on adding to their pile, you’ve got to make sure it’s easy to read. And there is one very simple way of doing just that.

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