Making sense of sentences in election materials

Election materials are starting to appear in our letterboxes, and they feature some ill-conceived sentences Here’s a sentence/caption from the front of a recent ALP brochure: Virginia O’Neill teaching her son, Labor Candidate for Brisbane, Pat O’Neill and his sister to read in 1985 This sentence has two problems – one to do with sets of information, and one to do with Virginia’s relationship to Pat Sets of information: ‘Labor Candidate for Brisbane’ is a subset/description of...

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The trouble with bills: when poor understanding defeats good intention

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the difficulties I was experiencing with billing systems and invoices as I learned to navigate a new industry At the time, I had paid some suppliers twice but missed payments to others Today I’ve encountered something similar – once again linked to invoicing, and once again linked to clear communication I encountered a system that might work well if my full-time job was to process and understand bills But paying bills is a tiny part of my work – and one...

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Apostrophes for mothers’ day

I’ve always had a bit of a thing for possessive apostrophes – much abused and misunderstood as they are And it’s this time of the year that I’m most aware of the little mark … because the day for mothers is upon us Every year I’m bothered by the various ways that marketers write about the day As you choose your card, do you wish your mother: Happy Mothers Day, Happy Mother’s Day, or Happy Mothers’ Day In my household, I insist on Happy Mothers’ Day, even though the...

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Ageing driver training facility

A note on why we need punctuation and why stacked adjectives create difficulties: I was listening to the radio news today, and heard a story about an ageing driver training facility in Mt Cotton Radio can't handle this concept neatly Is it an ageing-driver training facility or an ageing, driver-training facility The latter is correct (though the former was my first guess) A radio journalist might be better to unstack the adjectives or choose different words: 'an ageing facility for driver...

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Page design to encourage correct bill payment

I've been noticing lately that I make a lot of mistakes when paying bills Silly things mostly - like paying a page subtotal instead of the bill total, or paying the late payment fee when I didn't need to Last week I managed to pay just the GST amount instead of the full bill Mistakes like these are partly caused by busyness and a lack of focus But they're also a reflection of legibility problems If a bill is difficult to read quickly, then it will be difficult to follow and difficult to pay...

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Prison or jail? Being consistent with names

One of the things I often discuss in writing training is the need to be consistent with naming Whatever name you choose for something at the beginning of the document should be used consistently throughout, so that readers can be sure you’re referring to the same thing If you’re writing about a review, for example, it’s called ‘a review’ throughout the document; you don’t start referring to it as ‘an evaluation’, ‘a plan’ or ‘a process’ Here’s an example I heard on...

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