Everyone’s got a story to tell. Are you telling yours? No? Then GET RIGHTING! GET RIGHTING! is for anyone who has something to say and wants to say it well, whether it’s a poem, a memoir, a speech, a lyric, a novel, copy for a website, or just the emails and letters of everyday life. […]
Category Archives: Get Righting!
Words
From em dash to emojee
The existence of excessive em dashes in a text suggests that the text has been [...]
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2026 Ahem
WHIPPING MOB CELEBRATION: September 2026
Photo: Tom and Kate in Trinity College, Cambridge, September 2026 Ahem, With the multiple heatwaves [...]
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04
Oct
Oct
Uckfield Entrepreneurs
Save Money; Buy Quality! – Philip Eves
Uckfield Entrepreneurs: Philip Eves of PP Estates PP Estates is not only Uckfield’s but Sussex’s [...]
Continue readingJobs for Life
Campaigner, Britain in Europe campaign, April 1975, National Liberal Club, £20 per week (3)
Jobs for life: An autobiographical search for identity through employment The UK’s first ever referendum [...]
Continue readingUckfield Entrepreneurs
Local, Sustainable, Healthy : Lizzie Smith, The Oast Farm, Buxted
Uckfield Entrepreneurs After the Smith family bought the Oast Farm in 2014, significant changes [...]
Continue readingThe hidden past of the bisexual pronoun Those of all political and cultural persuasions will be delighted to hear the exciting news. The old pronoun they, supposedly re-purposed for new duty by the thought police, is not a new way to hide gender-specific pronoun and possessive uses like he and she, him and her. In fact, they was the word used by writers […]
I spent over four years trying to learn German and failed badly, losing ground every year, and finishing only with an ability to understand boys’ comic book German. But I never could grasp the concepts behind the words, the awkward sentence structure which left me waiting for the main point until the very last […]
29
Nov
Nov
These days the ampersand is used mostly in business names, but is often frowned upon as an alternative to the more general and personal use of ‘and’. The shape of “&” predates the word ampersand by 2,000 years, when Roman scribes wrote in cursive. They wrote the Latin word “et” which means “and”, then started […]
26
Jun
Jun
Here are ten tips on selecting the right words in the right order and on making written words and phrases simpler, clearer, and better understood. The preliminary rule is first to be aware and conscious of your audience. Depending on the nature of the audience for your writing, any or all of the rules below […]
22
Jun
Jun
The UK’s Foreign Secretary says that his avoidance of the recent Commons vote sanctioning the liar and ex-PM Boris Johnson was a moot point. I need to point out that this ‘moot point’ is not a ‘moot point’ at all, not even cleverly. It’s another example of why spending too long detangling modern political vocabulary […]
02
Jun
Jun
The memory of incessant snow, freezing winds, sludge and ice remind me that the Swiss are far happier in cold and wintry conditions; it’s what the country and its people are designed for, in a way. It’s as if the rest of the year is no more than an unfulfilling non-dress rehearsal in the […]
The memory of incessant snow, freezing winds, sludge and ice remind me that the Swiss are far happier in cold and wintry conditions; it’s what the country and its people are designed for, in a way. It’s as if the rest of the year is no more than an unfulfilling non-dress rehearsal in the […]
02
May
May
What is often termed Business / Corporate English has become little more than dead code, a lacklustre collection of weak and overused phrases stretched unevenly across an unimaginative vocabulary. And it’s not confined to English. There are very similar deathwish trends affecting French, Spanish, German and most other developed-world languages. The real problem is that […]
21
Jun
Jun
A hyperbaton is when you put words in an order that seems or sounds wrong, which is difficult to do with confidence in English. When almost everything else in the English language is so careless, lazy, and slapdash, the rules for English adjectival word order are throat-tighteningly strict. Punishment for this crime, as ever, is […]