“Never start a sentence with ‘and’!”

That was the one thing I remember my English teacher telling us over and over again.

It was a rule that I have lived by for numerous years. Throughout University you would never find an ‘and’ with a capital ‘a’ anywhere in my assignments. So I was rather puzzled when I saw a sentence in a recent copy of The Times starting with And.

I was mortified when my trusty edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage informed me that this enforced prohibition had been ‘cheerfully ignored by standard authors from Anglo Saxon times onwards’ (Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Third Edition, p.52). Even Shakespeare used it in King John.

Well, if it is good enough for Shakespeare…

As a freelance copywriter it is my job to create copy that is persuasive therefore the copywriting services I provide involve building rapport with the reader. Through my writing I hold a conversation with them and therefore the inevitable happens. I start a sentence with ‘and’.

The only rule that counts in this business is to make the writing real, persuasive and friendly. If you do that, your reader will trust you, your clients will love you and you will be kept in work for many years to come.

Sally Ormond

Sally Ormond is a professional website copywriter, SEO copywriter and advertising copywriter with extensive experience in B2B and B2C copywriting markets. She can be contacted at +44(0)1449 779605 or sally@briarcopywriting.comfor any copywriting project you may have.

As the self-assessment deadline draws closer, thousands of business are being hit with an email, supposedly from the tax office claiming they are owed a rebate. HMRC describe it as ”the most sophisticated and prolific scam” they’ve had to deal with and would like to remind people that HMRC will only ever offer rebates by post.

HMRC are receiving around 500 of these emails forwarded by customers. Taxpayers are being asked either to leave their bank details or to call a premium rate number which will charge them around £6 per minute as they hold for a reply.

From HMRC: “We only ever contact customers who are due a refund in writing by post,” said a spokesman for HMRC. “We never use emails, telephone calls or external companies in these circumstances, and it is very important that anyone receiving it does not reply or provide any personal details whatsoever.”

Did you know that everything you do on your computer is recorded, even when not online. Documents are saved, credit card information is recorded, passwords are encrypted but still noted. Normally this isn’t a problem and is a vital peice of the computer’s functioning.

When you come to sell the computer however, issues can arise. Deleting files isn’t enough, even some harddrive wipe software doesn’t quite do the job, and a good expert can gain access to your information despite the wipe. As you surf social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, banking sites, registration forms, online tax returns etc. the hard disk records all aspects of you and your life giving a hacker enough information to open bank accounts and get loans in your name. They can obtain credit leaving you to pick up the peices. You really don’t expect them to pay the money back do you?

Scary stuff? Well you don’t have to be worried because there is an easy, ultra-secure way to solve the problem. All the information whether on a PC or laptop is stored in a removable box. For someone who knows what they’re doing, 10 minutes is enough time to open the PC or laptop, remove the drive and replace it with a brand new, blank disk. These can cost as little as £40 so is well worth the investment, cheaper than a lot of disk wipe software and ultimately gives complete peice of mind.

Destroying data on the removed drive should be done with care. Safety goggles should be used as smashing it with a hammer is the best way to ensure the hard disk data is gone forever. In the casing is a vacuum sealed cavity containing metal disks, these store data magnetically so make sure these are in as many pieces as possible. They shatter easily so once you’re through the protective layer, they go without much of a problem. Just make sure you’ve pulled out the right part from the PC.

Rather than destroy it, if it’s not a laptop, you can sometimes install the hard drive into your new computer giving you access to all the files you had before on a second drive. This isn’t always recommended as relying on older hard drives isn’t usually a good idea.

If you’re based in Watford, Hertfordshire and surrounding areas and are not happy with doing this yourself. Give Simon a call at Zako Media on 0208 123 6609 and we’ll be happy to pop round with a new drive and kill your old one on site for a small fee. We can also reinstall Windows providing you have the original disks for a little extra but the choices are yours.

Don’t get caught out, information is far too easy to get hold of, and impossible to get back, so make sure you’re secure. Destroy your hard disk before sale.

Q: What is ‘me-marketing’?

A: Anything that is writer-centred and shouts ‘Look at me, aren’t I wonderful!’

Frankly, I couldn’t careless and neither could your reader.

Normally when I see sales flyers I throw them straight in the bin. But when one landed on my mat the other day I took a quick peek. It was very colourful and had several nice images dotted here and there to break up the text. It was quite pleasing to the eye so I thought I’d have a read – I believe it was a conservatory company.

I learned all about how long they had been in business, the wonderful calibre of their sales team, the fact that they used special glass and wonderful weather resistant frames. They had also won a local award or something…as you can tell, I was beginning to flag by this point.

They had made one fatal mistake – they had forgotten who the flyer was going to.

At no point did they tell me how their company’s product would benefit me.

They completely missed the point. OK, you could argue that I am intelligent enough to work that one out for myself. But because the flyer was all about them my reaction to it was ‘so what?’ Why should I spend my time and money contacting a company that paid so little attention to the needs of its potential customers?

If they had hired themselves a good freelance marketing copywriter their flyer would have been customer centred. It would have told me how their windows would benefit me: their energy saving qualities, reduced heating bills etc.

The moral therefore is no matter what medium you are writing for, your copywriting must be centred on the reader and the benefits they will get from your product.

Sally Ormond

Briar Copywriting – freelance copywriting services