Minding your language costs nothing
Words are important. And I’m not just saying that because I spend my working days trying desperately to wrangle them into some sort of order. Words have the power to stir emotions, to form and change opinions, to galvanize the spirit, to unite… or divide. That’s why people remember Winston Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches” speech (imagine if he’d approached the dispatch box, shuffled his feet and muttered, “Er, ah, we’ll do the best we can, eh?”). It’s why Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, a pithy two-minute oration consisting of 10 sentences, remains cherished; less so the contribution of Edward Everett, who preceded Lincoln on the stand and blithered on for a bum-numbing two hours. In our connected world, words cross borders pretty much instantaneously. It’s therefore never been more important…
