Nobody leaves without
cake and a balloon

If you write differently, will you think differently?

Some bits of writing are just bound to be boring, aren’t they?

Like, say, corporate expenses policies. Not much room to do anything different there, right?

Well. Take NetApp. They’re an American tech company. They do data storage stuff. They’re big, too – turning over about $3.4 billion a year. And when they rewrote their 12-page expenses policy, they did something really different. They ditched the whole thing, and wrote this instead:

‘We’re a frugal company. But don’t show up dog-tired just to save a few bucks. Use your common sense.’

Now, NetApp have faired better than most during the credit crunch, and they’ve just been voted No.1 Best American Company to work for in a Fortune poll. These are the kind of differences that count.

Do they think differently because they write differently? Or do they write differently because they think differently?

We rather think you can’t have one without the other.

By Chris Muir – Scottish Widows

We can’t begin to talk to people about pensions when we’ve only just crawled out of the swamp

The latest thinking on auto-enrolment

Every company will soon have to auto-enrol their workforce in a pension scheme. Our Vincent has contributed some thoughts on how these companies could use language to turn this obligation into a success story. Download the Clear Path Analysis report on the challenge of auto-enrolment, which contains Vincent’s contribution and many others.

Nice creative idea from Swiss Life

We like Swiss Life’s “Life Turns in a Sentence” campaign. See more here.

Are credit unions a viable alternative to banks?

This BBC News report  explores why more people are choosing credit unions.

The power of thank you

People like people who say thank you. In this short video, Laura Trice suggests we all say it.

Project Unbreakable: How words of abuse can heal

We saw this great project in The Guardian. Photographer Grace Brown empowers victims of sexual abuse to take control. She does this by photographing them with the words that were once used against them.

Creating a written language

To save an exclusively oral language from dying with its last remaining speakers, one man attempts to create a written version of Ongota.

How narrative can aid memory

We’re big fans of telling stories. So we like this Guardian piece about stories and memory.

Steven Pinker on language and thought

In this video preview of his book The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language and how it expresses what goes on in our minds — and how the words we choose communicate much more than we realise. See it here.

Letters of Note

We like the Letters of Note website. It gathers and sorts fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. Now featuring: what Nixon was ready to say if the first moon landing had gone horribly wrong.

When trust breaks down

A poignant sign, spotted.