The Draft

First Draft #35: a newsletter on public language Trump’s F-bomb; 7/7 jargon lesson; "engaging stakeholders"; the struggle to sound human; Bayeux Tapestry; The Draft is hiring

First Draft No. 35 has just landed. Inside: Trump drops an F-bomb, the Bayeux Tapestry, and we wrestle with what it means to sound human. Join thousands of subscribers and get it here:

thedraft.substack.com/p/first-draf...

First Draft #34: a newsletter on public language The rhetoric of free trade; levers; Mrs Dalloway; Conclave

First Draft 34 is here, where you can read my brilliant colleagues' writing, including a celebration of both Virginia Woolf and a railway line's recent decision to stop implying suicide. And then a little complaint from me, on politicians speaking like 19th c. foremen.

@thedraftwriters.bsky.social

Richard Titmuss and Labour’s attachment to welfare Labour, the party of work, is in rebellion over cuts to welfare. To understand why, turn to the thinking of Richard Titmuss, chronicler of social just...

✒️"Perhaps more even than William Beveridge, Titmuss is the founding inspiration of Labour welfarism."

On the legacy of chronicler of social justice Richard Titmuss and Labour's rebellion over welfare cuts, by our founder Philip Collins in Prospect Magazine 👇

✍️Word of the week: occasion

An occasion is a special event, but not in the corporate world where it can refer to almost anything. A snacking occasion, for example, by which we mean a bar of chocolate. This is a word added to ordinary events in the illusory belief that it makes them sound exciting.

✒️Word of the week: no, not

It has been said that the ability to say no is the true mark of good management. It is often the mark of good writing too. A sentence such as “there was a complete absence of strategy” would be much better as “there was no strategy” or “they did not have a strategy”.

✒️Word of the week: uptick

You mean increase. Saying that something has “ticked up” is already a sign that something is the matter. Saying “uptick” is an application to be locked up.

The quest for the age of the earth In the 19th and 20th centuries, geologists waged an epic struggle against the other sciences to uncover the age of our planet, and triumphed. Their scientific discoveries revealed the vast abyss of ti...

"Victorian certainty gave way to modern ‘doubt and conflict’. And as daunting as that was, it was a liberation, too."

The Draft's very own Lizzie Hibbert's essay in Engelsberg Ideas this week 👇

✒️Word of the week: catalyst

Usually a fancy way of saying cause. Not that it means “cause”. A chemical catalyst provokes a change but remains itself unaltered. See this example, from Santander: “Innovation and digital/technological transformation are a catalyst in our business model and strategy."

Maurice Glasman and the origins of Blue Labour Founded as a counterweight to New Labour, Blue Labour is socially conservative, economically leftist—and now allied with the populist right

✒️"Founded as a counterweight to New Labour, Blue Labour is socially conservative, economically leftist—and now allied with the populist right."

Our founder Philip Collins in Prospect Magazine today:

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/693...

✍️Word of the week: wordsmith

Writers might object to the implication that they are tradesmen for words. They especially object to being told to wordsmith something. A blacksmith forges something and so does a writer, sometimes. A blacksmith does not blacksmith and a writer writes.

✍️Words of the week are also posted to Look, Stranger!, the Substack run by our founder, Philip Collins.

Check out this week's edition below ⬇️

lookstranger.substack.com/p/blueprint-...

✍️Word of the week: purpose.

Every business is now set upon defining its purpose in terms that never mention material gain. There is some nobility in this, but don’t lose sight of Peter Drucker’s insight that “there is only one definition of business purpose: to create a customer”.

The fact that the objective of a business can be pithily described does not make it easy to achieve. Ronald Reagan once said that politics was simple but hard to do. The same is true of business. Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.

In truth, Mr Micawber was right about business: “annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”. To pretend there is a lot more to it is to be needlessly defensive.

That is all they mean and it is a good idea, in a business, to make people pay for stuff. Put like that it seems rather starkly obvious. But maybe many of the precepts of business are starkly obvious and avoiding this troubling fact might be why annual reports are so often so full of guff like this.

The truly skilled user, such as the writer of the 2019 Huawei annual report, can generate something meaningless from the term: “this enables carriers to monetize experience in addition to bandwidth, improving ARPU by more than 25%”. What they mean is that they want to make people pay for stuff.

Word of the week: monetise.

Let's get this straight: you mean sell. There is nothing wrong with selling. To turn something into money
sounds more vulgar than selling it, not less.

Today's Word of the Day: jump 🪂

The list of things on which you might jump is long. A bed, a pommel horse, or a sandpit, for example.

A call, however, is not one of them. You don’t sound informal, casual and fun. You sound mid-Atlantic, wannabe and weird.

Content, takeaway and gendered language Words of the Week will create a glossary of poor language usage.

✍️You can find more Words of the Week on the Substack 'Look, Stranger!' by our founder Philip Collins.

This week: Content, takeaway and gendered language.

Read and subscribe ⬇️

has “four cornerstones” or “four pillars”, try to ensure that the verb matches the metaphor. It makes sense to erect pillars and cornerstones or to lay them or to build them. It does not make sense to navigate them. Cornerstones are, as the clue in the name tells you, not difficult to locate.

Word of the week: Metaphor

In one of his less distinguished moments Samuel Johnson once suggested expelling metaphors from the English language. That would be needlessly limiting. Try to keep control of a metaphor by thinking literally about what you are suggesting.

So if your argument...

Trump will now be judged like any other politician The abiding question for the 47th President of the United States of America is whether he now, after running against everything that counts as orthodox in the way of politics, has suddenly become a po...

"The conjuring trick, rhetorically, for every successful candidate is the extent to which he can maintain outsider status after an emphatic victory. That was the conundrum of Trump’s second inaugural."

✍️Our founder Philip Collins in The Spectator today:

www.spectator.co.uk/article/trum...

📖 Our word of the week is jargon.

The philologist Wilson Follett called jargon “mere plugs for the holes in one’s thought”. Here is a tip for avoiding jargon. Write down every word you use at work that you would never dream of using at home. Then tear it up and never use any of these words again.

✍️"The problem is even vicarious and secondhand experiences are, by definition, lived."

Jargon buster from a recent edition of our newsletter, First Draft.

Read here — and sign up to get the next to your inbox: https://buff.ly/40d3hQI

Trump will now be judged like any other politician The abiding question for the 47th President of the United States of America is whether he now, after running against everything that counts as orthodox in the way of politics, has suddenly become a po...

"The conjuring trick, rhetorically, for every successful candidate is the extent to which he can maintain outsider status after an emphatic victory. That was the conundrum of Trump’s second inaugural."

✍️Our founder Philip Collins in The Spectator today:

www.spectator.co.uk/article/trum...

✍️ Labour and the case for dispersing power

Latest by our founder, Philip Collins, on Substack

🔗 Read more from Look, Stranger! here: https://buff.ly/3WjhNoX

🔊 Do you want your organisation and its people to communicate better?

In our 'Mini MBA' programme, Philip Collins teaches the theory and practice of persuasive communication.

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What we practise, we also teach – we train people to write clearly, concisely and persuasively.

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