“I was taught at school that it’s not good grammar.” “My boss says it’s wrong.” “It’s too informal.” Stuff like that. So several times each year, we dial up our emotional intelligence settings to 11 and explain that it’s not really wrong, it helps make copy nice and punchy… but of course style is very personal and we can of course leave it out if that’s what you would prefer.

But we’ve been trading for ten years now. We’ve had enough. This is where we drop the emotional intelligence and get mediaeval on the question. (Which is quite appropriate as people have been starting sentences with And for centuries).

Here is our cut-and-paste response, which will henceforth be delivered without preamble to anyone who asks ever again.

Starting sentences with And But and So is just fine. Full stop. Period.

But don’t just take our word for it. How about the word of God? It’s good enough for Him. More sentences in the Bible begin with ‘And’ than any other word. And of course the King James edition begins with the sentence: “And in the beginning…”

Other towering figures have no problem starting sentences with conjunctions either. Fowler’s Modern English Usage (edited by Sir Ernest Gowers) says:

“That it is a solecism to begin a sentence with and is a faintly lingering SUPERSTITION. The OED gives examples ranging from the 10th to the 19th c.; the Bible is full of them.”

Fowler’s applies the same rule to ‘but’.

In his popular writer’s handbook Troublesome Words, author Bill Bryson concurs, saying:

“The belief that and should not be used to begin a sentence is without foundation. And that’s all there is to it.”

But why do it? So you can make copy active and lively. Advertisers have been at it for years. Check out these 1950s advertisements touting the wonders of gas appliances.

It’s all very well for cheesy old gas advertisements, I hear you say, but surely it has no place in proper businesslike writing? Several large and very proper corporations, together with some very proper business publications, would beg to disagree.

Economist articles are full of sentence-leading ‘Ands’ and ‘Buts’. There are several in this randomly selected Charlemagne piece.

A quick ferret around FT.com will soon turn one up (its paywall makes direct linking irrelevant for the unregistered).

Two minutes minutes fossicking around on the website of blue-chip consultancy PwC (disclosure: not a Plain Text client – yet) will quickly reveal a few too.

And there are many more. Everyone’s doing it.

So in sum: if it’s the style you don’t like, then by all means shove ‘And’ But’ and ‘So’ somewhere else in a sentence. But don’t worry that it’s the wrong thing to do. God, Sir Ernest Gowers, Bill Bryson and some of the smartest publications and corporations in the world are all totally cool about it.

But what also sets Monday Note apart is its formatting. Perhaps here at Plain Text we just don’t read enough blogs, but I don’t recall seeing others that use this one’s simple technique of starting paragraphs, and major points in the story, with a sentence or a few words in bold.

It’s simple, but using bold this way really works. Having it at the start of the para makes it somehow more convincing, more credible than if it were a subhead. And Gassée and Filloux make sure that whatever’s in bold is also properly interesting, usually a short, attention-grabbing sentence. It draws the eye down the page and through the argument.

Maybe it’s the weight of what they write that makes it work. But these bold beginnings, together with some choppy paragraphs and a smattering of images, make their long, involved posts a joy to read.

Contrast this with ‘traditionally’ formatted pieces (or my personal pet peeve, the multi-web page mega-article) where no matter skillful the writer, it still seems harder to appreciate their words online than in print.

Let’s hope they haven’t been pesky and copyrighted the technique. Because it really works – and could maybe help businesses to cheer up some of their ‘thought leadership’.

It’s a near 2,000-page all-copy ad by ad guru David Ogilvy selling the skills of his agency and I’d wager that all the wisdom still applies. As a writer it’s good to hear affirmation that people read long copy (”the more you tell, the more you sell”) and although one of Copyranter’s commenters disagrees I think that’s still the case today.

The ad is also a great example of thought leadership – letting your wisdom and insight drive business rather than battering people over the head with sales messages.

Not sure what Ogilvy would think of one his agency’s recent copy-heavy efforts, though, a full-page press ad that’s part of the ‘new logistics’ campaign for UPS. I took a pic of its closing paras at the time, a little dumbfounded by the verbosity.

Was I missing something or is it a little too abstract?

“Apple has discovered something that other companies have long forgotten, if they ever knew: language can also be beautiful and easy to use. Words can be fun to read. They can look elegant. They can make you laugh.”

Is this the beginning of a bright new dawn for business writing, in which everyone follows Apple to the broad sunlit uplands of clarity? Hardly, suggests Kellaway, going on to compare Apple’s bright words with Microsoft’s stodgy copy:

“It is one of the great mysteries of capitalism that there is no invisible hand that joins good language and good profits. If anything, the hand pushes the two apart”

It’s a fair observation. Plenty of successful firms write drivel. But would they be more successful if they didn’t? Take the first para of Microsoft’s press release announcing the Windows Phone 7:

“The goal for Microsoft’s latest smartphone is an ambitious one: to deliver a phone that truly integrates the things people really want to do, puts those things right in front of them, and either lets them get finished quickly or immerses them in the experience they were seeking.”

Huh? A gadget that lets me get finished with the things I really want to do right in front of me? C’mon guys, you’re up against the BlackBerry and the iPhone here! Get clarity!

Good copy may not correlate directly with profitability. But it surely has an impact on the way people feel about a company or a brand. As the queues of crazed fans at every new launch attest, people love Apple. Would people love Microsoft a little bit more – or even a little bit – if it spoke a language they could relate to?

Whilst we’re a copywriting agency, our clients don’t always want just the words. Sometimes they need us to help deliver them in the most compelling and appropriate way possible: and not everyone has easy access to reliable design, print or audio-visual capability. So this time we feature two projects in which we worked with our partners to produce short films; and a glossy report.

Read on – and please get in touch if you’d like to discuss writing with us. And of course feel free to forward this email to anyone you think might find it of interest.

Contents
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• Condensing a conference: Merryck & Co
• Making a compelling argument in double-quick time: Wherry Housing Association
• Introducing Brave
• And presenting the new-look Plain Text website

Condensing a conference: Merryck & Co
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How do you best capture the many thousands of often important words exchanged in a two-day conference? CEO-mentoring organisation Merryck & Co invited Plain Text to do just this at its Business Leaders’ Forum at Bagshot in May.

Together with our AV partner SAV Media, we worked with the speakers to summarise their themes in a series of short films called ‘The five-minute mentor’. These give delegates and Merryck clients a lively and interesting reminder of the main points made at the conference – more effective than pages of PowerPoint handouts! We’ll post links to the pieces when they are published.

Making a compelling argument in double-quick time: Wherry Housing Association
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Sometimes you only have a short window of time in which to make your point. For Wherry Housing Association, an upcoming conference provided the perfect platform to promote a radical new way of financing the ‘greening up’ of social housing. Having just been instrumental in transforming an old, fuel-guzzling house into a state-of-the art ecohome, Wherry had a great case study that would help to make its argument. The challenge was to create a report that told the story in just the right way: enough detail to prove the case, but delivered in a way that would resonate with a broad audience.

Referred to Plain Text by our client the Energy Saving Trust, Wherry knew we understood the environmental issues and arguments involved. Marshalling a great deal of technical background information and working with our contact Mark Jones and design partner Brave (see below), we delivered an accessible, attractive 16-page printed report on deadline. The result, Mark assures us, was “very well received at the conference and generated a great deal of interest”.

Take a look at the report, ‘Greening the Box‘.

Introducing Brave
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For the Wherry project we worked with our design partner Brave, a new branding and design agency whose fast, accurate and diligent work ensured our client had their printed report well in time for their conference.

So if you need the finished, artfully designed article instead of just the copywriting, or need a second opinion or a quote on design, please get in touch.

Browse Brave’s portfolio to see more examples of their work.

And presenting the new-look Plain Text website
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And finally – we’ve recently dragged the Plain Text website into the 21st century. From your point of view, the main difference is that we blog, occasionally, with language- and copywriting-related stuff that piques our interest. You can subscribe via RSS (bottom right of the page) if you wish. We don’t tweet yet, but it’s on the todo list, perhaps.

Contact Plain Text
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If you have questions or would like to discuss a writing project, please get in touch.

“Skid-lid bonk-stink crack tech cracked in Germany”

Connoisseurs may take issue with the repetition of ‘crack/cracked’ but I reckon it’s sheer headline genius. Just as good if not better than famous tabloid newsletter efforts such as The Sun’s “Obama Lama ding-dong”, fronting an article which implied a geopolitical rift over the US president’s meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader. Although that was surely a headline that had been sitting in a drawer somewhere just waiting for the flimsiest pretext to be used.