Here’s our list of five of the best publications to improve your charity writing:
Guardian Style
by David Marsh
This book is the Guardian’s proofreading and consistency bible, evidence of the huge effort it takes to avoid the all to easy mistakes many newspapers seem to be littered with. It provides definitions of grammatical terms and industry terms, as well as commonly misspelt words and their contexts. Infinitely useful we’d say.
www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide
Essential English: for Journalists, Editors and Writers
by Harold Evans
Recommended by the Society of Editors, this is an excellent guide to well written English, particularly for news journalism. It explains exactly how a newspaper functions and then discusses how to write for newspapers.
The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors
by Robert Ritter
If you need to know Maldon is in Essex, that the battle of Malplaquet was in 1709, or that Benazir Bhutto (b. 1953, former prime minister of Pakistan from 1988-90 and 1993-96) is the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928-79), former president (1971-73) and prime minister (1973-77) of Pakistan, then this book is for you.
And you’d be surprised how often we at ngo.media are struggling for just such obscure facts. Some entries, such as “malcontent not malecontent,” could easily be looked up in an ordinary dictionary, but you would need a whole reference library to find other entries. Overall a useful addition to the bookshelf of anyone who is a word addict.
Clever Communications
edited by Flora Jenkins
This lovely little book, published by the Voluntary Action Media Unit before it closed, includes a directory featuring hundreds of media contacts and useful resources for charity communications.
It also provides top tips about who to approach at which media outlets, with what kind of stories. The book shows charities how to be more confident, creative, strategic and bold in their media work. It also gives examples of how some charities are working effectively with the media to shout about their campaigns.
Download a copy at http://vamu.org.uk/downloads/CleverComms.pdf
BBC News StyleGuide
Good writing and good journalism from the Beeb. Features much more fact-based stuff than the Guardian guide: political definitions, country pronunciation guides, etc. For those who want it, it has a section on the European Union with helpful descriptions of what titles mean and how the EU actually functions.
Also features sections on Americanisms, jargon and foreign phrases. If you need information to back up an argument, or merely to be ‘more informed’, this is a great compact, and very clear, document.
www.bbctraining.com/pdfs/newsstyleguide.pdf
