We All Need Words is one of those ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ companies that aims to help people articulate what they’re all about, both personally and professionally, ‘without the branding bluff.’

Here are five of their writing ‘Unrules’ via the The School of Life, and here’s the link to their site. Worth a look, even if words aren’t your thing. (After all, we all need them.)

Five Unrules:

5. Write short or ‘fragmented’ sentences. Ignore Microsoft Word’s green squiggly line. A sentence can have seven words. Or two. It’s up to you. Play with the length of your sentences to add pace and rhythm to your words.

4. Split infinitives. They can be clunky but they’re not grammatically incorrect.

3. Use contractions (eg that’s instead of that is). They’re a good way to make your writing sound more personal.

2. Don’t sign off letters with ‘Yours Sincerely if you know the person you’re writing to or ‘Yours Faithfully’ if you don’t. ‘Yours Sincerely?’ It’s 2010. You don’t need to use stuffy formality like this anymore (or start letters with ‘Dear Sir’ or ‘Dear Sir / Madam’ for that matter).

1. And you can start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’. We just did.

And a bonus rule from Kurt Vonnegut:

‘Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.’

Brilliant idea, beautifully executed. I’m a fan.

“In the end, Maya is postmodern: she can’t really make music or art that well, but she’s better than anyone at putting crazy ideas into motion. She knows how to manipulate, how to withhold, how to get what she wants.”

Diplo on M.I.A., quoted from a recent article in the New York Times that has caused quite the media shitstorm. Journalist Lynn Hirschberg basically slams M.I.A.’s much publicised political agenda as a misguided gimmick – harsh, but when combined with quotes from Jimmy Iovine and Richard Russell, as well as lots of detail on Argulpragasam’s undeniably fascinating life story, it makes for pretty interesting reading.

Check it out here.

Both the Online and Press and Publications sections of the site have been updated with a few new-ish bits and pieces. Take a peek.

Olivier Zahm

I love magazines. Really love them. I’m always interested in reading any kind of informed opinion on them. Here’s a quote from Olivier Zahm, founder of Purple Fashion Magazine, from the new issue of i-D:

“The internet sphere is amnesia: information arrives and disappears, arrives and disappears. Magazines always touch me because there shows a true love for the present time,  an historical trace of what’s going on by year, or by decade. You can pick up an issue of Interview magazine from 1974 and understand the 70s in New York, but you can’t figure out what 2007 was like by going to a website from 2007, because it has disappeared. I know there is love inside a magazine. There is a collective voice of people who want to share something.

There are two reasons for magazines on paper. First it’s the glamour and to me real glamour comes from photography and interviews. This is because it is the place where people get intimate. The fashion world is organically a part of magazines – it’s the best place for fashion to be seen, appreciated and evaluated. And secondly I think magazines need to survive because magazines are intimate, it’s one person to one person. It’s me to you. The photographer shot this model, with this stylist, for you. It’s like a film; everyone is working together to achieve a certain vision, of the time, of the fashion. So when the reader opens a magazine immediately they are part of the world.

A magazine has presence, it reveals something about people, about their dreams, it’s on paper, you can keep it and it gives you this possibility to interact…Purple is my life.”

This month’s i-D also features a great Rihanna interview by the marvellous Ms. Hattie Collins, and lots of other good shit. Go cop that.

Bonnie Greer

If you’ve been reading this blog since its inception then you’ll probably have picked up on my love for The Guardian Weekend and its Sunday counterpart, The Observer. Having an appreciation for these publications is hardly unique/comment-worthy, so I don’t want to rant on about it except to say that both papers and their respective supplements always publish articles that make me think. A lot.

Case in point: Yesterday’s Observer Music Monthly (the last ever issue of the magazine, which is folding alongside Observer Woman – sob – and Observer Sport – much smaller sob.) I can’t say that I was an obsessive, front-cover-to-back-cover reader of OMM but I did always like the ‘Record Doctor’ feature in which a music-lover would be ‘prescribed’ new bands and songs, based on a quick rundown of their musical tastes, past and present. Yesterday’s patient was playwright Bonnie Greer, who had some interesting things to say about the birth of Hip Hop in the Bronx c.1978 and its similarities and differences to Grime music in the UK:

“It’s a real urban sound that reminds me of the South Bronx in the 80s…It’s fascinating to me, though, that grime hasn’t developed its own culture. You don’t see any grime painters or grime theatre. Partly, it’s because it’s been taken over by older people. In hip-hop the moguls tended to be people who were part of the environment, but they have grown older and they’re still running the show.

What she most admires about grime, she says, is its refusal to recognise the past. “I like people who want to do something new. There’s a jazz musician I like called Henry Threadgill whose motto is: ‘When I hear new music I prepare to do something else.’”"

Food for thought.

The Observer Magazine’s advice column, written by the endlessly wise Mariella Frostrup, also struck a chord yesterday. Usually this column features letters from women write in with concerns about their ticking biological clocks or their increasingly distant marriages, which I read out of some misguided sense of polite interest but never really engage with. Yesterday’s Q&A, though, came from a 28 year old living a very ’successful’ existence, who was finding herself paralysed by anxiety about ticking accomplishments off her life-long to-do list. I, myself, alongside many of my friends, are often stricken with a sometimes exhausting obsession with constantly achieving and being busy, so I found Frostrup’s response particularly insightful:

What I’ve learned in 47 years is that only the days well spent leave any enduring satisfaction. Looking back through the photographic evidence of so many amazing journeys and colourful crowds of acquaintances made me wonder how much I’d missed while I was busy keeping busy…It’s shocking to realise how indulging in endless opportunities to scramble to the top of your field or satiate a rollercoaster addiction to lifestyle extremes adds up to not very much. Meanwhile the days misspent in idling, enjoying the company of those you most care for and generally achieving very little are the ones you want to stash in your box of treasures.

The importance of ‘days well spent’ is definitely something I’ll be carrying in my mind in the upcoming week. Have a good Monday.

The Record Doctor Meets…Bonnie Greer

Dear Mariella