Sounds Good on Paper: How to Bring Business Language to Life

Figures of speech are everywhere. Popstar or postman, president or paperboy, the chances are you've already used a whole heap of them today without realising it. For business writers, they're pure gold. They make our words more powerful, persuasive and poetic. They add flavour to dreary standard issue language. They help us get our message across in a way that's immediate and memorable.

This book takes fifty of our finest figures of speech and explains how they can help anyone who works with words, regardless of profession, to express themselves with more style and impact. Sounds Good on Paper is a practical guide to every figure of speech you never knew you knew, including the chiasmus ('You can take the boy out of Essex, but you can't take Essex out of the boy'), tmesis ('abso-blooming-lutley') and kenning ('pencil pusher' or 'coffin dodger'). It shows how you can use these techniques to make your words work harder and pump up your powers of persuasion. If you want to inspire and engage your readers, this book is here to help.