writing
3 October, 2019
Published in the Public Sector Informant, Canberra Times, on October 1 2019 On a dark and stormy night, a long time ago, a colleague of mine, having spent long hours reviewing and clearing documents, declared that the work of […]
3 March, 2019
Amid some conjecture and debate, Homer is the ancient Greek author credited with writing the epic poems The Odyssey and The Iliad. These two poems, aside from being great literature, have had a defining impact on the development of Western culture. Homer’s works […]
8 May, 2017
It’s time to start that piece of writing no one wants to hear about: annual reports. Generally, their mention makes people sob and horses bolt. True enough, the worst sort of annual report is stupefyingly dull. But these reports are […]
5 May, 2017
By Robert Garran, A few weeks ago, my twitter feed lit up with tweets praising, of all people, an editor who had just died. I could have let them pass by—like so many tweets—but these tweets had great passion. So in […]
24 April, 2017
From the Ethos CRS Editing Team If you want to discover words you’ve never heard of and never thought you’d use, bureaucracies—both government and corporate—can be the place to go. New terms, jargon, acronyms and euphemisms bombard you every day. […]
19 April, 2017
By John Preston In ancient Greek mythology, Theseus—the founder of Greek democracy—entered the Labyrinth on the island of Minos and conquered the Minotaur. Theseus was renowned for his great strength, courage and—above all—wit. Today’s regulatory and policy environments are a […]
5 April, 2017
Using an ‘s’ over a ‘z’ is one of the most obvious differences between Australian English and American English. It’s an area of huge debate—when are grammar rules of opposing English-speaking countries ever not?—but also of huge confusion. Everyday […]
3 April, 2017
By John Preston Let’s face it; if facts were enough, we wouldn’t still be discussing the science of climate change, would we? And yet here we are. Why is this? Could the problem lie with the fact that we […]
3 April, 2017
By Robert Garran  ‘A storm is brewing over spectacular Katherine Gorge about Aboriginal land rights.’ Back when I was a rookie journalist on the Age in the 1980s, I wrote an article that began something like that. I’ve forgotten the […]