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Hell is other people’s slides
For some people hell is other people. For me, it’s other people’s PowerPoint slides. We’ve all sat through bad presentations. * Too many words. * Tiny charts. * The presenter reading every word out loud. * Or looking at the screen, not at us. They're boring. They're
The 3Ls
Want to write finance content that actually gets read? Start with the 3Ls of financial writing: language, layout and look. * Language – Use plain English to explain your ideas and messages without dumbing them down. * Layout – Structure your content so the message is clear at a glance. * Look – Make your document
Start here: what this blog is about
Welcome — and thanks for reading. This blog is for finance professionals who want to write with more clarity, purpose, and impact. I cover topics like: * Presenting complicated and technical ideas in plain language * Common writing mistakes and easy ways to fix them * Tips to improve your productivity when writing * Getting
AI can write finance reports but should you ask it to write yours?
In the public sector, written reports need to be clear and credible because the audience is usually non-experts. Yes, AI can generate reports fast. But it doesn’t understand your stakeholders, your risks, or your political context. And let’s be clear: AI isn’t actually intelligent. It doesn'
Is your audience pretending to listen?
PowerPoint allows speakers to pretend that they are giving a real talk, and audiences to pretend that they are listening. (Edward Tufte, 2006) Ouch! Take a moment to reflect on your own presentations. Have you ever been in front of an audience (in the room or on the screen) and
If you don’t have time to make good slides, don’t make any.
Most presentations would be better without slides. Because most slides compete against the presenter instead of supporting them. I know what it's like. A presentation is looming and you leave it late to create slides. And when you do finally open PowerPoint you do the obvious thing: you
Don't have borders around every cell of a table
All those borders are clutter. They get in the way of the message. The vertical lines obviously get in the way of a reader scanning across the rows. If you have your data in columns that are aligned (left for text, right for numbers) then let the white space between columns do the work …
Whether they are good, bad or mediocre, your presentations set the standard for your team.
Modelling behaviour is a core part of leadership. If you’re a finance leader, your presentations should inspire good practice in your team ... but too often they inspire mediocrity. When it’s your turn to present, do you: * Ask someone to put together a bullet-point slide deck? * Glance at the
A faster, better way to reply to emails
We don’t send original letters back with our replies—so why do we include the full text of every email in our responses? Email systems automatically create message threads. There’s no need to repeat every line of a previous message. Instead: 1. Highlight the sentence or two you’
Q: What has DeepSeek got to do with business writing?
A: Constraints lead to innovation. The scientists working for DeepSeek didn't have the money and data centres filled with £30,000 microchips so they had to find a different way to build artificial intelligence models. They did it by asking better questions of the data rather than cramming
Take the easy way
Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious. So said Saint Thomas Aquinas. Let me paraphrase it: not every long document is worth the time it takes to write it and read it. Remember that when it comes to writing your next long-ish document. Think about whether you are