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Sea like a mirror…

Created by Francis Beaufort in 1806 to provide a standard measure of wind force related to conditions on land and sea, the Beaufort Scale runs from 0 to 12:

But the full impact comes from the words accompanying the numbers. So alongside the wind speed and wave height for 0 Calm, we have ‘Sea like a mirror’ and ‘Smoke rises vertically’; for 6 Strong Breeze, there’s ‘Large branches in motion; whistling heard in telegraph wires; umbrellas used with difficulty’; and for 12 Hurrricane, the one-word-punch of ‘Devastation’.

From “Sea like a mirror’ through ‘Umbrellas used with difficulty’ to ‘Devastation’, the Beaufort Scale illustrates beautifully the power of putting a few well-chosen words together to convey rich and deep meaning. It just goes to show, there is poetry in every subject matter – from the driest to the windiest!

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Super selective…

Towards the end of 2024, the FT chose ‘slop’ as a word of the year. A wonderfully unappetising onomatopoeic word redolent of prison gruel, cold gravy, couldn’t carelessness. A word rubbing shoulders with ‘slap-dash’, ‘slip-shod’, ‘slosh-on’, and these days also a word taking on a new meaning for our increasingly digital age: the mass of low-grade AI-generated content clogging up our lives.

Slop champions quantity over quality, volume over value. It’s a watch-out word for storytellers everywhere: AI or no AI, only some stories are worth telling – the ones that really matter. Key stories.

So in a world awash with the sloppy stuff, my new year’s resolution is to be super selective.