Doing it in style

Split any infinitives recently? When should you use a semi-colon rather than a dash? Join our style campaign.

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Other than football, few subjects generate more debate at Daybreak Towers than that of style and punctuation. Issues like when it is appropriate to use capitals, where to stick commas (!) and whether it is now acceptable to split infinitives trouble us regularly. We needed a referee to quote to clients and have found a firm friend in the excellent Times style guide, which you can use online.

On the caps front, we can now quote the authority of the Thunderer as justification for "knocking em down" - even job titles as grand as chairman or managing director. The Prime Minister, however, is allowed to keep his elevation. Split infinitives are banned, except in the famous quote "to boldy go where no man ..."

Punctuaton is a master class all of its own and you can do no better than turn to "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Lynne Truss. Leave out the comma in the title and you have an entirely different meaning.

A good move forward

To a new home - and some great mates.

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Home is famously where the heart is and it’s easy to love your home, with your big screen TV, your slippers, your cat that refuses to go outside in the cold and your fluffy sofa cushions which as far as I can make out serve no discernable purpose.

But modern working practices and commuting in the south east mean that most of us get to spend so little time in our house that it may well be that absence is making the heart grow fonder. We spend most of our time at work, but no cliché has ever been formulated declaring our undying love for the office.

Well it’s about time that was addressed.

We used to have an office in an American cold war bunker. It was a grey place, with corridors so long you felt they would never end, with windows so small that if you stuck a first class stamp on them you’d block out the sun, turning the office into a timeless environment, much like a Vegas casino, except without the gambling, attractive women and any sort of fun.

But that’s all changed. We’ve moved across the business park and now have an office with big windows, a view, a proper kitchen and lovely neighbours (our graphic designers now share a door with us).

Optimistic on optimisation

Meet our Google guru - and climb the web rankings.

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One of the benefits of our comfy new home is that we now have a website optimisation expert at our elbows. Fed with sugary tea and jammy dodgers, Claire delivers valuable insights into the mysteries of how best to climb up the Google rankings.

There are nowadays an awful lot of apparent search engine gurus out there who make lavish promises about optimisation, usually at the cost of a complete website rebuild. Claire will tell you that there is no exact science which will deliver you top spot, that Google is too clever to be manipulated, and that often some close attention to content and keywords is all that is really needed.

Deeply moving

Join us on our trip to an underground city.

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When you do as much work in the quarrying industry as we do you get used to hanging out beside impressive rock faces and giant machinery.

But even we were blown away by the sheer scale of the Winsford Salt Mine, home of our latest client Salt Union.

Over 140 miles of tunnels all dug out under the Cheshire countryside. As fast as miners can gouge it from the rockface and bring it up to ground level, the trucks carry it away.

Processions of vehicles pulling up at the mounds of tawny rock salt freshly hauled from cathedral-sized caverns before heading for the country's road network.

Some of the spent caverns have been put to good use. If you’ve got a police record, the chances are that it’s kept at Winsford, along with the evidence that secured your conviction. Your hospital records may be down here too, with your x-rays. If you’ve ever owned a house, sold a house, had a car loan, been in hospital somewhere there’ll be a record of it, and it may well be in here.

Hundreds of public and private bodies taking advantage of the constant temperatures and security that comes with being hundreds of metres underground.

Turn another corner and you will find hundreds of giant white bags, stacked as neatly as bricks in a wall, each holding a tonne of ash produced from the incineration of household waste.

Without doubt the most unusual cinema I’ve ever been to is set up at Winsford, a couple of dozen plastic chairs in the dark, with the only light available that eminating from the headlight we were given during our site induction. The history of the Winsford mine is eloquently displayed on the side of a rockface long since dug out.

An experience that will stay long in the mind.