Training & Coaching

Writing skills for work. For life.

Here’s something that might surprise you. It isn’t actually difficult to become a good writer. There are plenty of simple tips we can pass on to you that will improve your writing instantly and permanently.

Have you, for example, ever stopped to think about how many words there should be in a sentence? Do you have any idea what “shape” your email should be? Do you make common mistakes like writing “could of” instead of “could have”?

Our workshops and individual coaching focus on helping you develop a strong, clear, direct and unambiguous writing style. Ultimately, this will improve your company’s image – and save you and your clients time and money.

One-to-one coaching – power hour

Want to transform your writing in just ONE HOUR? Yes, you can.

Wherever you are in the world, we can offer you our hugely effective 60-minute coaching session on Zoom.

Before the session we’ll ask you to send us some examples of your writing which we’ll analyse in detail. If your copy is waffly, you have problems with grammar or you use too much jargon, we’ll identify the issue.

During your session, we’ll discuss your writing and how you can improve it. It really is that simple – and it really works. The tips will be easy to put into practice and will help you improve your writing instantly.

After the session, we’ll send you the notes we made on your copy.

Usually, one hour is all you need, but some people like to have a follow-up session to review progress or focus more on a particular weakness e.g. grammar.

To book your session, or to find out more, email Judy. We can do morning, afternoon, evening or lunch-time – whatever works for you.

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Be a Better Writer – inhouse training

Does your business need to train a number of staff?

We will design a session for your team which can be delivered on Zoom or face-to-face in your offices. The Sentence Works offers a variety of courses to suit your time, budget and needs. We can run a day-long workshop, a half day masterclass or an intensive two-hour session.

You can pick an “off the shelf” course (see below) have the entire session designed for you, or a mix of both.

For instance, we designed an email workshop for one client and a press release writing workshop for another, which we combined with general writing skills training. We’ve trained a large public organisation on how to respond to written complaints and a law firm on how to write blogs aimed at the public.

We also offer at optional hour at the end to work on your own documents, putting what you have learned into practice and getting instant, private feedback.

Please contact us to discuss your requirements.

Our tried and tested workshops

Be a better writer in two hours flat

This “highlights” course for the short-of-time focuses on the points that will improve your writing the quickest. We’ll look at how to craft succinct, uncomplicated, attention-grabbing sentences, plus how to avoid management-speak and write in simple, straightforward English. We’ll discuss how to use apostrophes correctly, and throw in some essential tips on how to improve your spelling. A fantastically useful 120 minutes!

We offer this as an individual or team session, either face-to-face or on Zoom.

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Be a better writer in a morning (or an afternoon)

This course is highly interactive and occasionally noisy (you’ll need to be quick on the buzzer). You’ll leave able to write easy-to-read, succinct, professional documents that catch your reader’s attention.

The workshop covers

Writing in crisp, punchy sentences
Using straightforward English
Clear, clean copy
Intros, endings and structure
Writing to length
Jargon, acronyms and management-speak busted
Tools and resources for writers
Grammar and punctuation: common mistakes and how to avoid them.
Spelling: hints and tips.

Although this course is designed for businesses, it can work well as a one-to-one too, and will include analysis of your writing. We have found it particularly suitable for people two or three years into their career who realise they need to improve their written communication skills.

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How to be a media expert

Do you see other people in your field being quoted in the press, and writing opinion pieces for major magazines and newspapers? Do you want a bit of that too? This course will show you how to become the “go-to” person in your industry. We’ll focus on what journalists are looking for, how to be a dream interviewee and how to write articles for different media. We’ll practise print and broadcast interviews and cover blogging too. This course is run jointly with media trainer Steve Hemsley.

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PR training

We have a special workshop for PR companies, which combines writing skills training with an insight into the minds of journalists. We’ll look at examples of bad press releases and reveal the things that wind journalists up about them. We’ll also discuss how to pitch a journalist by email and the things that will make them love you.

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Online courses – do you want to learn at your own pace?

Want to improve your writing but pushed for time or can’t get to one of our workshops? Our online course is perfect for you.

Find out more

Open Events.

Be a better writer in two hours flat

Some of Our Clients.

The Resident Expert.

Judy Yorke

Specialty: Teaching

I love writing but I think I love training even more. For me, there is enormous satisfaction in being able to make a huge difference to people’s writing skills in just a few hours.

That’s because our short courses can transform the writing you do every day as part of your job.

I’m a qualified trainer so I know exactly how to run a lively course that’s both incredibly useful and enormous fun. There’s some hard work in our sessions, as well as plenty of discussion and some highly competitive games, including our fast-becoming-famous buzzer round.

What you’ll take away is the ability to write in simple, clear, pithy English and keep your writing fresh and interesting. One extra advantage is that you will save both you and your reader time because you’ll learn to get straight to the point.

We offer courses for individuals, bespoke workshops for companies, online courses and one-to-one coaching.

Contact Judy

Testimonials

You may recall that you wrote some brilliant copy for a new website we were planning to launch. It has been a long time in the making, but I thought you might want to know that your prose has been a massive influence in the way that our website has been formed. I’m pleased to say that it finally went live on Thursday. I just wanted to say a very long overdue and big thank you for the help you gave me. Whenever there is a conversation around development of website content or other marketing materials, your name and skillsets feature prominently. I sincerely hope that we can find ways in which to work together again.

Jim Mathieson, Director. CloudConnX
CloudConnX

"Judy is a wonderful copywriter. Writing copy for businesses is not easy but Judy is brilliant at taking what we give her and creating something accurate that speaks to business owners in our voice. She has written the copy for the last few years Ride the Wave business support programme which helped it to exceed all its targets for engagement. She has for the last few years written our Chamber breakfasts copy which introduces our speakers and which I always look forward to receiving and publishing. Judy is also a pleasure to work with."

Sarah Springford, Director of Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce.

“A very belated, but huge thank you nonetheless, for last week’s workshop. It was brilliant and I have already put some key exercises into practice and it has helped so much. Namely, the cutting down on text for press releases; making introductions more succinct and a ‘less is more’ approach. So thank you very much for a very enlightening and constructive course. Highly worthwhile.”

Sarah Fiedosiuk, Head of Media/PR, Group B Strep Support

"Thank you again for providing such an excellent, perfectly pitched course. I really appreciated all the work you’d done to make your examples relevant. We’ve had great feedback from the team and loads of enthusiasm about putting everything they’ve learned into practice."

Miriam Underhill, Children’s Services, East Sussex County Council

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