An ex-journo colleague tells me hacks don’t like sterile working conditions. They hate the silence of the office and the fact that PRs collude in that silence by doing everything by email or Twitter.

Apparently, some PRs actually try to drive more conversations onto email. One journalist, I shall refer to him only as Pint of Guinness, outlined his biggest gripe with modern PRs. “After I’d spent two minutes explaining something to this girl, she asked me to type it all out in an email for her.”

As it’s a Friday I thought I’d share this little gem with you. I spend months every year media training company spokespeople for what might be that one moment where they get their chance to shine on television or the radio.

Over the past few months I’ve begun to notice something sinister in some of the social media training sessions I’ve been giving. No, it’s not Gollum sitting in the corner, but something far worse. In fact, if left unchecked it threatens to ruin the public face of some of the larger corporates we know. Indeed, it appears the F-Factor is spreading through firms like bindweed and choking their creativity.

That’s one of my favourite pieces of dialogue. And I didn’t hear it at the recent premier of The Iron Lady. My invitation to this auspicious event obviously got lost in the post.

Following my recent piece for PRmoment.com on the ‘Ten PR sins you must not commit’, I received countless emails and tweets from the PR community and juniors in particular. While it was great to know people felt so strongly about the pressure of cold calling journalists, I felt rather sad and slightly appalled by the sheer volume of responses confirming this still takes place.

Have you got an irrational hatred? Mine is inanimate objects. Specifically the increasing tendency to plurality. So company A’s new widget is ‘their product’ and analysts are said to predict great things for ‘them’. As if they were humans.

When Rick Perry took to the floor for the recent televised presidential debates in the US few could have imagined the spectacular self-destruction that would occur live, on air, in front of the world’s media.

Shows and exhibitions have come and gone over the past 20 years. Some are impossibly popular and extremely expensive while others offer far better value for money. But the fact remains the same: unless you happen to be Apple launching the iPhone 5, do not bother announcing anything at events. It will simply get sucked into the noise and sink to the bottom of the news pool.

On receiving an internal email from a colleague containing a tragically misplaced apostrophe swimming about the word ‘its’, it got me thinking. While misplaced apostrophes are a heinous grammatical faux-pas, the art of politely but pertinently correcting an equal on abuse of the English language, appears to be an equivalently horrendous social gaffe.

Last week I spent an hour on a conference call with two agency personnel and three people from their client having a meeting about a meeting to be held next week at which I would be briefed about a copywriting requirement. The number of people involved and time taken in what was a fruitless interaction got me thinking about the cost of the copywriting process.

Most mainstream film studios and distributors have embraced social media, but what are they gaining from it?

Watching movies at the cinema is an inherently social experience increasingly reflected across platforms and sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Even US trade magazine Box Office Magazine has anticipation and appreciation indexes based on Facebook likes and tweets. The principal reason is to raise awareness as part of a marketing campaign, but looking at two different types of releases use social media can be revealing.

PR: Hello. We’d like you to travel to a briefing. Don’t worry, we’ll pay your train or plane fare as our client wants to meet you face-to-face. We want to talk to you about how videoconferencing does away with the need for expensive travel, saves you time and money and…hello?? Oh…He's gone.

Even as a junior PR I knew what many agencies now still don’t realise: Journalists hate follow up calls. You’re only useful if you’re helping them do their work. If you stop them, to make them help you with your admin, they’ll soon learn to cut you out the loop. So my first ever PR job was nearly lost over a huge row over follow-ups with journalists.

It seems that releases concerning new appointments are being written in a kind of retarded shorthand, drawn from the same bucket of words to gloss over flaws, dehumanise the people involved and make a potentially interesting story as standardised and dull as possible.