The written word has often been seen as magical though the ages; something that the printing press both harnessed and destroyed to mold into something even more mysterious. The printing press worked by having a series of letters and sometimes words that you could arrange into blocks to say just about anything – you then printed your run.

But then… then unlike the wood cuts that had been used previously to make ‘print runs’ you could rearrange the same letters to make a new piece of writing.

It is along these lines that today’s exercise works. Take an article from a news paper or magazine and stick it to a piece of cardboard (say from a cereal packet) or alternatively just laminate it! Then cut it up so that you end up with a pile of words.

Randomly arrange these and see what phrases occur. Often something you would just never think of with pop out and hit you on the head!

Another variant is to use just the headlines and titles – this gives you larger words to work with which is a lot less fiddly!