Friday fun with tearable puns
Found at Linguistics Girl . . .
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Richard Branson — pro writer
I already shared this on twitter but thought it was worth sharing here as well because I have a different set of followers here on Pros Write. Branson’s description of his process and what he does and does not delegate will help you understand a piece of what it means to be a pro writer. How…
2014 at Pros Write
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for Pros Write. My sabbatical, which allowed me to concentrate on research projects, distracted me from posting as much as in past years. (Did you hear that, Will?) Thanks for reading. Happy New Year! Here’s an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year….
Amateurs accept platitudes about passive voice
“Passive voice is bad,” cry self-proclaimed (but undereducated) writing experts. I’ve known lots of these folks who can’t accurately identify a passive. And very few folks who can accurately define it. And even fewer who can provide amateur writers with more useful advice than this platitude. (In fact, I can’t accurately call it a platitude since…
What’s the difference between “defective” and “does not perform to design”?
In case you missed it, you really should watch John Oliver making fun of GM‘s attempts to control the language of those discussing their millions of defective (in their prescribed words, “does not perform to design”) vehicles. Last week, USA Today picked up on the Detroit Free Press piece titled GM’s banned words: What’s wrong with using…
More on the limitations of style analysis
Not long ago, I wrote about the limitations of considering only style as the textual element that determines plain language (or quality workplace writing). I made the point that over-reliance on style analysis is a reason software tools are not all that helpful. Well . . . I just had time to read the Johnson…
Why I prefer watching something other than a newscast
To celebrate my birthday with Pros Write readers, I thought I’d share some of the OTHER interesting things that have happened on March 28. On this date in 1960, when I was born, Time magazine’s cover was devoted to Jacques Cousteau. And a scotch factory in Glasgow exploded, burying 20 fire fighters. It gets worse if you look…
