Grammar nazis are alive and well
This Embarrasses You and I*
One of my Bama colleagues sent me this link to a recent Wall Street Journal piece on grammar in the workplace. It’s generated 671 comments as I write this. Whew!
One of my Bama colleagues sent me this link to a recent Wall Street Journal piece on grammar in the workplace. It’s generated 671 comments as I write this. Whew!
Julia Williams, President of the Professional Communication Society (and one of my favorite colleagues) has negotiated a deal to offer a free eLearning course on leadership communication to IEEE members. Details are available in Julia’s Monthly eNotice. IEEE offers 3 CEUs (or professional development hours) for successful completion of the course. I created the content for…
Attitude, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. (OK. This is not technically accurate. Psychological theory considers attitude a trait of the individual. But it is an accurate way of describing the fact that we attribute attitudes to other people.) We have been attributing attitudes to the woman in Da Vinci’s portrait for 500 years. We mostly use nonverbal cues, like…
I don’t know people who read at work for fun. They read because they need help doing their jobs. That means they’re looking for documents they can USE. Few things make a document more usable than format. (I’m talking about white space, typography, etc.) Revising Professional Writing devotes a chapter to this topic. I’ve been using short…
. . . to understand what influences writing quality in the workplace. Everyone has an opinion. And it usually focuses on blaming someone else. The public, through their legislators, blames educators. Educators blame legislators. Or businesses. And businesses blame both. What truly happens? I mentioned my interest in this topic a year ago in Why…
For National Grammar Day, I’m posting a slightly edited version of “Shibboleths and entering the professions,” which appeared on Pros Write back in 2012. I wrote the original in response to the raised eyebrows after I posted “Language choices can be unsuccessful — but never wrong.” For some readers, my belief that language can never…
Over at the NY Times, Errol Morris has conducted a very interesting test of the effect of typeface (you might call it “font”) on credibility. His article is definitely worth a read, but it requires a time commitment. For those of you who want the gist, use Baskerville if you want to maximize your credibility. In case…
When writing for public consumption, if you follow standard usage (e.g. “for you and me”) and punctuation (e.g. “those buildings’ windows), you’ll always be safe. If you deviate (e.g. “for you and I” or “those building’s windows”), you run the risk of being perceived an illiterate.
A prudent person doesn’t jeopardize his or her future.