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!
I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Nothing signals your status as a pro workplace writer as much as testing an important document with representative readers before you deliver it. But reader testing can be expensive. You need equipment and training to conduct eye-tracking studies. Thanks to two of my Dutch colleagues, Menno de Jong…
I think so. At least this email from the lead writer at Pinterest to all company employees supports the connection. It is too good not to share. (See my series on what plain language is for background.) Because of my current research on workplace writing quality, I’ve been thinking about how to capture the qualities of organizations…
Today’s post begins a series on the different sections that make up a research article (RA). I’m tackling the Introduction section first. The Introduction provides a “frame” for the research. It sets the boundaries for interpretation. (See this post for a discussion of the overall structure of the RA.) Based on my 25 or so years of experience writing and teaching others…
In Part One of my attempt to explain how I understand plain language, I focused on the elements of a text that must be managed to create a plain language document. Anyone who has known me for long, however, could have predicted that I would talk about the rhetorical context of a high quality document in Part Two. …
Please tell me you had a teacher talk about homophones at least once during your educational experience. This story from the Salt Lake Tribune a few days ago depresses me on many levels. In short, an English language teacher was fired for using the word, “homophonic.” Like I’m watching a car crash . . . I haven’t been…
Because documents are performances and great performers can teach us what it takes to deliver a great performance, I have used that theme to create a short (3:48) cartoon. My goal is to get people, mostly amateurs ( . . . beginners), to think about the amount and kind of WORK involved in being a…
Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.
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.