This is a great reminder that all of us need an editor!
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Celebrate the National Day on Writing
October 20th is the National Day on Writing in the US. See the press release here or the US Senate proclamation for 2012 here. To celebrate: On October 19, tweet out your compositions of all sorts and post them to Twitter using the hashtag #WhatIWrite and, if space allows, #dayonwriting. Our goals are to share writings…
Language choices can be unsuccessful — but never wrong
I recently found a marvelous video of Stephen Fry talking about language. Here’s what the creater (Matthew Rogers) says about his video: Using the wonderful words of acclaimed writer, actor and allround know it all (I mean that in the best of ways) Stephen Fry, I have created this kinetic typography animation. . . I loved this particular essay on…
Learn to write like a secret agent!
Thanks to the folks at Bridging the Unbridgeable, I learned that the CIA style manual is now publicly available. As the Director of Intelligence wrote in the foreward to the 8th edition, The information the CIA gathers and the analysis it produces mean little if we cannot convey them effectively. I’ve included the manual here so you can investigate for yourself. The…
Now that last week is over, and I get a breather from wearing a suit and listening to other people in suits talk at me using PowerPoint bullets (I’m not a “natural” administrator) . . . let me get back on track. Gavin’s post was a timely reminder about what makes a visual work.
Plain language in the news
Check out Huffington Post‘s “The new illiteracy — obfuscation — hinders progress.” The author mentions some top notch plain language efforts like the Center for Plain Language and PLAIN. But he assumes obfuscation is a recent problem. I wrote a very brief history of the problem in Why hasn’t plain language become the norm? Related…
Amateurs (and lawyers) beat around the bush
Most of the world has heard that CNN and Fox News inaccurately reported the US Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Health Care Act last Thursday. Later that day, here’s how Ellen Killoran, a reporter for the International Business Times, explained their error: The egregious error does not appear to be the result of the news…
