Friday fun with keister
In this episode of Mysteries of the Vernacular on TED-Ed, Jessica Oreck and Rachael Teel try to trace the history of “keister.” Happy Friday!
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Which federal agencies made the grade?
The Center for Plain Language just released their 2014 Federal Plain Language Report Card. Highest grades went to Homeland Security, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Social Security Administration. In their white paper, they note that the quality of writing within the US federal government is improving. • 16 out of 22 departments improved over last year’s grades….
Fun with Weird Al’s “Mission Statement”
MTV News says Weird Al sounds just like your boss. What? They’re talking about “Mission Statement,” the final video release this past week from the Mandatory Fun album. Weird Al Yankovic does not only make fun of the way the less powerful use language. This time his target is the language of the powerful. The song’s a parody of corporate jargon using…
Lead your reader through your content with transitions
Readers understand a message better when writers use explicit signals of what they want readers to get out of a document. Transitions like “unfortunately” are one type of explicit signal. (Headings are another — see Think long-term and be kind to readers with well-formatted documents.) In fact, transitions are also sometimes called logical connectives. Maybe that makes…
Friday fun with word frequencies
Calling all word nerds! For some Friday fun, try the Macmillan Red Words Game, which tests your awareness of English word frequency. It’s not as easy as you might think. After a couple of tries, my highest score was 195. Can you beat it? Along the same lines, Roberto Trotta has written an interesting book. From the…
Communicating in Cairo
I saw this last week and thought I would share it today because I don’t have time to write much. (I’m in Atlanta for a few days at the AACSB Accreditation Conference.) According to a cab driver from Cairo, car horns are used by drivers there to communicate more than their frustration. Several morse-code like…
Happy holidays!
In the spirit of the holidays, I’m sharing this infographic from Oxford Dictionaries. Thanks for reading Pros Write, and peace (in whatever language you prefer) to you all!
