Check out today’s US Navy ends dependence on capitalised communications from BBC News. Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London, told the BBC, The US Navy has made up its mind that not everything is a crisis and some messages are just normal. The change appears to mean the organization has…
My first new post in a while. And I’m ranting — albeit somewhat quietly. This time I’m reacting to a newly published research article about assessing student writing within MOOCs. Balfour, the author, provides a review of two technologies for assessing writing when you have a huge student-to-teacher ratio: Automated Essay Scoring (AES) and Calibrated…
Purpose is unchanged. But the blog has a new look and organization. Feedback is welcome!
I meant to post this Monday morning — when many in the workplace could use a happiness boost! (That’s what dopamine does for your brain.) You may think positive psychology is mostly platitudes. But Shawn Achor could change your mind. The psychologist’s research into happiness shows that success does not lead to happiness. Instead, happiness leads to…
Because it’s Friday and we all need a little more fun, I’m sharing The Dirty Etymology of 9 Everyday Words by Romy Oltuski, who wrote this piece for mental_floss.** I don’t know Romy, but I share her sense of humor about word origins. Enjoy! Within our lexicon lives a library of forgotten stories, developed over…
Within Western culture, there are few workplaces with ONLY men or ONLY women. In theory, our workplaces are gender neutral. Our language, however, sometimes perpetuates a world in which women are subservient to men. Sexist language is commonly characterized using six issues: pseudo-generic pronoun, he (e.g., When an employee asks for a raise, he should be brief.) pseudo-generic noun,…
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…
For the funny explanation of appropriate usage, see College Humor. You can even download them as truetype fonts for actual adoption. It’s worth a few minutes! Happy Friday!
A nice lesson on usage, language change, dialects, and more! Related articles Language is alive and…evolving! (termcoord.wordpress.com) The Power of Babel: Dialects are all there is (stancarey.wordpress.com)
I was reading my digitial issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) this morning and found Ben Yagoda’s Warren Buffett Is a Better Writer Than I Am. Damn It. (Yagoda is one of a handful of contributors to CHE’s Lingua Franca blog.) The piece is a terrific analysis of Buffet’s writing ability based on his recent Letter…