In honor of the retirement of Annetta L. Cheek, PhD, Board Chair and co-founder of the Center for Plain Language, an American flag is flying over the U.S. Capitol today. The Center’s website lists the following among her accomplishments: Worked with U.S. House of Representative Bruce Braley (D-IA) to pass the Plain Writing Act of 2010, which was signed…
U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken is running the antitrust trial against the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) on behalf of Ed O’Bannon. The Wall Street Journal reports the judge is not knowledgeable about sports. ESPN’s W site (devoted to women and sports) says she has been direct, civil and understated during the trial, which ended last Friday, and that,…
In case you missed it, you really should watch John Oliver making fun of GM‘s attempts to control the language of those discussing their millions of defective (in their prescribed words, “does not perform to design”) vehicles. Last week, USA Today picked up on the Detroit Free Press piece titled GM’s banned words: What’s wrong with using…
For the next two days, I’m excited to be visiting my alma mater to lead a workshop sponsored by LSU’s Master of Science in Analytics program in the Ourso College of Business. If you are curious about the agenda or materials, check out 3 Things You Need To Know About Writing in the Workplace.
Check it out. The Center for Plain Language just released this 2013 report card for plain writing done by federal agencies. Details are available from their website. Two related media articles appear below. Sure makes me wonder what’s different in the USDA (Dept of Agriculture) and the DOL (Dept of Labor). Related articles The Worst…
I’m guessing many of you don’t understand how a dictionary is created. It’s true of the vast majority of people — even highly literate ones. So here’s your chance to get educated about lexicography. That means dictionary-making. The misconception that dictionaries are authorities on language is pandemic. John McIntyre’s piece”You Could Look It Up” appeared…
Martin Luther King, Jr. certainly had a way with words — and with audiences. I have often used his words as the focus of discussions in my leadership communication class. In honor of today’s 50th anniversary of perhaps his most famous speech, Johnson wrote an interesting rhetorical analysis for today’s Economist. If you want to read…
No time to explore this in detail today, but Henry Blodget, editor of Business Insider, is getting a lot of attention for his article “This one tweet reveals what’s wrong with American Business.” The bottom line here is that Henry believes US corporations think only about the short term. If that’s true, plain language efforts…
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…
My colleague, Saul Carliner, shared this slide deck from Mark O-Toole about why new grads don’t get hired. See if you can locate one of the eleven reasons that isn’t caused by (or couldn’t be fixed with better) communication. Congratulations Graduate! Eleven Reasons Why I Will Never Hire You. from Mark O’Toole Here’s my analysis….