If I need a lawyer, I’m gonna call up Mr. Kaplitt. Here’s a letter he wrote for a client who received a “cease and desist” letter written in indecipherable legalese. Huffington Post posted a short video about this one. Or read his letter for yourself. Bet Mr. Kaplitt’s phone has been ringing off the hook! Related…
We naturally adapt our language based on our social surroundings: we choose different words to describe the same thing when addressing our pals in a pub, our professor at a pub, our professor in class, or our grandmother on the phone. I’ve written about this before as code-switching. When code-switching appears in written language, some folks experience…
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…
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,…
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…
Thanks to Christopher Trudeau, law professor and plain language champion, I just viewed the Terms of Service for CodePen. Proof that the company takes its consumers and its legal risks seriously! I especially like the clear version of the copyright and content ownership clause: The things you make on CodePen are yours, “CodePen” is ours. …
Not long ago, I wrote about the limitations of considering only style as the textual element that determines plain language (or quality workplace writing). I made the point that over-reliance on style analysis is a reason software tools are not all that helpful. Well . . . I just had time to read the Johnson…
I’m working on a post about taboo words (that means swearing or profanity) that’s not ready for prime time — and recovering from the flu. In the meantime, I highly recommend today’s post over at Motivated Grammar. Gabe’s point is that, when people don’t actually understand how language works, they see decline and deterioration in language different…
I just read a Forbes piece from a while back that’s worth a minute: Why Trying to Learn Clear Writing in College is Like Trying to Learn Sobriety in a Bar. Writing education in the US does not empower our students. They are not encouraged to write in a way that communicates to workplace readers….