Just taking a second to vent my frustration about the lack of plain language on the ballot I read this morning. Here’s a sample. As someone with an earned doctorate in English linguistics and writing, I would place myself near the top of any chart displaying literacy skills among US citizens. But I had no…
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…
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.
I’ve heard a few folks complaining about automated messages — thank-you emails to be specific. In Auto-politeness, revisited, one of The Economist’s Johnson bloggers wrote, Thanking is a real human response to a real event; I don’t know if it can be outsourced to a machine. Here is a personal example from a while back….
The Harvard Business Review blog network recently featured a piece by Kyle Wiens called I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why. Wiens runs two companies, and both focus on technical communication. But he makes a good argument about why what he calls “grammar” matters in any workplace. Grammar is relevant for all companies. Yes, language…
Thanks (again) to the Center for Plain Language, I found a terrific story of the process pros use to manage the creation of a document with a very large and heterogenous audience. Check out the infographic timeline at the Know Before You Owe site (under “How we did it”). It describes the process used by Kleimann Communication Group…
Read today’s press release from the Center for Plain language about report cards for federal agencies one year after the Plain Writing Act regulations went into effect.
To celebrate Friday the 13th (and keep in touch while I work to meet a deadline), I’m sharing a link to a 2010 article that appeared in The Onion. Nation Shudders At Large Block Of Uninterrupted Text is one of my favorites. And it reinforces the importance of one of my video tutorials. Enjoy! Related articles…
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…
About the grammar quiz in the WSJ article
A less-than-polite response to the Wall Street Journal’s grammar quiz from the linguist behind Real Grammar.
It’s the usual mish-mash of zombie rules, shibboleths and prejudices. Half of the questions are not about grammar at all, but about spelling and punctuation. Two fail to acknowledge a difference between British and American English usage. Three are based on false ideas about which words can introduce relative clauses. And, inevitably, there are the misguided questions about between versus among, less versus fewer and I in object position or following a preposition.