One of my colleagues recently asked me for resources on writing white papers for a corporate friend who is confident in his ability to write short recommendation reports, but believes longer ones — white papers — are increasingly important for corporate success although he hasn’t had experience writing them. I was most familiar with white papers…
In case any of you are wondering where the phrase originated today . . .
About a year ago, I posted Kitty, ABC, and beautiful locations when I learned that the Association for Business Communication (ABC) chose me as the winner of the Kitty O. Locker Outstanding Researcher Award. I’ve just returned from New Orleans where I attended the ABC’s annual convention and had the privilege of addressing the convention audience in a plenary address titled “What is outstanding…
I am a linguist who studies workplace language. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to explain that I don’t speak lots of languages. (The fact that I wish I had learned to earlier in life is a separate issue altogether.)That definition of a linguist is used almost exclusively within government, especially in…
I’ve said before that advice to ban the passive voice counts as a platitude. A recently published study corroborates my point. The authors of that study wrote, [Advice to ban the passive voice] implies that the active and passive voice can be used interchangeably and, where grammatically possible, the active voice should always be favoured. Their results show…
‘Cause my day job kept me from blogging this week, I’m reprinting a wonderful article by James Harbeck: You’re using that dash wrong: A comprehensive guide to our language’s horizontal lines — from the humble hyphen to the three-em dash. It’s worth a few minutes! Published in The Week on September 10, 2013 Ah, the dash…
This 4-minute TED Talk explains how the lack of “sh”explains why we use the letter X to mean “the unknown.” You know like Planet X. X-ray. Gen-X. X-Men. X-rated. Cheers!
. . . to understand what influences writing quality in the workplace. Everyone has an opinion. And it usually focuses on blaming someone else. The public, through their legislators, blames educators. Educators blame legislators. Or businesses. And businesses blame both. What truly happens? I mentioned my interest in this topic a year ago in Why…
I’m sharing a delightful first-day-of-class speech from John McIntyre, teacher of copy editing at Loyola U in Maryland and columnist at The Baltimore Sun. His words ring true for anyone who has taught others to write for the real world. I’ll share this with students in the future. (Did I mention I’m on a sabbatical from…
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…