Friday fun with punctuation gone wild
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)
-
Warren Buffett, pro writer
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…
-
Comparing organizations devoted to promoting workplace document quality
I recently discovered the Simplification Centre, which originated at the University of Reading in the UK, now functioning as a non-profit organization devoted to what they call information design. For our purposes, we can think of this as document quality. A couple of years ago, they published Criteria for Clear Documents: A Survey in which they compared the…
-
A little platitude humor
To honor both my love of puns and my disdain for platitudes, I’m sharing this Duck-Billed Platitude cartoon today. For more on the fight against platitudes, see Tracy Allison Altman’s recent post over at Evidence Soup on the lack of evidence in — and about sales of — business books. Happy Friday!
-
Enjoy some cod English today
This post has nothing to do with writing in the workplace. But I discovered the Inky Fool not long ago. An entertaining site for those who love language. You’ll find a post by Mark Forsyth on Cod English that includes the delightful video below, which is credited to an Italian entertainer named Adriano Celentano. I assume…
-
Pros right visuals for presentations
OK. I know the title of this post is a little strange because of the use of “right.” But it captures the lesson I try sharing with anyone who asks me how to be a better presenter. Getting the visuals right is the single biggest hurdle for most folks. (Read a little more before you dismiss this…
-
Another lesson on the oxford comma
Related articles A little fun related to the Oxford comma (proswrite.com) A light-hearted lesson on the Oxford comma (proswrite.com) The Oxford comma: Decried, defended, and debated [infographic] (holykaw.alltop.com) OnlineSchools.com Infographic Debates the Use of the Oxford Comma (prweb.com) The Best Shots Fired in the Oxford Comma Wars (mentalfloss.com)
-
The genre of email requests
It’s been a while since I offered up a post on writing a specific genre. (If you need a brief introduction to what I mean by “genre,” read Pros have contextualized knowledge.) I thought I’d tackle email. Radicati Group, a technology market research company, estimated that nearly 90 BILLION business emails were sent a day in 2012….
-
Email etiquette for students
Many college students misunderstand the level of formality appropriate in email to faculty and staff. The New York Times did an article on this topic way back in 2006. The situation hasn’t improved for me since then. If you teach and are frustrated by the email you receive from students, I’m making a plea to…
