A comment on What counts as good advice when writing a sales letter led me to today’s post about evidence. (Thanks, Ambrose.) The quality of evidence tells me what I should believe — what we know — about sales letters. I’ll do my best to avoid heady philosophy here, but paying attention to knowledge means…
If you’re entertained by invented languages, you’ll enjoy this podcast from The World in Words. It lists both old and new novels which include an invented language. Plus a weather report in Elvish for Tolkien fans. Enjoy! Related articles New Zealand Weatherman Gives Forecast in Elvish (VIDEO) (blippitt.com) Auden and Elvish (newyorker.com)
I think this video is a terrific way to share the spirit of the holidays for those of us who believe in the power of words. Life has gotten in the way of blogging since Thanksgiving. I can’t apologize as it would be insincere. But I do promise more content soon!
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….
A sales letter (or email) is designed to entice a reader to become a customer of the writer. The most common approach to training writers to create a sales letter is called AIDA, standing for Attention Interest Desire Action It was developed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis based on his practical advertising experience in the US before the…
My name is Jessica Crew. I’m a graduate student at the University of Alabama studying Communication Studies and have a personal interest in business and organizational communication. For these reasons I enrolled in Dr. Campbell’s Leadership Communication course. The exam below is an analysis of Nelson Mandela’s effectiveness as a leader in the movie Invictus. This was…
I like to highlight best practices in writing for the workplace when I see them. Here’s a terrific example. This morning, Judy Knighton posted Listen to your readers! at Write, “a professional services firm that helps government and business organisations create clear, reader-friendly communications” located in New Zealand. I’ve written about audience analysis and posted a video tutorial on…
If you need evidence that people feel passionately about language, check out a plain language summary of research published by Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics at Monash University in Australia. The summary appeared today in the Linguistics Research Digest, a terrific resource for locating more than platitudes about communication. Their goal is “to provide up-to-date reports on the…
I recommend Gavin’s post about pie charts — especially for his “makeover”! Related articles I give up, I am embracing pie charts (simplystatistics.org)
I posed a linguistic puzzle about the Chickasaw language, and I owe you the answers. By process of comparison and contrast based on the data given, here are my translations of the six sentences presented in the challenge: The man loves the woman. → Hattakat ihooã hollo. The cat stinks. → Kowi’at shoha. I love…