Hello! My name is Derek Longenecker, and I am an undergraduate in the University of Alabama MIS (Management Information Systems) program. I am entering a new phase in my life as I graduate this December, so I took Leadership Communication (MGT 422) and will complete the Management Communication Specialization to better prepare myself for communication…
I saw this last week and thought I would share it today because I don’t have time to write much. (I’m in Atlanta for a few days at the AACSB Accreditation Conference.) According to a cab driver from Cairo, car horns are used by drivers there to communicate more than their frustration. Several morse-code like…
Got that frivolous Friday feeling? I have exams to grade so, naturally, I was looking for a diversion this morning and thought I’d share three of my attempts. Diversion 1: Identify the pun performed by today’s photo from doozzle. Diversion 2: Check out the pronunciation humor in this Berlitz ad. Diversion 3: Watch the short video on…
This post follows up on a couple of earlier ones about a letter soliciting sponsorships for an outdoor sign at The First Tee of Tuscaloosa. Pros don’t settle for platitudes about audience described the principled way in which we analyzed our audience. Pros plan message content strategically described how we developed the content for the first draft. This one describes…
Everybody loves show and tell. Check out this monthly event in Brooklyn. Sadly, the workplace equivalent of “showing” typically consists of PowerPoint slides filled with text. That’s tell and tell rather than show and tell. Everybody complains about PowerPoint. A Google search showed that “Death by PowerPoint” appeared 11,100 times in newly created web content in…
This post follows up on some conversation about the meaning of “specialist” after my On Being a Writing Specialist a few days ago. I had always used “specialist” and “pro” and “expert” interchangeably. That will change now that I’ve done some more reading and reflecting. I knew I would have to define what I mean by “pro”…
I have used the term “genre” — even in the titles of a few blog posts — a number of times. But I realized a couple of days ago that I have never explicitly defined the concept here. My bad! Most people are familiar with the word’s use in the context of music. If you use…
My name is Aylin Wispeler. I am from Germany and at the moment I am doing my exchange semester as an undergraduate student at University of Alabama. I am here to deepen my knowledge in management and communication in order to become an effective leader in my future. I will begin my required internship in only…
[Updated September 7, 2012] What do you think makes a writing specialist professional want to tear out [thanks, Joyce] her hair? Subject-verb disagreement? No. Business reports with double-spaced text? No. Plagiarism? Not really. Students who write emails to pros in text-message style? OK, maybe a little. But the REAL frustration is the widespread incompetence of people who…
One of the most important things any teacher or manager can do to help amateurs become pro writers is to discuss sample messages with them. The key here is discussing the sample message in sufficient, relevant detail and connecting those details to future messages the writer will create.** Here are the guidelines I’ve provided before to those introducing…