If you have known or followed me for long, you know I am no grammar nazi. As I wrote recently, If my students’ language signals they may not pass inside the gate where professionals reside, I never tell them they’re wrong. I do sometimes tell them their language will elicit negative attention from more than a…
I have been totally consumed with my day job the past few days. The semester starts at Bama next week. Cause I don’t want ya to think I forgot ya, I’m sending you to a nice piece by Stan Carey, who blogs at Sentence First. He talks about word choice and defines “inkhorn” and “sesquipedalianism” for…
Yesterday’s post, Language choices can be unsuccessful — but never wrong, raised a few eyebrows. For some of you, my belief that language can never be wrong contradicts with my belief that I can prepare students for writing successfully in the workplace. The apparent contradition deserves an explanation. So today’s post is about grammar rules. (I’ll get…
I recently found a marvelous video of Stephen Fry talking about language. Here’s what the creater (Matthew Rogers) says about his video: Using the wonderful words of acclaimed writer, actor and allround know it all (I mean that in the best of ways) Stephen Fry, I have created this kinetic typography animation. . . I loved this particular essay on…
A couple of days ago, Gabe Doyle wrote an enlightening explanation of the psychology behind word choice. A writer has two options when deciding whether to use a word s/he has recognized as “questionable”: To satisfice by deciding the benefits of using it outweigh the costs To optimize by deciding to search for a better word…
Over at the NY Times, Errol Morris has conducted a very interesting test of the effect of typeface (you might call it “font”) on credibility. His article is definitely worth a read, but it requires a time commitment. For those of you who want the gist, use Baskerville if you want to maximize your credibility. In case…
I shared my position on the use of short lectures in a writing class a couple of days ago. But I told only part of the story from the video lecture-tutorial + teaching note that will be published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior Education. The amateurs in my courses depend on me to make a professional’s tacit…
I am NOT going to talk politics here. But check out Lucy Ferriss’ Of periods, serifs, and politics in the Chronicle of Higher Education today for an interesting interpretation of Obama’s campaign slogan. the dot at the end of the word is less a full stop than a bit of bling, like that light at the end of…
Today, I am correcting proofs for a teaching note that will soon appear along with my lecture-tutorial on tone in Journal of Organizational Behavior Education. The paper explains the teaching philosophy behind use of video lecture-tutorials like those I have been posting here at ProsWrite. (Click on the tab to view the complete collection on…
Research has clearly established that the vast majority of US business readers notice only two punctuation infelicities — even in formal documents. Today I am sharing a video tutorial to help those amateurs who struggle with the two issues that elicit the most negative attention: comma splices: using a comma to mark a sentence boundary sentence fragments:…