Not long ago, I wrote about the limitations of considering only style as the textual element that determines plain language (or quality workplace writing). I made the point that over-reliance on style analysis is a reason software tools are not all that helpful. Well . . . I just had time to read the Johnson…
Glad to leave my sick bed and return to the land of the living . . . Here’s how this post started. Recently, my 17-year-old son did something dumb on the basketball court during his high school team’s game at a school in another town and earned his fifth foul. (For those with limited knowledge…
I’m working on a post about taboo words (that means swearing or profanity) that’s not ready for prime time — and recovering from the flu. In the meantime, I highly recommend today’s post over at Motivated Grammar. Gabe’s point is that, when people don’t actually understand how language works, they see decline and deterioration in language different…
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…
Today I’m sharing a little linguistic fun by directing you to an episode of the Slate podcast, Lexicon Valley. In case you’re impatient, one of the hosts provides a definition: the word malapropism comes from the name of a character in an 18th-century play called The Rivals by a guy named Richard Sheridan. There’s a…
Motivated Grammar provided an excellent discussion of word choice — specifically confusing homophones (like “your” and “you’re”).
Anyone who avoids full responsibility after making a mistake counts as an amateur in my book. This past week, my students discussed the purpose and effectiveness of a letter from a publications manager to a group of volunteer editors. The consensus was that it effectively informed readers about the reasons for performance issues in the manager’s area, as well as plans to address them in the…
In getting ready for my leadership communication class tonight, I have been thinking about power. After all, leadership implies power. Most management researchers differentiate among different bases of social power: Legitimate power (position, reciprocity, equity, & dependence) Reward power (personal & impersonal) Coercive power (personal & impersonal) Informational power (direct & indirect) Expert power (positive…
I’ve heard a few folks complaining about automated messages — thank-you emails to be specific. In Auto-politeness, revisited, one of The Economist’s Johnson bloggers wrote, Thanking is a real human response to a real event; I don’t know if it can be outsourced to a machine. Here is a personal example from a while back….
Last week, I wrote that subject-verb disagreement matters because it signals a serious breach in etiquette. And that distracts business readers. Relatively few of my former students (or writers for whom I served as editor) have committed the faux pas in the writing they have done for me. But, for those amateur writers who do struggle with subject-verb disagreement,…