I was the guest speaker for a lively group of business analysts at the Treasure Valley IIBA lunch meeting today. During the Q&A they gave me some wonderful examples of miscommunication. (For those of you who don’t already know this, I’ll explain here that I collect such examples to use for trainings, workshops, and just [...]

Here is the corrected link to the freerice.com site.
Many thanks to the alert subscriber who pointed out that the link in my earlier post wasn’t working! I fixed it there, too.
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Language mavens take heed: you can feed the hungry and build your vocabulary at the same time, while slacking off online, by visiting www.freerice.com. The home page is built around an interactive vocabulary quiz, and for every word you guess correctly, the site’s sponsors donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations’ World [...]

Next Tuesday, April 8th, I’m presenting a luncheon seminar for the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce called “Words That Work: Business Writing Basics.” Can’t wait. It’s always a treat to get a chance to share useful, practical information that makes life and work easier for people. There’s nothing like witnessing those “aha” moments when something [...]

A well-educated, sophisticated client of mine whose practice serves her own well-educated, sophisticated clients brought up an interesting question about headlines this week. She had learned in an online marketing course that capitalizing every word in a headline — regardless of grammatical correctness — is a good way to get people’s attention, and she wanted [...]

Is it just me, or have the rest of you been noticing the proliferation of commas newly being added between the “Hi” and “[recipient's name here]” in email salutations?
One of the most intriguing and confusing things about email etiquette is its flexibility. The old conventions of letter writing don’t apply, and informality has become the [...]

Just read a colleague’s post — http://www.webinknow.com/2007/08/the-gobbledygoo.html — that makes my day. David Meerman Scott’s updated manifesto makes me feel so, well, validated. Having written more than my share of jargon-ridden pieces — always under tactful protest, having tried to point out the futility of using worn cliches instead of language that actually means anything [...]