Posted in Writing on Aug 26th, 2009 No Comments »
I recently learned about a delightful little concept called Godwin’s Law, which says that the longer an online discussion drags, the more likely it is to make comparisons to Hitler or Nazis.
A corollary to Godwin’s Law says that in a debate, whoever makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis first loses.
The idea is somewhat [...]
Posted in Writing on Aug 19th, 2009 No Comments »
Watch this fun presentation by CNN iReporters about overused and misused words.
Embedded video from CNN Video
Posted in Writing on Apr 1st, 2009 No Comments »
The Washington Post reports that “‘Global War On Terror’ Is Given New Name.” The White House uses “Overseas Contingency Operation.”
Assuming that the new term is more accurate, does the accuracy justify the obscurity? Or is the new term a euphemism that, like many euphemisms, may be an attempt to deceive?
Years ago, Ronald Reagan avoided the [...]
Posted in Writing on Jan 23rd, 2009 No Comments »
I can’t remember ever seeing two news stories that cover one event so differently.
One story from CBS News portrays Obama as a friendly visitor, joking with reporters, having fun, interested in making relationships.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/01/22/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4748255.shtml
It is called, “Obama Pays Friendly Visit to White House Reporters.”
Another story from Politico, a site that I often suspect leans to the [...]
Posted in Writing on Jan 3rd, 2009 No Comments »
I love the irony in this quotation, which I found in William Zinsser’s essay “Writing in Your Job”:
Any institution that won’t take the trouble in its writing to be both clear and personal will lose friends, customers, and money. Let me put it another way for business executives: a shortfall will be experienced in anticipated [...]
Posted in Writing on Nov 11th, 2008 No Comments »
Today, I saw a newspaper headline that one can easily misinterpret. The headline appears in a major West-coast newspaper that published the article today.
“Palin Smears Hurt McCain”
When I first saw this article, I thought, “Why is John McCain feeling hurt, and why is Sarah Palin smearing him?” The four words for that kind of [...]
Posted in Writing on Sep 22nd, 2008 2 Comments »
As my students learn grammar, they often ask, how is this stuff supposed to help my writing? This week, as I teach parts of speech, I am planning to give some tips about how knowledge of the parts of speech can directly help one’s writing.
One area of help is parallelism. Readers prefer sentences that [...]
Posted in Writing on Sep 17th, 2008 No Comments »
Lynn Gaertner-Johnston says that a common problem within corporations is failing to target information to the right audiences. As a result, the sender can create hostility unintentionally. My experience with reading group emails within my organization is that senders often do a very good job with channeling communication to the correct groups. Click here to [...]
Posted in Writing on Sep 16th, 2008 No Comments »
By running the Flesh-Kincaid Readability Test, Microsoft Word allows users to identify how readable their writing is. Apparently, the Flesh-Kincaid Reading Grade Level uses a formula that is based on the average number of syllables in each word and the average length of the sentences.
When I learned about this feature, my first thought was [...]
