“All your people write long narratives that we have to wade through! We’d have our writing problems licked if we could just get them to jot things down simply in bullet points,” the president snapped at his partner. “Everything can’t be boiled down to bullet points,” the older partner and chairman of the board responded. [...]
“I’m tired of going to court because these lawyers don’t know how to use a which clause or where to put a comma.” A vice president and general counsel of a large oil company made that statement to me early in my career just as he was contracting my training company to lead business writing [...]
What does your writing say about your personal brand or that of your company? For all the words you speak during the average day, my guess is that you write with far less confidence—and often less fluently. Yet your business and your brand depend on what your writing can deliver: attention-grabbing emails and letters to [...]
Does what you say sync with what you do? In addition to meeting your deadlines, achieving all your project goals, and staying within budget, establishing trust in your communications is vital to your career. In both oral and written communication, including your social media interactions, a lack of trust will lower your hallway credibility. And [...]
You’ve heard this old adage: Never call “Help” in a crowded street while trying to explain a problem to passersby. People will simply ignore you, mistaking you for a crank, a crackpot, or a crook. Instead, the police advise you to yell, “Fire.” A short shout that appeals to self-interest gets attention. The same proves [...]
Our consumer culture loves new things. We thrive on the latest trends, gizmos, and gimmicks. But sometimes the right message for the moment resides on your bookshelf or eReader inside the pages of a classic written a hundred years ago. As you aim to communicate with your audience, don’t always assume that you need to [...]
—“As we discussed when I made you aware of the problem with X…” —“As you may recall on May 4 that issue surfaced and no decision was announced at that time, so the assumption seemed to be that…” —“To follow up our phone conversation in which you instructed me to…” If your documents and those [...]
The “information should be free” controversy has been raging for the last several years with no signs of resolution. Big money rests on the outcome. Google argues their right to collect it, categorize it, archive it, and grant admission for others to get to it. A decade ago newspapers claimed they owned electronic rights of [...]
I’ll admit it right upfront: I’m not the best at parallel parking. Mark me down for at least two or three tries on each occasion. But when it comes to thinking, I show marked improvement. Why’s this so important? Parallelism leads to comprehension. Without it, confusion reigns. Yet, otherwise very bright people make parallelism errors often in their speeches, [...]
To pose a frequently asked question: Does size matter? Document length, that is. Do more details lead to more definitive answers? That question was debated about the healthcare bill and is now being batted around regarding the new financial regulatory legislation. What’s the link between words and worth? Take, for example, the new financial reform [...]
