People frequently send me their pet peeves about email. And as you might imagine, I have a few complaints of my own. So rather than rant and rave another day about the productivity problem this email glut causes, I’m tossing out three tips not mentioned in previous blogs or interviews: Put the Action in the [...]
It’s bad enough to dial a “customer service” line and have to listen to a menu of seven options. But it’s even more irritating to get to the end of those seven options, and realize that you have to listen to them again because you can’t remember the direction by the time you get to the end of the spiel.
No worries. I’m not about to ask you to enter the confessional and own up to your worst sins. We’re going to talk only about the ones that surface when trying to write important documents: Those sales proposals that could win a big contract. That report that outlines what you’ve accomplished for the quarter. That [...]
All too often they don’t. A quick scan through the subject lines of the messages in my inbox provides very little useful information. The subject lines read… A Quick Question (They never are…) Time Sensitive (What isn’t?) May I Ask a Question? (No, I don’t have time.) Are You Available Friday at 3:00? (It depends.) [...]
Have five minutes to spare in exchange for quick, useful communication tips? I just posted five new videos. They might not have you rolling in the floor laughing, but I hope you find them worth your while! To view speech clips, media interviews, and other videos, visit my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/diannabooher. Dianna Booher [...]
After my comments about Morgan Freeman ran in the New York Post article last week, we’ve had a flurry of response. But the most intriguing call was from an interviewer yesterday morning, Kathleen Kurke, who posed this question: “How do you exude that same executive presence when you’re talking to a client on the phone [...]
If someone asked you to guess the most used word or phrase of 2009 what would you say? Healthcare? Economy? H1N1? According to The Global Language Monitor, it’s Twitter. “In a year dominated by world-shaking political events, a pandemic, the after-effects of a financial tsunami and the death of a revered pop icon, the word [...]
“You have a lot of trees back here,” I said to my husband one Sunday afternoon in his backyard after we’d been dating only a few months. “Yep.” “I thought you were going to be moving shortly?” “I probably will.” “So how long does it take them to grow—won’t you be moved before they’re big [...]
Are you curious about the three punctuation errors that surface most often when participants bring writing samples to our business and technical writing workshops? Although we haven’t kept a formal list, hands down, these are the three that take top honors: Run-on sentences (missing or inadequate punctuation) The biggest punctuation pitfall that renders a sentence [...]
Last year researchers at Oxford University published a list of the most irritating words and phrases. (Read my blog post and the Oxford list here.) Executives have now come up with their own list of overused clichés in the workplace. “When business or industry terms become overused, people stop paying attention to them,” said Max [...]
