Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: hermeneutical. I love few things more than reading about food, when two of my most intensely held pleasures combine into one glorious mouthful. When I read the New Yorker article […]
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Reading time: Less than 3 minutes Communicators need to use writing transitions — or bridges — from one sentence to the next. In that sense, we’re a little bit like ironworkers… Bridges, connectors or transitions are the words, phrases and stylistic devices that help direct readers through our writing. Sometimes I even like to imagine them as
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Reading time: About 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help other writers. Today I discuss a useful blog post by Susan Weinschenk. I’m a big fan of Susan Weinschenk AKA the Brain Lady, a PhD psychologist who writes about how to
Four magic questions… Read More »
Reading time: About 3 minutes I never thought I’d see the words crisis communications and Jian Ghomeshi in the same sentence. Now, they seem inseparable… If you don’t live in Canada, you might be unaware that Jian Ghomeshi was a media god in this country. He was host of the popular CBC radio program Q. He
Case study: crisis communications gone wrong Read More »
Reading time: Less than 2 minutes I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a glorious handful of metaphors from New York Times writer David Carr… I came of age during Watergate. The Senate Watergate committee began its nationally televised hearings in 1973 when I was
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: titivating. I discovered the writing of Sarah Waters about 10 years ago when I read her marvellous 2002 novel Fingersmith. A Victorian crime novel with fine writing and
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Reading time: About 3 minutes Having a “vocabulary” of writing problems might sound like a strange idea but there are some terrific benefits from knowing how to ID your bad writing… I was speaking with a coaching client last week about “bad writing.” Here’s what we decided: Most writing is neither bad nor good. Instead,
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help other writers. Today I discuss an article about Virginia Woolf… It makes me feel both guilty and inept to admit that I have never read a
Reading time: About 1 minute When things are going badly, many organizations want to act rapidly. But don’t make decisions too quickly…. Parents with “challenging” offspring learn one manoeuvre early on: they don’t dish out consequences too quickly. That’s because they know that if they have to retract or change their minds, they’ll lose face with their children.
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Reading time: About 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: excrescence. I haven’t seen the movie Frank. But I can tell you it’s a comedy about a young man who joins a band of pop musicians led by a guy named
What is an excrescence? Read More »
