I’ll respond to the headline with another question — “Are you just kidding yourself?” If you think your writing works as well as you imagine it does to boost your business or your favorite cause, then maybe you are kidding yourself. By the time we reach adulthood, with school and perhaps even a graduate degree […]
If you must smoke, please do it quietly! Yesterday a friend asked if I’d like to speak at his Rotary Club in a few months. We tentatively agreed on a topic, namely the title of this post. The following is a preview of some of the territory I expect to cover in this and another […]
Verbiage is often pronounced – mispronounced – to nearly rhyme with garbage, something with which it has a bit in common. Hold onto your hats. Here comes another language-related rant. This one’s about the widespread misuse and mispronunciation of the word verbiage. I can’t tell you how many times, as a writer, I’ve been asked […]
Nearly a year ago I wrote about unnecessarily windy phrases like “next week Wednesday” and “15-year anniversary.” It seems, however, that the wind never stops blowing. Have you ever noticed how people sometimes appear to forget simple words and instead use liberally loquacious locutions (there’s one!) whose extra length only makes reading tiresome? Want another […]
