Talk Archives

The “Lean and Mean” Message

Every so often I hear the expression "lean and mean" applied to United States industries. This week I heard it again, in an ASTD webcast called "Closing the Skills Gap," which focused on the challenge of filling U.S. jobs that require certain skills. The expression… continue reading

Email
Talk

Telegrams Give Way to Email

Late last month the last telegram was sent–the very last telegram. For those of you who are too young to have experienced the telegram, it is was a quaint typed message sent by telegraph lines (through Morse code) and delivered to one’s home by a… continue reading

RSS Feeds and Readers: Simple Steps

According to an October 2005 Yahoo publication, 96% of Internet users have never knowingly used RSS (Real Simple Syndication). Are you one of them? I was until today. Yes, I confess that I’ve been blogging since last June, but I just downloaded an RSS reader… continue reading

Email and Your Corporate Mission

Yesterday someone visited this site with an interesting search. The words in the person’s query were "linking mission statements with email etiquette." Those words immediately got my attention. What do mission statements have to do with email? I think there’s a strong link. The link… continue reading

What If We Signed Our Email in Ink?

Last week I met with my friend Ira, who is a senior vice president of human resources. We talked about business writing and about the errors that fill email. Here’s one of Ira’s thoughts: We put our name on what we are proud of. Is… continue reading

Pursue Peace

Today is a national holiday in the United States: Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Dr. King was a peace activist and a passionate advocate for social justice and racial equality. He was born on January 15, 1929, and assassinated on April 4, 1968. The holiday… continue reading

Resumes: Content & Ethics

In the United States, the hearings of Judge Samuel Alito for the position of Supreme Court Justice have brought up the subject of what to include in resumes and job applications. Unlike Judge Alito, most of us do not have our resumes combed through and… continue reading

Sales Reps, Answer Your Email!

Can you imagine a company turning away interested and ready customers? According to a 2005 study published by Benchmark Portal, many companies do just that–by ignoring inquiries they receive by email. The study evaluated 147 small and medium-sized North American businesses in the retail, travel… continue reading

Words to Ban in the New Year

Are you looking for a quick way to improve your business communication in 2006? How about banishing a few stale words and phrases from your presentations and documents? Lake Superior State University, in Michigan (USA), publishes an annual Banished Word List. Their list of words… continue reading

Found in Translation

Imagine that everything you wrote were translated into several foreign languages. How would you write differently? Would your sentences still be complex? Would you continue to use puns, cultural allusions, and slang? How about acronyms and abbreviations? For me, it’s more than something I have… continue reading