Acronyms deserve their bad reputation. Those TLAs (three-letter acronyms) are guilty of excluding, confusing, and delaying readers. And what's worse--many times we can't agree on what they stand for. Nevertheless, like carbohydrates, snowmobiles, and pigeons, there's a place for them.
For example, CEO is just right in the title...
Podcasting, adware, RSS feeds, firewall--these terms are all commonly found in blogs, on high-tech web sites, in consumer-focused articles, and in PowerPoint presentations across the globe.
But do readers know what these words mean? According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, many do not.
Here are some...
Many communication and marketing experts talk about having an elevator speech. It's the mini-speech you give someone to promote yourself, your idea, or your business. The connection with elevators is the idea that you have only 30 seconds or less--the time it would take to get to the top...
Yesterday I received Robert Middleton's weekly e-newsletter, "More Clients." The newsletter has a subscriber list of more than 40,000, and Robert is a top marketing resource for small service businesses.
This week's "More Clients" focused on repackaging one's products and services. Although it wasn't about writing, it reminded me that...
Mistakes. Mistakes. Mistakes. We all make them, even when we think we have proofread our documents.
Some mistakes are worse than others:
Written: The rent will be $200 per month. Intended: The rent increase will be $200 per month.
Written: You have a credit of $2,500. Intended: You have...
Never accept a grammar- and spell-check as foolproof.
Last week I was once again reminded of the limits of proofreading software. In a business writing class, participants were sharing the documents they had just written, when we discovered these grammar- and spell-check misses:
"between you and I" (change...
