You may have noticed that the more I get my dander up, the more sarcastic I get, and nothing does it as well as a Communication Pet Peeve! Here's what happened. My husband gets a bunch of emails from various Marketing Gurus each day. Every so often they invite him to a free seminar where they give away a small amount of free information about marketing your business and then ask you to spend anywhere from $374 to $1997 for their eBook, software product, or consulting services. We've been to so many of these the formula is obvious. It begins with 15 minutes of the host telling you why the Speaker Guru is so great followed by 15 minutes of...
Your English teacher always told you to study your vocabulary words because it was important. Why? Because the bigger our vocabulary, the stronger the likelihood that we will choose the correct word for the situation. Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” The more words we have at our command, the more precise our description and the more effective our communication. To that end, today's Word of the Week is: pansophy \PAN-suh-fee\, noun: Universal wisdom or knowledge. From the Greek, pansophy is comprised of the root words pan meaning “all” and sophy meaning “wisdom.” As I looked at this word, it reminded me...
Last week I talked about the misuse (and overuse) of the word "literally." This week, I continue my series of misused words with the word, "Expert." Expert is another word that has "literally" been overused to the point of being lost in meaninglessness. With so many able to claim expert status on the net, everyone is an expert in something these days. Aren't you? If you've been on Twitter for any length of time, you will notice a huge influx of Marketing Experts and Social Networking Gurus. I'm followed by at least one per day! Hundreds of them per day spam my Twitter and email accounts with things like, "How to get six million followers before lunch!" and "Make money...
