Art of Eloquence Blog — offense RSS

Since our Birthday Bash Contest is coming to a close this month, this week is Birthday Bash week here at Communication FUNdamentals.  Monday, I shared a Word Scramble with two ways to get extra points toward our Birthday Bash Grand Prize.  So...for this week's misused word, I'd like to share a bit about the word bash. This word has been thrown around a great deal recently to mean anything from attacking someone verbally to interpreting something someone said as in some way negative.  It's the latter I'd like to discuss here today. Are we all just too sensitive? Merriam Webster defines bash as "to attack physically or verbally."  However, I've seen situations where a person has taken something someone said...

One of the biggest communication mistakes we make is assuming that others have the same frame of reference for topics, terms and ideas as we do.  This has always been a recipe for disastrous miscommunication, but in the Information Age where we communicate with so many different people from different cultures and backgrounds, it has become an even larger issue. First I'd like to give you a little history behind my asking the question, "Do you know what Mopar is?" Last Wednesday evening, my daughter, my husband and I were discussing how cars had changed over the years.  My first car, Iggy (a 1974 Datsun 710 with the pea green paint peeling off its nearly bald head) had no power...