Email is the number one preferred method of communication these days, but is our email communication effective? What renders it ineffective? What could strengthen it and make it more persuasive? When would it be best to just pick up the phone? These are the issues I'm going to be covering in a new article series I'm writing exclusively for my newsletter subscribers over the next several months. If you are not currently receiving our newsletter, you can subscribe here. It started with this month's newsletter article and continued with a discussion I had with my dad last week, but I believe most of the misunderstandings now take place over the internet. Email, texting, social media and Yahoo groups are immensely...
For your Friday Funny viewing pleasure this week, I bring you "The Front Fell Off." This is a mock interview of an Australian official regarding an oil spill. My hats off to these guys. Very funny! I now bring you the completely ridiculous politician's double speak.
Brought to you by the folks at Art of Eloquence: the FUN place to learn effective communication skills!
I grew up, as many of you, learning my plurals: One pickle. Two pickles. One man. Two men. One mountain lion. Two mountain lions. One person. Two people. So it bugs me when I see road signs in the carpool lane that say, "Two Persons or more" Can you imagine your 2nd grade teacher's response to, "I want to invite six persons to my birthday party." Do you think your boss might question your education if you suggested, "I just emailed 642 persons the details for our next business luncheon." So is it incorrect grammar to say 'persons' or just poor spelling? Actually it's neither! According to my research including this article, the word persons was the original plural of...
Authors just need to know how to write, right? Well, actually writing is a business just like any other. It requires various skills including communication skills. An author needs to be part of the marketing process even if he or she has a publisher: book signings, selling his next novel to the publisher. And an author needs to know how to be a great guest on a radio or tv show! My friend Felice Gerwitz over at Media Angels is hosting a series of seminars for authors on the various skills needed to be a successful author these days. I'll be teaching about the communication skills an author needs on Thursday, April 15th at 8am PST/11am EST. Her seminar on...
Euphemisms and political correctness have permeated our language leaving our communication bereft of all meaning! We are so concerned with not offending that we end up saying nothing of consequence and are beginning to sound like we are all speaking legalese! Often we expend so much energy, not to mention verbiage, in order to make the simple almost unintelligible: Once (but perhaps more times than I am aware of. For I am not counting myself among the gurus on the subject) upon a time, there lived three vertically-challenged, pink mammals with a reputation for gluttony. The first (though he was only first in order, not necessarily in preference) vertically-challenged, pink mammal with a reputation for gluttony made his warm seasonal...
