As PR professionals, we often deal with placing a client’s op-ed with what we hope will be a reputable, widely read publication or platform. However, as anyone who reads small-town newspapers for fun and schadenfreude knows, many op-eds are pretty much unreadable. One can only assume they’ve been printed because there wasn’t any news about […]
As we enter a new decade, let’s all make a pact right here, right now. Let’s stop saying “two thousand” when we say the year. Guys, it’s 2010. That’s “twenty ten.” We’ve gotten away with saying “two thousand blah blah” for far too long. It’s ridiculous. No one at the turn of the last century […]
Are you sick of sounding silly when trying to use “whom” correctly? Of course you are. Here is how you figure out when to use “who” or “whom.” Whom replaces a subject where the answer to the question could be either “him” or “her” or “them.” I remember it like this: whom ends in an […]
To the chief bottle washer, Cog: Today, we’re staging a little intervention. Cog, we’re not doing this to punish you; we’re doing this because you’re our friend and we want what’s best for you. It’s getting to the point where you can’t handle it anymore. You’ll destroy yourself if you keep using at this rate! […]
Normally, any attempt to stifle what little creativity we have in this business makes my skin crawl. Really takes the cake. Gives me the pip. But in this instance, I have to put my foot down. Guys. Stop using figures of speech in your business writing. If I had a nickel for every time someone […]
Instead of my usual harsh judgment (my hammer of knowledge, if you will), this week I bring you a question. It’s an issue on which I’ve been waffling for some time. Backstory: Remember a few weeks ago, when Starbucks released their new instant coffee? Well, now Nestle’s Taster’s Choice would like to remind you that […]
One of our own, CTMichaels, is in the market for a new place. Like a lot of people, he’s going to be looking on Craigslist (CL) for the apartment and/or roommate of his dreams. Because Craigslist is the place where copy goes to die, I pleaded (nay, begged) CT to let me have a crack […]
It’s November, which means NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). NaNoWriMo can also be called “the month where all your wordy friends disappear from the planet.” If you’ve never heard of it, here’s the scoop: for the month of November, participants sign up for the NaNo challenge. Their goal is to write a 50,000 word novel […]
Wow. Guys. Did we really need to sit down and talk about how you probably shouldn’t steal? Man, I guess we do. So here it goes: when you steal words, pictures, or ideas from other people, especially people who live in the constantly well-documented world of the blogosphere, you’re not being cool.
Please consider this a gentle nudge in the direction of proper usage. I am not angry with you, dear thing. Almost everyone makes the same mistake time and time again. But for your elucidation: Editing is not the same thing as copyediting. When you talk about making sure all the commas are in the right […]