Why do people try so hard to have coffee with famous entrepreneurs when reading a book they’ve written is like getting many hours of their most crystallized thoughts? Drew Houston, the chief executive of Dropbox, posed that question when he was interviewed for “Corner Office,” one of my favorite columns... (Read More)
“Very is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen. For example, would you rather hear the mincing shallowness of I love you very much or the heart-slamming intensity... (Read More)
People often ask me whether it’s okay to start a sentence with the word and. And the answer is: Yes, it is.
Lest you beg to differ (I am sometimes met with raised eyebrows when I tell people this) here is what three usage experts have to say on... (Read More)
I just edited a bunch of case histories for a public relations firm. Most of the results cited increased visibility, which wasn’t surprising. Many companies strive for higher profiles and hire PR firms to help them do it. What was surprising is how fuzzy the word visibility sounded—not a good... (Read More)
I was recently on vacation in a cell phone-free zone. In the lounge of the hotel where I was staying, a sign invited me to leave my cell phone in my room. Its exact words were, If you want to use your phone, we invite you to use it in... (Read More)
When Aaron Bell, the CEO of an online advertising placement firm, interviewed with Microsoft when he was just 16 years old, he was asked, “How do you know the light goes off in the refrigerator when you close the door?” His response? “I would put my baby sister in the... (Read More)
I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to get to the full story—a humorous take on what to do about falling birth rates in upstate New York. The story, it turned out, wasn’t nearly as exciting as the headline, but that’s a topic for another bulletin.
Article titles, PowerPoint... (Read More)
(That’s my attempt at writing a “Jeopardy”-like clue.)
A milestone is, by definition, an important event, advancement, or development. Merriam-Webster goes one step further and defines it as a very important event.
So why do we tend to embellish this word with superfluous adjectives like important, major, and... (Read More)
She is untrustable, a political commentator said about Hillary Clinton the other day.
If you type that line using Word, a red squiggly mark will appear underneath untrustable telling you it’s not a word. She is not trustworthy, is what the pundit should have said.
People seem to... (Read More)
A friend presented me with the following two sentences and asked, “Which is correct?”
• “I walked; talking nonstop about anything to distract myself from the pain.”
• “I walked, talking nonstop about anything to distract myself from the pain.”
The second sentence—the version with the comma,... (Read More)
