Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools and senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists, says "my colleague Chip Scanlan publishes wonderful pieces on writing for the Poynter website." To read Chip's blog please click here.

Effective corporate communications means effective use of language -- not the "let them eat cake" model of discourse! These three blogs take a look at a trio of often-fumbled sides of business communications:

Crisis Manager is "for those who are crisis managers, whether they want to be or not." Scroll down to the post about a restaurant and a police department for a taste of disastrous crisis management -- and what you can learn from it.

ReputationXchange is written by a global public relations company's "Chief Reputation Strategist," who has studied how corporate and CEO reputations are shaped -- and shattered.

Spinfluencer looks at how PR and emerging technologies mix to influence public perceptions, written by a specialist on online public relations.

Nancy Friedman runs a verbal-branding consultancy called Wordworking, and contributed today's "Candlepower" column on naming. She suggests these blogs on language, branding and media:

Wordmall. "The labor of love of retired English teacher Michael Sheehan (who also contributes to the excellent online magazine Vocabula.com). Each post takes a familiar word or term -- one of my favorites is "bogus" -- and examines its history, etymology, and usage."

The Language Guy. "The lessons of linguistics applied to advertising, journalism, politics, and society. Written by a retired linguist, this blog is invariably well researched and feisty."

 Continue reading...

Brian Crosby, our featured educator in this week's "Teachers at Work" column, reads these blogs dedicated to innovating in the classroom:

Borderland by Doug Noon

Speed of Creativity by Wes Fryer

Mark's Edtechblog by Mark Ahlness

Around the Corner by Miguel Guhlin

Room 208 by Bob Sprankle

Finally, this is not a blog, per se, but Brian also recommends checking out National Library of Virtual Manipulatives for additional teaching resources.

The following blogs aim to keep grammatical foibles in check:

Literally, A Web Log, tracks abuse of the word "literally." You'll literally flip over the entries -- oops.

Apostrophe Abuse, even pings the New York Times for mussing up an apostrophe.

Groaners are overused, hackneyed phrases that ignite "a firestorm of controversy" in news writing.

Grammar Hell, urges you to fight back against "brutal assaults" on language.

Word lovers, listen up: Grant Barrett, creator of the Double-Tongued Word Wrester's Dictionary and a lexicographer at the Oxford University Press, recommends these blogs on language:

Separated by a Common Language. Lynne Murphy is an American linguist working and living in the U.K. She writes about variations between British and American English.

Language Log. One of the smartest group blogs on any topic anywhere on the Anglophone Internet, featuring respected linguists and grammarians commenting on the mundane, arcane, and profane. A key to the blog's success is that the various posters disagree as often as they agree? meaning more than one school of thought is represented, rather than whatever is faddish or fashionable.

Verbatim, the Language Quarterly. A neat and nifty newsletter with fun, funny, and quirky articles from a variety of authors. Edited by my Oxford University Press colleague Erin McKean.

Besty Bird, a librarian at the New York Public Library who blogs about children's literature on her popular A Fuse #8 Production website, suggests checking out these blogs to find out more about kid's books:

Read Roger run by Roger Sutton, the editor of Horn Book Magazine

Bookshelves of Doom run by Leila, a librarian of Kennebunk, ME

Big A little a run by Kelly Herold, a midwestern language professor

Mother Reader run by Pam Coughlan, children's library assistant in northern Virginia.

Oz and Ends run by J.L. Bell, a writer, editor and researcher.