How are you at handling criticism? I don't mean comments about your driving or your housework or your management style. And I particularly don't mean criticism from your kids. (Anyone who can tolerate that with grace deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for parenting.) I'm talking about criticism of your writing.  Continue reading...

It's hard these days to be in the computer business and avoid "the cloud." All the big companies — Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Cisco, and Apple, among others — tout their cloud services. For the most part, the folks who have to think about cloud computing are programmers. But odds are that you’re using the cloud today, and definitely will be tomorrow. What is "the cloud," anyway?  Continue reading...

Last month, The AP Stylebook, the style guide for many American newspapers, finally gave up on restricting hopefully to its original meaning, "in a hopeful manner." The stylebook now also allows hopefully to be as a sentence adverb meaning "it is hoped" or "it is to be hoped that."  Continue reading...

The Internet offers writers unlimited space and so, for many, their writing expands expansively. Readers, however, have limited attention spans. So here are a few circumlocutions, or wordy phrases, that seem particularly ascendant. Occasional use of them may be needed for clarity, but most of the time, it's just inattentive or bloated writing.  Continue reading...

What's your Twitter threat level? Tweeting a word that's on the federal government's terror word watch list could jump you up from green to red in 140 characters or less. And that could get you some unanticipated scrutiny from the Department of Homeland Security.  Continue reading...

The good times were back on Wall Street, the news report said. Executives of an banking firm were staying at "some luxury digs in New Dehli." But, the report added, "This is not a pure junket, to be sure." The executives would also be conducting some business.  Continue reading...

Fine, call me a Luddite or, even worse, a late adopter, but I say, Kindle-schmindle, Nook-schnook, give me a good old-fashioned book.

Yes, I have adopted, step by reluctant step, each new advance of the digital realm, Facebook, Google, Wikipedia and all the rest, and I've grown used to the virtual media's constant changing despite my constant grousing.  Continue reading...