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Blog Du Jour
Presentation Blogs
Wed Nov 22 00:00:00 EST 2006
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Dog Eared
Storytelling
Mon Nov 20 00:00:00 EST 2006
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Candlepower
A Value-Added, Outside-the-Box Sea Change
Mon Nov 20 00:00:00 EST 2006
If you've heard them once, you've heard them a thousand times: "Back to the drawing board." "Get our ducks in a row." "Do the heavy lifting." "Think outside the box." We're talking clichés, the banal staples of business meetings, conference calls, speeches, and web content. You're tired of them; I'm tired of them. Yet when push comes to shove, when our feet are to the fire, and--especially--at the end of the day, we keep coming back. Like moths to that bright, hot, flickering thing. It's a losing battle, the fight against clichés. But I'm tanned, rested, and ready; I have my game face on; I came to play; I'm good to go! Clichés, prepare to meet your unmaker.
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Blog Excerpts
Principles of Presentations
Sat Nov 18 00:00:00 EST 2006
David Maister, a management guru and author, writes a blog on professional life. In a recent post he discussed presentations and pitches: "When giving a presentation, you can focus on one of three things: your material (we must cover all these slides), yourself (let me impress you), or your audience (let me serve you in some way). Guess which it should be." Want the answer? Read the post here.
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Backstory
Lisa Tucker, author of "Once Upon a Day"
Sat Nov 18 00:00:00 EST 2006
The idea for Once Upon a Day came from something that happened to me when I was in New York to tape the CBS Early Show. I was on the way back to my hotel when the cab driver and I struck up a conversation. He was curious why I'd been at CBS, and I told him about my first novel, The Song Reader, which had just been released. He also told me about himself: that he was from Romania and had immigrated a decade before, that he loved New York, that he had two children, a wife, and a house in Queens. But then his voice became quiet as he told me that he was having some problems since 9/11. The World Trade Center attack had changed him, he said, and he didn't know what to do or how to change back. Then he looked in the rearview mirror and said flatly, "I've lost my hope."
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Word Count
Pop Language
Wed Nov 15 00:00:00 EST 2006
With the average American home watching more than eight hours of television a day, it's no wonder how we talk has become eerily similar to how they talk on the tube. Duh! Author Leslie Savan has studied the way popular idioms have crept into our language and -- long story short -- wrote an entertaining and enlightening book on the subject called Slam Dunks and No-Brainers. Just released in paperback, it was recently selected as a "Book for the Teen Age," by the New York Public Library and has been required reading at several universities. In her book, Leslie explains the phenomenon of what she calls "pop language." We phoned Leslie and said, Bring it on!
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Blog Du Jour
How to Write Like Stephen King
Wed Nov 15 00:00:00 EST 2006
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Dog Eared
On Language
Wed Nov 15 00:00:00 EST 2006
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"Bad Language"
Encouraging Your Staff to Write Better
Mon Nov 13 00:00:00 EST 2006
My company, Articulate, runs regular seminars in London aimed at getting companies (rather than individuals) to write better. Two questions always resonate: how to encourage staff to write better and how to give feedback. Get them right and you are on your way to being an articulate business.
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Blog Excerpts
Language of the Week
Sat Nov 11 00:00:00 EST 2006
A linguistics blog called Anggarrgoon runs something it calls "Language of the week." If you've ever had a hankering to know more about Hadza, Emberá or Anejomon, you found your blog! The site recently talked about Iñupiaq, "spoken in northern Alaska by roughly 3000-4000 people, mostly adults over 40." The post is quite fascinating. You can read it here.
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