Are you keeping up with the adorbs new words?
You may have missed the latest crop of words welcomed (or possibly just reluctantly allowed) into the English language, but you have surely heard many of them. Binge-watch is one example, something I did with some friends catching up on Downton Abbey seasons, and...PIC session shares how to market yourself with social content
For a switch, here’s a summary of the session I attended last night with IABC/Toronto’s Professional Independent Communicators and Donna Papacosta, created with tweets. (View the link here if the text isn’t visible below.) Be sure to scroll to the...
The ultimate list of pricing resources for independents
Money is always a touchy subject, isn’t it? Equal pay for equal work done by men and women is still an issue. Companies don’t seem to want employees sharing salary info. Independents rarely share billing information either, and we’re always wondering if we’re charging...Avoid jargon monoxide with the Son Test
Newsletter articles and any other writing — speaking too! — can be improved if you cut out “hollow and meaningless” business language. This gobbledygook is also known as jargon monoxide, a wonderful term I discovered this week in a tweet by Stanford...
10 ways to jump-start your blogging mojo
The last time this happened, in 2012, a Google search pulled up a piddling 31,000 hits. This time, “lost my blogging mojo” brought up more than 700,000 results. I think I am in good company. There are lots of reasons why I seem to have lost my blogging mojo, including...
My new mantra is, ‘Why not?’
If you read this blog, you know that it’s been one helluva a year. Recognizing the fragility of life, my new mantra (“a frequently repeated word, phrase, etc.; a slogan,” to quote the Canadian Oxford Dictionary) is “Why not?” When an...
Lessons from the Dogfather
Jake was our first dog. He’ll probably be our last dog, too. Long before we got our black Lab, I was already imagining the pain of saying goodbye to a treasured member of the family. Our youngest son was just 10, so I figured by that time, he would be old enough...
The expressive language of loss
Any writing can be improved by careful attention to words that convey meaning or emotion, or metaphors and analogies that bring a concept to life. The July issue of my newsletter, Wordnerdery, shares some wonderful examples of expressive writing I’ve found...