English/Writing

Comma story - Terisa Folaron. What’s Really Hot on Dating Sites? Proper Grammar. When Jeff Cohen was getting ready to meet his OkCupid date for drinks in Manhattan, he started to have second thoughts as he reread the glaring grammatical error in her last message: “I will see you their.”

The date flopped for a couple of reasons, but bad grammar bothers Mr. Cohen. Learning a potential mate doesn’t know the difference between “there,” “they’re” and “their” is like discovering she loves cats, he says. Mr. Cohen is allergic to cats. With crimes against grammar rising in the age of social media, some people are beginning to take action. Mr. “Grammar snobbery is one of the last permissible prejudices,” says John McWhorter, a linguistics professor at Columbia University.

Mr. The Grade demotes people whose messages contain certain abbreviations, like “wassup” and “YOLO,” short for “You Only Live Once,” popular among young people who want to justify doing something risky or indulgent. Words to eliminate from your vocabulary - Business Insider. 40 Incorrectly Used Words That Can Make You Look Dumb. LinkedIn Influencer, Jeff Haden, published this post originally on LinkedIn.

While I like to think I know a little about business writing, I still fall into a few word traps. (Not to mention a few cliché traps.) Take the words "who" and "whom. " I rarely use "whom" when I should -- even when spell check suggests "whom" I think it sounds pretentious. 11 Common Grammatical Mistakes And How To Avoid Them. 38 Common Spelling and Grammar Errors - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.9) Amazon's Jeff Bezos: The ultimate disrupter. FORTUNE — Jeff Bezos likes to read.

That’s a dog-bites-man revelation if ever there was one, considering that Bezos is the cerebral founder and chief executive of a $100 billion empire built on books. More revealing is that the Amazon CEO’s fondness for the written word drives one of his primary, and peculiar, tools for managing his company: Meetings of his “S-team” of senior executives begin with participants quietly absorbing the written word. Specifically, before any discussion begins, members of the team — including Bezos — consume six-page printed memos in total silence for as long as 30 minutes. (Yes, the e-ink purveyor prefers paper. How to Write with Style: Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Keys to the Power of the Written Word.

Find a Subject You Care About Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about.

It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

Do Not Ramble, Though I won’t ramble on about that. Keep It Simple As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. Software Co. CEO Has 'Zero Tolerance' for Poor Grammar - Teaching Now. Learn a Language in 10 days. How To Get Through The Great Gatsby At Breakneck Speed [Video] Remember Cliffs Notes?

There’s a new video on YouTube that is basically like reading Cliffs Notes but without all that, well, reading. Rather than you spending even a half-second reading one of the great American novels, John Green walks you through the broad themes and character developments at breakneck speed. In the first video of what will likely be a series, John whips through the introduction of The Great Gatsby and does a pretty great job at making his video fun to watch and easy to understand.

He throws in pop culture references, relative descriptions, vivid imagery, emotion, and really fast talking. Combine all that with some creative editing (each shot is about 5 seconds long so viewers don’t lose interest, sad isn’t it?)

Footnoting

Gallery of ASNE Award-Winning Leads. A waiter fond of poet Ralph Waldo Emerson attends morning prayers at his church, steps across the street and hijacks a school bus.

Owing $15,639.39 in back taxes, wielding what he says is a bomb, Catalino Sang shields himself with disabled children. Death to high school English - Education. Like so many depressive, creative, extremely lazy high-school students, I was saved by English class. I struggled with math and had no interest in sports. Science I found interesting, but it required studying. I attended a middling high school in central Virginia in the mid-’90s, so there were no lofty electives to stoke my artistic sensibility — no A.P. art history or African-American studies or language courses in Mandarin or Portuguese. I lived for English, for reading. History Re-Written. Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking.