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Horrendous corporate buzzwords
Please, do not speak like this at work: And, if you must occasionally resort to this sort of horrible corporate-speak in real-life conversations, whatever you do, don’t ever write like this! You have no excuse. Here’s a good list of terrible corporate lingo from software company Atlassian, and some suggested normal English alternatives that mean…
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Cracker Barrel’s PR statement: a fisking
How to say nothing in 425 words. Last month, Southern-style dining chain Cracker Barrel received major backlash after unveiling a new logo. Cracker Barrel is something of an institution, and the design change irked a lot of people. The old, familiar logo featured an overall-clad geezer sitting in a rocking chair next to a barrel.…
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So you want to be a journalist?
TLDR: Newspapers are dying but other formats are rising – so I would argue there are still job opportunities for tenacious journalists and wordsmiths. It might seem odd that in this era of rising illiteracy and the AI-accelerated collapse of writing skills, thousands of people still aspire to be journalists. Nearly 1,400 colleges and universities in the…
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James Dickey’s advice to writers
Poet and novelist James Dickey, author of Deliverance (the novel that was the basis for the 1972 film of the same name), offered some advice to aspiring writers in this 1982 “Writer’s Workshop” Q&A session hosted by the University of South Carolina: Dickey’s advice: Ask yourself one question: “Do I really love it? Do I…
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Martin Amis’s rules for writers
British novelist Martin Amis (1949-2023) was one of the great literary stylists of our time. Described as “the overlord of the OED [Oxford English Dictionary],” Amis sculpted some of the most caustic, vivid and hilarious sentences ever put to paper. The master wordsmith, who taught creative writing at the University of Manchester, also had some…
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