“Society pays dearly for all the experiments it could have conducted but didn’t. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, millions of crimes have been committed, and billions of dollars have been wasted because people have bulled ahead on their…
Blog Archives
Book Report: Mindware
Tagged with: cognition, confirmation bias, cost-benefit analysis, Daniel Kahneman, Dialecticism, Drunk Tank Pink, effort heuristic, emoji, endowment effect, fundamental attribution error, HiPPOs, ideomotor mimicry, illusory correlation, logic, loss aversion, Matthew Syed, Mindware, mulling, multiple regression analysis, Nautilus, representativeness heuristic, Richard E. Nisbett, Scared Straight, scientific method, spreading activation, status quo bias, sunk cost fallacy, Superforecasting, The HEAD Game, Thinking Fast and Slow, Will Durant, words that work
Posted in Books, Everything, Leadership, Math and Science
Posted in Books, Everything, Leadership, Math and Science
Technical Communications: Plain Language for Clear Communications
“One of the things that sets an organization up for failure is to assume that plain language happens after everything else is done; instead, think about it right at the beginning.” – Christa Ptatschek The most recent session of Communitech’s Technical Communications…
Tagged with: AODA, Christa Ptatschek, clarity, communication, Communitech, ESL, Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, George Orwell, International Plain Language Working Group, plain language, Randall Munroe, Technical Communications P2P, Thing Explainer, Up Goer Five, words that work
Posted in Everything
Posted in Everything
Book Report: Words that Work
“For most people, language is functional rather than being an end in itself. For me, it’s the people that are the end; language is just a tool to reach them, a means to an end. But it’s not enough to simply stand there and marvel at…
Tagged with: Bill Maher, corporate communications, Frank Luntz, George Orwell, Jack Welch, Robert F. Kennedy, Rudy Giuliani, Will Rogers, Winston Churchill, words that work
Posted in Advertising, Books, Leadership, Marketing
Posted in Advertising, Books, Leadership, Marketing
Why how you say something matters more than what you’re saying
“Those who define the debate will determine the outcome.” – Words that Work, p170 I’m an engineer by training. That means I enjoy precision, I get along well with numbers, and I’m fairly objective when presented with facts. But it…
Tagged with: communications, Frank Luntz, Medicare, personalization, words that work
Posted in Leadership, Management, Marketing
Posted in Leadership, Management, Marketing
Five words to supercharge your marketing communications
On more than one occasion I’ve gone through my company’s marketing material and completely eliminated particular words in favour of others: “flexible” is so bendy and wishy-washy, but “versatile” suggests something that can be put to use in many different and varied…
Tagged with: communications, efficient, Frank Luntz, hassle-free, imagine, innovation, investment, precision, value, words that work
Posted in Advertising, Marketing
Posted in Advertising, Marketing
The appeal of hope and optimism in communications
In a recent post, The Ten Rules of Effective Language (from the book Words that Work by Frank Luntz), I wrote about the importance of speaking aspirationally (rule #7). The most important take-away of that section was that messages need to say what people…
Tagged with: communications, Frank Luntz, Martin Luther King, optimism, positivity, Robert F. Kennedy, words that work
Posted in Advertising, Leadership, Marketing
Posted in Advertising, Leadership, Marketing
Language lessons from George Orwell
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” – George Orwell If rock legend Bruce Dickinson ever tells you that you need more cowbell, then you should listen. Similarly, when George Orwell gives advice about language and writing, we should…
Tagged with: communication, George Orwell, language, rhetoric, words that work, writing
Posted in Advertising, Everything, Marketing
Posted in Advertising, Everything, Marketing
The “Ten Rules of Effective Language”
Dr. Frank Luntz¹ is a political strategist and pollster who describes his specialty as “testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.” He begins his…
Tagged with: communication, Frank Luntz, lessons, presentation, public speaking, storytelling, words that work
Posted in Advertising, Books, Leadership
Posted in Advertising, Books, Leadership
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