Women on the Move
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Actually, we can speak with confidence and professionalism
I have like totally noticed professional women at all levels undermining their authority by (unintentionally) "up-talking," that is, turning their statements into questions. In a recent post
Why do we need hyphens?
The wonderful tweeters at
Body language and the debates
Check out this fantastic interactive New York Times piece on the candidates' body language and what message it conveys to voters. Wonderful insights for speakers!
Come “Bridge the Gap” with me
You may have heard some of the recent hubbub about law school graduates' lack of preparation for the real world of law practice. Well, just in time for new associates to get the training they need to hit the ground running, PLI is offering a
Taking instructions way too literally
We've had some fun with cake wrecks before, and it looks like it's that time again. My son Levi's 6th birthday is this weekend, so I couldn't resist sharing this gem,
The audacity of punctuation: Word nerds stopped by Obama slogan, ‘Forward.’
Forget the audacity of hope -- Obama's real audacity is grammatical. Obama has ruffled some feathers recently, but not exactly the same feathers he regularly ruffles. This time it's the word nerds, and even more specifically, the punctuation nerds, who are displeased with the President. The source of their displeasure? A period. That's right, a small dot no larger than the tip of your pen. More specifically, the period that follows his new one-word slogan, "FORWARD." According to a
Kill the zombies, free the verbs
Thoughtful legal writers generally do a good job of eliminating unnecessary uses of passive voice. So why is their writing still so abstract and dense? The culprit is nominalizations, or
The generational split on infinitives
So, lawyers ask me pretty regularly what the deal is with split infinitives. The deal is this: splitting infinitives is perfectly acceptable according to every respected style authority. (Grammar Girl has a nice explanation of what a split infinitive is.) But (yes, there had to be a but) plenty of very, shall we say, senior attorneys and judges persist in condemning infinitive splitters as unsophisticated writers.
We don’t need no education!
Oh my. I knew that schools no longer teach grammar and diagramming the way they did back in the day. Now I'm thinking that's for the best. Better to let kids pick it up on the streets than have them learn from the educators responsible for these doozies, as reported by Daily Writing Tips.