By Jason Menard
They’re powerful words designed to provoke a reaction. For some, that reaction is shock, for others its indifference, whilst some feel revulsion. But the biggest risk with swearing is that words used for emphasis can actually diminish your overall credibility.
I recently received a comment from a reader of this blog who started off his diatribe with “You guys need to get your fucking facts straight before you put shit like this on the internet…” Continue reading
By Jason Menard
You know the old adage about what you should call a spade? Well, run that tool through a marketing department and it’ll be time to call a spade an efficiency-increasing earth adjusting implement.
And in the case of a Toronto Star article that ran today discussing the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, the fog created by biz speak can run the risk of creating a tool that ends up doing the wrong job for its users. Continue reading
Fishermen aren’t the only people who lament the one that got away. For those of us in writing/editing positions, the one that got away is not just a reality — it’s a daily fear with which we live every day.
The one that got away, for writers and editors, is the dreaded mistake. It’s the misspelled word, the misplaced letter, or — most recently in my case — the word that eluded the delete key in a sentence that underwent one-too-many revisions. Continue reading
By Jason Menard,
HootSuite’s April Fool’s email prank worked because it preyed on two things: one of our greatest fears and one of our greatest weaknesses.
Many HootSuite users received an email, ostensibly from Ryan Holmes, the CEO of HootSuite, which outlined the company’s proposed move to social gaming with its new application Happy Owls. Continue reading
By Jason Menard
For the most part, business communications prefers to prefer quantity over quality. That increased volume of chatter is usually filled with hot air – and can explain why some companies ‘blow’ so much when it comes to social media.
One of the most exciting things about the social media revolution, to me, was that it seemed to be pushing companies towards a way of connecting with their clients and customers in a way that was more open and honest. It’s still a challenge for many businesses simply because, for years, there’s been a belief in the power of Biz Speak. Continue reading
The M-Dash by Jason Menard 