Everybody needs a short bio, whether its at the top of your LinkedIn page or on the bookflap of your first book. But it’s hard to write about yourself succinctly and objectively. That’s why people writing their own bios so often end up sounding like an idiot. Dear Dr. Wobs Why are bios so bad?…
In “The Biotech Devil’s Dictionary: Your Guide to the inanities of industry jargon,” Damian Garde of STAT News lists 16 bullshit terms that are common in biotech news and coverage. Why do they exist? To make the ordinary sound special. Here are part of his excellent list, with my own translations: 2.0 (adj.): A largely meaningless…
Salesforce is a great program for small business. Each of its customer sites has an administrator, many of whom are non-coders. That’s why a recent “critical update” featuring “block execution” sounded scary — but incomprehensible — to many. The salesforce email: simultaneously opaque and terrifying A correspondent working in a small financial advice firm forwarded…
When it comes to your passion for the NBA, Nike knows it’s the uniforms that really excite you. They’ve given 110% in their superlative- and jargon-packed press release. My critique feels like a slam dunk; let me know if you think it’s an airball. Here’s yesterday’s Nike release. I’ve put the superlatives and other weasel…
It’s been a tough week for Juicero, a startup company that makes an internet-connected juicing machine. Some Bloomberg reporters figured out you could make juice from the juice packs without using the Juicero machine at all. The CEO’s response on Medium is completely ineffective, because he can only see the world from within his limited, Silicon-Valley…
Cision, which makes tools for PR professionals, will become a $2.4 billion publicly traded company through a maneuver with a capital company. They’re holding a call to explain it Monday at 11. If you read those 31 words, you know everything you need to about this news. Press releases tend toward fluff. But this one —…
Much of the Internet was down for three hours last week. Because of an outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud-based service that powers Internet companies, hundreds of services like Medium, Slack, Quora, Reddit, and Kickstarter stopped working or worked poorly. Amazon’s Web geeks then bungled the response, focusing on jargon rather than clarity and empathy….
People keep sending me word lists. “Use these words,” they say. “Don’t use these other words.” If you want to be a better writer, these lists are useless, because they don’t change how you think. Words to ban from tech? This list is way too short Robert Dean lists “20 bullsh*t buzzwords that should be banned…
Want to write better? Change a writing habit. Here are ten ways to be a better writer: pick one, then stick with it. (Tell me which one you picked in the comments.) 1. Stop sending first-draft emails. Most of what you write is email. While it creates the biggest impression in aggregate, you’re not spending…