Passive voice sentences conceal who is acting and create creepy feelings in the reader. Fixing them reveals the truth and improves the tone of your writing. If you write advice or instructions of any kind, here’s your tutorial. Look at this example I encountered last night at the Red Sox game, where the team wrote the rules for “Friendly” Fenway…
Hiring is hard enough. If your job description says “we’re full of bullshit,” you’ll attract bullshitters and repel genuine human beings. Here’s the gist of my advice: write shorter and speak directly to applicants. If you want to see how not to do that, check out a job description Johnson & Johnson has posted (hat-tip to the brilliant…
The word “expected” is a clear sign of bullshit in any written material. Here’s why: Writing contains two kinds of easily distinguished statements: facts and opinions. The writer vouches for the facts. And over time, you can see if the opinions turned out to be true. But a statement with “expected” is an opinion stated…