Donald Trump’s interview about technology on breitbart.com is uncharacteristically equivocal; he sounds like any other politician. Apparently, his batshit candor is limited to tweets, debates, and speeches. Memo to Trump-haters and opponents: technology is his weak spot. Breitbart Tech’s Milo Yiannopoulos interviewed Trump about tech issues from the NSA to artificial intelligence. Full of equivocation and hedges, Trump’s…
Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, announced a huge increase in the cost of his drug for a life-threatening disease. Then he backtracked. By analyzing his passive statements, you see exactly how a scoundrel evades responsibility. After acquiring the drug Daraprim, used to treat the sometimes deadly parasitic infection toxoplasmosis, Turing Pharmaceuticals hiked the price from $13.50 to…
Business writers are boring. It’s tedious to read their email, Web sites, and white papers. Standing out from this grey background just takes a little color, and it will boost, not harm, your professional reputation. Boring text is not only dull to read, it’s dreary to write. Your readers are seeking information, but you’ve still got a responsibility…
I just finished Steven Pinker’s book on writing style. I like Pinker’s take on writing; I learned a lot from it. It’s a great guide and you should read it, but be aware that business writers need to bring a different and more practical perspective to the advice in this book. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker is…
Google CEO Larry Page’s reorg announcement — about creating a new parent company called Alphabet — is clear, direct, and personal. It’s way better than any press release. You should learn to write like this. Frankly, I had just been reading all the articles attempting to “clarify” this announcement until I finally read Larry Page’s post…
Say what you will about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, but he finally figured out how to publish something clear on deflategate. Or putting it in the terms that the Wells Report used, it is “more probable than not” that you can actually figure out what Roger Goodell is saying. Look, Goodell is a mess. It took…
I wrote yesterday about the Times’ journalistic lapses and passive-voice innuendo in reporting about Hillary Clinton’s email account. Later on Monday, Margaret Sullivan, the New York Times‘ public editor, explained how the paper screwed up in an article called “A Clinton Story Fraught With Inaccuracies.” While her explanation clarifies what happened, it uses passive voice to allow…
If you opened your New York Times on Friday, you got the impression that the Justice department was opening a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton. Actually, it isn’t. After the newspaper recognized its errors, it papered over the original article and headline with passive voice. You’d expect this sort of innuendo from outlets with a conservative…
I’ve cured many writers of the passive habit. I can cure you, too. All it takes is the 5 R’s: recognize, raise awareness, reconsider, rewrite, and retrain. Think of this process the way you’d think of changing your diet. Let’s say you want to cut down on sugar. First you need to recognize why sugar is a…