Taylor Huckaby, who posts on the Twitter account of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), just turned honesty into a full-fledged funding debate. I’ll show you what’s special and effective about his tweets. Here’s what Huckaby tweeted in response to a complaint. @shakatron BART was built to transport far fewer people, and much…
There is no better way to tell the hard truth than with a joke. First, the audience laughs. Then they think “why is this funny?” Then they get your point. Then they change. That’s why Chris Rock’s Oscars monologue was so telling, while Motion Picture Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs’ apology was so pathetic. Humor…
California middle school teacher Leilen Shelton wants her writing students to eschew simple words like “good,” “said,” and “fun,” according to the Wall Street Journal. To demonstrate the problems with this dumb idea, I rewrote a news article about terrorism, replacing all the mundane words with longer ones. Misguided writing teachers are responsible for much of the bullshit…
You’ve completed a draft and you’d like a review. This is your chance to tell the editor clearly what you need. Or, you could start with excuses. It’s your choice. When you turn over a draft for editing, there’s always stuff that you worry is weak or wrong. Resist the urge to hide your weaknesses. This is…
Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn is gone. But on his way out the door, he described the company’s massive, deliberate fraud on his customers and the environment as an “irregularity.” That’s bullshit. Here’s what happened: Volkswagen jiggered the software in 11 million of its diesel cars to conceal how much they polluted. “Clean Diesel” is a pillar of Volkswagen’s marketing….
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…
The social network Reddit is in trouble. Lots of its popular “subreddit” forums went dark as volunteer moderators protested the firing of Victoria Taylor, a popular Reddit staffer. But rather than stonewall, the company’s management is now attempting to tell the truth, clearly and transparently. It’s working. Communication succeeds when it’s matched to the audience. The audience…
When writing documents, posts, or emails, keep one thing in mind above all others. I call it the Iron Imperative of writing: Do not waste the reader’s time. To help you internalize this, remember the Golden Corollary: Treat the reader’s time as more valuable than your own. To act on this, you must internalize the…