Watch Your Personal Pronouns

Me, Myself and I
By COLLIN LEVY
The Wall Street Journal
January 14, 2008; Page A13

After months of presidential primary debates, town-hall meetings and cable talkathons, I hate myself. And I mean that in the most old-fashioned way.

For all the rhetorical flourish on display, many of the presidential candidates still don't have a grip on the King's English. That great American personal pronoun, the first person singular, which adorns nearly every sentence of candidate discourse, is still too slippery for many of this year's White House aspirants.

Speaking on Social Security, Democrat hopeful Barack Obama boasted that "here's an area where John (Edwards) and myself were actually quite specific." A few minutes later, Bill Richardson wondered, "What is wrong with having been like myself -- 14 years in the Congress, two Cabinet positions?"

Campaigning is certainly exhausting in a primary homestretch, which may explain this gem from Mitt Romney: "It is going to take a person who is himself an innovator like myself who has the experience to bring change to Washington." Republican contender Ron Paul noted proudly that "We have a lot of similarities . . . Barack Obama and myself, because our campaigns are made up of young people."

The new verbal tic is part trend and part defensive posture. Since the Me Generation, "I" and "me" have become increasingly tangled up as Americans have looked for ways around tricky constructions. As sportswriter Red Smith once put it, "Myself is the foxhole of ignorance, where cowards take refuge, because they were taught that me is vulgar and I is egotistical." In the same spirit, "myself" has become the campaign's de rigueur grammar cop-out, substituted for I or me when the candidate isn't sure which is accurate -- or worse, assumes Americans will see proper English as elitist.

Yet grammar still matters to a lot of Americans. Potential employers often report they are put off by job applicants who display bad spelling or grammar -- taking it as a sign of sloppiness, inattention to detail or lack of IQ. Why shouldn't voters hold the next leader of the free world to similar standards? Especially since, as Richard Lederer, former usage editor of the Random House Dictionary points out, when candidates "chicken out and use 'myself'" in place of I or me, "it shows an inability to take a stand" -- and isn't that something voters should care about?

The stakes are high, and the wrong pronoun can even change the meaning of a sentence. In his New Hampshire victory speech after the New Hampshire primary, John McCain told a cheering crowd, "Enjoy this. You have earned it more than me." (When he presumably meant, you have earned it more than I have.)

The misuse of "I" took its own toll on Bill Clinton in 1992. Running against then incumbent President George H. W. Bush, Gov. Clinton famously said: "If you want a spring in your step and a song in your heart, give Al Gore and I a chance to bring America back." The mistake spawned a pretty good media lashing, as it should have. New York Times columnist William Safire wrote in his language column, "Between you and me -- never you and I . . . the best answer is 'Give I a break.'"

By the time the 1996 debates came around, the president learned his lesson and dumbed it down. At the podium, Mr. Clinton remarked on the "big differences between Sen. Dole and myself."

Not that the 2008 candidates can't find support from the more flexible sort of grammarian for their innovative usage of "myself." One school of lexicographer holds that proper English is however people use it. So, though the classically-approved usage of "myself" is as an intensive ("I myself feel that way") or reflexive ("I hurt myself"), several dictionaries approve its "informal use" as an all-purpose substitute for "I" or "me." What's next, ketchup on hot dogs?

Defenders of heterodoxy say the casual usage has been around for centuries, finding mention in dusty old texts of Chaucer and other reputable English and American writers. But its growing use is intensely controversial among grammarians. "People who are shaky in their grammar think of "myself" as a safe usage," says Bryan Garner, former editor of Oxford's Dictionary of Modern American Usage, "but to a real snoot, it's bothersome."

To handle the skirmish, dictionaries now include tortured "Usage notes" on the casual version. The 2006 American Heritage Dictionary, referring to its in-house advisers, points out that "a large majority of the Usage Panel disapproves of the use of -self pronouns when they do not refer to the subject of the sentence."

One imagines a lot of furniture being broken up by American Heritage's more liberal experts. The dictionary goes on to say, "Seventy-three percent (of panel members) reject the sentence 'He was an enthusiastic fisherman like myself.'" The Panel is even less tolerant of compound usages. Eighty-eight percent find this sentence unacceptable: 'The boss asked John and myself to give a brief presentation.'"

Ahem, candidates.

Despite the excessive presence of "myself" in the current race, its emergence in political campaigning is not recent. John F. Kennedy used "myself" awkwardly once in his debate with Richard Nixon on Oct. 7, 1960, remarking on "the issue between Mr. Nixon and myself." Jimmy Carter used "myself" once in his October 1976 debate with President Gerald Ford, noting that "I think that we'll have good results on November the second for myself and I hope for the country."

Presidential campaigns have been dotted with stories of candidates maligned for misspellings and malapropisms memorable enough to define a political career. (See former Vice President Dan Quayle, whose misspelling of potato(e) in the days before spell-checkers turned him into a national punch line.) The most notorious of these has probably been President George W. Bush. So in the pronoun sweepstakes, he must be the worst offender of all, right?

He's not. Referring to his own grammatical quirks in a debate with Al Gore, the then Texas governor's usage was impeccable. "Well, we all make mistakes," he said, "I've been known to mangle a syllable or two myself."

Ms. Levy is a senior editorial writer at the Journal, based in Washington.

Drawing a Picture with Words

Drawing a picture with words is a powerful copy writing technique.

A good example is the The Kennedy Center promo piece I found in my mailbox the other day.

Here is how the author describes the exclusive atmosphere of the Center for us and appealing to our sense of exclusivity and high-culture:

"There is nothing else like the Kennedy Center in Washington! Think about that feeling you get when you first enter the Hall of Nations or the Hall of States. The way the outside world melts away as the majesty of the building -- its height, its history -- lifts your spirits.

Your eyes automatically rise to the colorful flags overhead as your feet sink into the thick red carpet below. Glittering light fixtures and dancing fountains combine to create an unforgettable experience even before the performance begins!"

Don't you feel you're already there savoring the height of the ceiling and the flags overhead?

That's powerful sensual writing.

Beware of Fake Hallmark Cards

It's that time of the season when people might be still sending each other "New Year Cards."

Some these ecards will point to ecard sites where you'll find a card from a friend waiting for you.

Some others, however, are phishing messages. If you click the link, an executable program will start running on your machine and god knows what will happen next! At the very least, a spyware code will be embedded into your system (if you're using a Windows machine).

Here is one I received today, supposedly from Hallmark company.

(Image to be added later on.)

The giveaway is the URL address that displays on the Status Bar when you hover your cursor above the link WITHOUT actually clicking it (don't!).

The link is pointing at

http://neander-buertechnik.de/card.exe

a web site in Denmark! And ready to unleash the executable "Card.exe"

Clicker beware.

"Doctors Without Borders" Gets It Right

Doctors Without Borders direct mail package does so many things right that it's worth mentioning here.

First off: they've got a great FREE OFFER that they announce right up front:

"Your Free World Map Enclosed."

How can you not open that envelope? Who does not like a free world map even if you've got a dozen already?

Secondly, you turn the envelope, and there it is -- a trust-builder hard to match:
"Awarded the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize"

Wow! They must be doing "something right"- correct?

I'm sure there aren't too many organizations out there who are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but if you've got even your Neighborhood Good Business Prize then don't hesitate; flaunt it. Right on your envelope.

Two more great things about this direct mail package.

Aren't we all worried "where the money is going to" when it comes to non-profits like this?



Fully anticipating such donor skepticism, DWB informs you with a very simple bar graphic that 87% of the money goes to Program Services, 12% to Fund Raising, and only 1% to Management and General.

Now that's the kind of non-profit I'd like to contribute to. I like that 1% figure very much.

Then the map... The first side looks like any other color world wall map.

But you turn the other side and you see great highlights of the services DWB offered in different countries under different trying circumstances.

COLUMBIA - Populations Isolated by Violence
SUDAN - Assistance to Displaced Populations
UGANDA - Meningitis Outbreak
CAMBODIA - Expanding Access to Treatment
IRAQ - Assisting Victims of a Brutal Conflict

That's good because without that the world map they gave would be pretty much meaningless.

However, as you can see, the copy is not even. The sentences do not follow the "parallel construction" rule.

It would be much better if all descriptions started with an action verb and reflected what the organization did for those local populations.

Here is the edited world map highlights with parallel construction:

COLUMBIA - Brought Health Care to Populations Isolated by Violence
SUDAN - Assisted Populations Displaced by Ethnic War
UGANDA - Treated Meningitis Outbreak Patients
CAMBODIA - Expanded Access to Rural Health Care
IRAQ - Assisted Victims of a Brutal Conflict

Once again, on the map, we are reminded by a simple pie chart that only 1% of the proceeds go to "Management".

A very heads-up and professionally done direct mail package. Good job!

Loose Copy Will Sink the Message

Envelope blurbs are great vehicles to increase the response rate in direct mail.

But here is the Number One Commandment of all envelope copy: Thou Shalt Not Confuse and Obfuscate.

Here are two recent direct-mail envelopes that I found in my mailbox recently that raise more questions than they answer.

1) The Kennedy Center

The back of the solicitation envelope that the Center mailed has a beautiful multicolor pie chart as an answer to the question: "How Important Is Kennedy Center Membership?"

So you look at the pie-chart to understand how important the "membership" is and guess what? NONE of the pie slices is labeled "Membership".

• The 37% slice is labeled "Contributions"
• The 19% slice is labeled "Federal Funds"
• The 44% slice is labeled "Ticket Sales & Other Earned Income"

So where is the Membership? I guess it's "Contributions"? But if that is so, WHY MAKE ME THINK?

Why not just call it "Membership" so I can establish an immediate visual connection between the Question and the Answer?

But it's not over yet.

The pie-chart is followed by a call to action: "Help make us whole!"

Yes, BUT HOW? That's not clear either.

Here is the Other Cardinal Rule of direct mail envelope copy - If you are asking the reader to do something, you should also provide specific steps to complete the requested action.

From the pie, it's not clear which slice should I help EXPAND to make it the WHOLE?

Should I help the Kennedy Center become WHOLE by increasing their Federal Funds?

Should I help the Kennedy Center become WHOLE by increasing their Ticket Sales & Other Earned Income?

Or,

Should I help the Kennedy Center become WHOLE by increasing their Contributions?

I suspect the Center would like me do the third pie-chart alternative.

Then why don't they simply tell me "Send in your Contribution today!" ?

The lesson -- do not force your readers to solve puzzles. That will drop your response rate considerably.

2) IONA Senior Services

Their motto, printed right on the envelope, reads:

"Experts on Aging"

Like in "we are experts in helping you get older"?

Probably what they meant was this: "Experts in Elder Care..."

What a difference the right and wrong copy can make.

Windows IE’s Research Tool

My regular readers know how much I like open source software and operating systems.

I’ve just had the privilege of having a look at the Beta version of (Linux) Ubuntu’s latest 7.1 upgrade, for example, thanks to the way my wonderful son keeps on top of these things. And I must tell you – it’s even BETTER than Mac OS X! It’s just awesome as we’ll all have the chance to appreciate it for ourselves when it’s officially released in October. (And of course, it’ll be FREE as usual.)

But I digress… despite all that, I still think Windows Internet Explorer holds a special place among all browsers because there are still a lot of things that are optimized only for Windows IE.

Take the Google Pages, for example, Google’s free and versatile web page design and hosting functionality. I’ve been using Google Pages for over a year now to host and maintain my main site www.writer111.com and I have only a SINGLE complaint: a number of editing functions work only if you are using IE browser on a Windows platform.

Today I’d like to bring to your attention to another great tool that is available with IE – it’s great built-in research tool, hidden under the Research button (two books under a magnifying glass).

You click it and a sidebar opens on the left.

Type in your search word and then click the drop-down menu button in the next field.

Windows allows you to make a quick search from the following sources:

Encarta English dictionary, Encarta Thesaurus in 3 languages, Translation module, Encarta Encyclopedia, Factiva iWorks, HighBeam Research, MSN Search, MSN Money Stock quotes, and Thomson Gale Company Profiles.

If you are a writer or researcher such functionality comes in very handy indeed.

How to Copy and Paste with OpenOffice on a Mac

I love OpenOffice because it’s a very powerful and FREE open source office application. Its lack of enterprise-level mail program (like Outlook) is its only shortcoming. Otherwise it’s (at least) as good as its Microsoft counterparts Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.

However you need to be careful if you have downloaded the Mac version of OpenOffice to your Macbook or any other Mac machine because Macs run OpenOffice through an outer shell program called X11. You first download X11 and then OpenOffice will work.

It works but not thew ay you are used to when it comes to Copying and Pasting text between OpenOffice and a non-OpenOffice application, like Safari or Firefox browser, for example.

Here is a must tip for copying and pasting text between your OpenOffice word processor and your email window. It’s a MUST because if you don’t know this you cannot copy and paste your text.

When you are in OpenOffice COPY by pressing CRTL+C.

But when it comes to PASTING it in your email window, use APPLE BUTTON + V.

No other combination will work since within the X11 shell, you can access your clipboard through the CTRL button only. However, when you are in the mail screen, you are no more in X11 but in Apple environment. Therefore you can reach the clipboard only through an Apple command, which is accomplished by switching to the APPLE BUTTON.

MS Excel -- How to join texts in different cells

Imagine you have the name of your company in cell A1 and the address in F1 but you would like to add the address to the company name and display them in a new cell, D1.

This is how you can do it:

Click and select cell D1.

Click the fx link to the left of the Formula Bar to display the Insert Function dialog box.

Select TEXT for category and then select the CONCATENATE function.

Click OK to display the Function Arguments dialog box for the CONCATENATE function.

In Text1 field insert the cell ID of the text “ABC Company” (which is A1 in this example).

In Text2 field, hit the SPACE BAR to introduce a space between two text fragments.

In Text3 field insert the cell ID of the text “123 Main Street” (which is F1 in this example).

Click OK and The Company name and Address will be now displayed in cell D1.

Obviously in as simple an example as this, you might as well just copy and paste the text from one cell to another too.

But imagine having 20 or 30 different pieces of text dispersed all over a spreadsheet. That’s when the concatenation function really comes in handy.

MS Excel can concatenate up to 30 text items, including the spaces.

Two Giants in Two Days

The world of motion pictures has lost two giants within the last two days -- Ingmar Bergman, and Michelangelo Antonioni.

I must admit that I could never take a shine to Bergman. His films left me cold, drained, without a drop of sunshine.

So why did I love Antonioni that much? His classic trilogy (“L’Avventura” (1960), “La Notte” (1961) and “L’Eclisse” (1962)) was not exactly a display of "fun under the sun" either.

But first of all, Antonioni's courage to leave behind the 2,300 years old 3-Act paradigm and sail towards the unchartered waters of emotions-without-a-plot really fascinated me.

Secondly, the way he brought the sense of modern alienation into focus will probably be without an equal for a long time to come.

His "Blowup" was not bad either but at the level of the Trilogy. "The Passenger" with Jack Nicholson is another latter-day Antonioni classic that should be on every cinema fan's must-see list.

The Italian master will be missed. And perhaps I'll write about him more later on.

For the time being, I'll refer you to this excellent NYT review.

Google's Killer App

By Brandt Dainow

Google Analytics 2.0 changes everything, and according to the CEO of ThinkMetrics, the competition is dead. They just haven't stopped moving yet.

Death by Google

Google has killed the web analytics software industry with the release of the new version of Google Analytics. The new version was released just under two months ago and is simply a quantum leap above any other analytics product on the planet.

In my opinion, Google Analytics does for the web metrics industry what the Google search engine did for online search: it kills everyone else off.

Google Analytics version 2 is not revolutionary. It does not extend web analytics software by providing new forms of analysis. Neither does it extend our understanding of websites by offering new approaches. What Google has done is simply take every feature in every product on the market and put them all into one system, and then make it available for free.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/Newsletter/15823.asp

Screenwriting – The Power of “Character Arcs”

A “character arc,” that is, the changes a character goes through during the 2 hours of a movie, is one of the most tricky aspects of screenwriting.

You miss it, and you have in your hands a flat piece of narrative, a chain of events without a human-emotional core. Such movies do not move us to laughter or tears.

Nail it on the head, and the whole narrative comes alive like the juice hitting a light bulb. We can now identify with those characters and feel the satisfaction of living through their lives vicariously. Our hearts expand. Our souls take wings. Those are the movies we love to watch more than once.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (2006) is one such jewel in which not one but all SIX characters go through clearly defined sharp character arcs. It is a good example of careful and loving writing by Michael Arndt which won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for him this year. Alan Arkin, as grandpa Hoover, also won a well-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar with his unforgettable performance in “Sunshine.”

Here are the SIX arcs for SIX characters in “Sunshine”:

(WARNING: Plot points are revealed.)

OLIVE: A seven year old darling of a girl, a perfect picture of innocence, who is not quite sure of herself, whether she can win the contest and make her daddy proud… arcs to… an uninhibited beauty pageant performer on stage “kicking ass” with the dance routine taught her by her grandpa. Shy Olive refuses to be intimidated by her more polished competitors, brings down the house and shows her own dad what “winning” is all about.

RICHARD: A stuck-up and judgmental disciplinarian, a paint-by-numbers motivational speaker with strong Protestant-ethic work values, unsympathetic to the plight of the losers of the world… arcs to… himself becomes the kind of loser that he always despised in the past, gets rid of his self-righteous inhibitions and joins in with his daughter’s “ass kicking” stage performance.

DWAYNE: A catatonic and depressed teenager idolizing Frederick Nietzsche who would no talk to anyone and would communicate only by writing on a note pad… arcs to… a young adult who comes to full terms with his worst fear of not being able to become an air force pilot due to his color blindness, he starts talking with his family, and joins Olive on the stage for a wild “ass kicking” stage performance.

GRANDPA: A cantankerous foul-mouthed old man who had been kicked out of a nursing home for his heroin habit, who is bitterly critical of the world and in particular of his son’s attempts to lead a clean and “ideal” family life… arcs to… his granddaughter Olive’s most precious role model and talent coach, and a man who truly appreciates his son’s courage and the risks he is taking in life to prove himself.

SHERYL: A mother who is trying to hold her family together by acting as the sane moderator, a good woman who is busy putting out fires, steering the dysfunctional characters in her family towards common sense solutions, but also a homemaker who feels the full brunt of the family’s financial problems… arcs to… the only family member who refuses to blink at the brink of Olive’s critical talent show stage appearance, a mountain of inner strength who refuses to be intimidated by the prospects of failure even when her son and husband give in and want to pack it up and go back home.

FRANK: A catatonic survivor of a suicide attempt sitting in a wheelchair at a mental hospital before his sister Sheryl takes him to her home to join the rest of the family, a world-class Proust scholar driven to self-loathing and self-destruction for losing his male lover to his chief competitor in the academic world… arcs to… a man literally running ahead of anyone else to the hotel ballroom where Little Miss Sunshine competition is held to make sure Olive would not miss the registration, a lonely pessimist who becomes an unexpected mentor to the equally depressed Dwayne, accepts all his loses in life and joins the rest of the family on the stage to celebrate Olive’s improbable “kick ass” stage performance.

Six well developed non-overlapping characters. Six arcs. Six paths to a better life, or at least, a deeper life where love, solidarity and understanding replace hatred, sarcasm and anger.

What else can we expect from a movie?

If you are a screenwriter you owe it to yourself to watch this very well written Oscar winner and study and learn from it.

Multitasking Tips

For all you work-from-home professionals, here are some multitasking tips from David Meyer, a professor of cognition and perception at the University of Michigan (brought to you by WIRED magazine):

1) Double up on tasks that use different mental channels like writing a report and brainstorming for a company logo.

2) Think carefully about the requirements of each task. If you are trying to close the sales while driving a car and the conversation does not go as planned you might be endangering both your life and the lives of innocent others.

3) Minimize unnecessary distractions by switching off your phone ringer, shutting down your email and closing the door (if you have one).

4) Interrupt tasks at natural breaking points. Finish writing a sentence before answering a phone.

5) Set aside time for not doing anything at all. Take breaks, eat well, exercise and make sure you get enough sleep.

Hollywood Writers Up in Arms Over "Residuals"

In this day and age of free YouTube downloads, webisodes, and mobisodes, "creatives" of Hollywood think they are shortchanged. They want a piece of the "backend." They want "residuals." That is, they want to get paid everytime, for example, you log on to ABC's web site and watch any episode of any show.

Or else? WGA, The all-powerful Writers Guild of America, will go on strike on October 31. So the studios are busy like crazy stocking up on extra scripts and shooting all those back-logged episodes so they'll be ready if and when the writer's strike hits Hollywood like a tsunami.

"Tsunami"? Well, perhaps I went overboard with that description because the last time WGA went on strike in the 1980s over the home video rights, 9,000 WGA members walked out. But then they came back for only 0.3 cents on the dollar! It turned out the writers' pocketbooks bled a lot faster that the "suits" in corporate offices. It's an embarrassing episode that most WGA members would rather forget.

One alternative is for the suits and the creatives share the ad revenues on these sites. But probably that's not going to happen anytime soon since the suits accuse the writers with splitting the profits but not the risks as, for example, when a show that has cost tens of millions of dollars bombs completely.

Gobbledygook of the Day: "Swimming Venues"

Obfuscation, or making what is plain unclear and cover it with a veil of mystery, comes easy to some public speakers.

The other day as I was driving in my car and listening to a program on the various hazards of spending a day at the beach, I heard one of the experts say:

"I have to caution your listeners to be careful when they visit hundreds of thousands of swimming venues this summer..."

SWIMMING VENUES??? That was a new one for me. Why not just say "pools and beaches"?

Clarity and relevance should not be the cost of abstraction and generalization.

Google Analytics - Simply Amazing!

If you haven't tried "Google Analytics" yet you owe it to yourself to check it out right away.

If you have a web site and if you'd like to see who is visiting your site, when, from where (including country and city), how much time they spend on what page, etc. then you need Google Analytics -- which is FREE.

You register with Google and place your custom-generated HTML code inside the HEAD section of all the pages you'd like to track. The rest is taken care of by Google.

All reports can be mailed in 4 different formats both to yourself and to anybody else you like on earth.

You can track the traffic of multiple web sites from one single account.

There are some truly very smart people working out there in Google. They continue to amaze me on a weekly basis.

While Microsoft is trying to protect its hold on the IT sector through all kinds of marketing strategies but weak products, Google is letting their products do the talking.

Copy + Paste is not a simple operation with MacBook

MacBook is a visually stunning gorgeous piece of hardware which makes its software issues all the more so heartbreaking. It's the equivalent of a very beautiful girl belching aloud in public.

I've previously written here about the kind of problems the Mac-native browser Safari has with some Google functionalities that I use on a regular bases (like Google Documents, and Google Pages).

Yesterday I was dismayed to discover yet another MacBook dysfunction, this one much more serious than the Google incompatibility issue.

It is hard to believe but...

If you copy text from your word document, MacBook will NOT allow you to paste it into either your e-mail message or any Google Document file!

The only way you can send that text is to save it as a separate file and then ATTACH it to your e-mail, or just type the whole thing the good-old fashioned way. (I hope, unlike me, you are fast typist.)

I still find that hard to believe... such a glaring shortcoming, and yet, MacBooks are still selling like hotcakes.

I'm praying I'm wrong and that I just missed a very simple setting that will eventually set everything right.

But I tried it both with Safari and Firefox and both don't work. If you copy from a file on your machine, you cannot paste it into your e-mail window.

I have no idea what to make of that but if I cannot fix it one way or the other, I think I am returning my beautiful MacBook back to the store and order myself the new DELL UBUNTU lap top. At least I know most of the things that can go wrong on an UBUNTU system and copy-paste function is not one of them.

POST SCRIPT:

After talking with Mac people, it became apparent that the copy-paste does not woth with OPEN OFFICE but it does with MS Word.

MSN News versus Google News search functions

I find Google's news search functionality to be a lot more accurate and focused than MSN's news search.

Here is an unscientific comparison for a specific key phrase. You be the judge.

TOP 10 MSN News Search results for search key phrase “travel nurse”:

http://search.msn.com/news/results.aspx?q=travel+nurse&form=QBNR&go.x=13&go.y=6

TITLES of the returned articles:

She's always ready to go Retired nurse packs her bags at a moment's ...

For fliers, fares are still ascending

Summer nights: Rimini

You want screenwriting advice? Ask this writer

Couple creating a refuge for children

Free health screenings in Haines City

Make My Day

Letters: 'Our government needs a serious overhaul'

Transplant Rules to Let Children Stay Home

Missing, found, but in denial

TOP 10 Google News Search results for search key phrase “travel nurse”:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=travel+nurse

TITLES of the returned articles:

Pack up your troubles

ATC Healthcare Revenue Increases 25% for the First Quarter of ...

Jury consultant in nurse murder trial tells lawyers how to dress ...

She's always ready to go Retired nurse packs her bags at a ...

Take Care will contract with individual doctors to oversee nurse practitioners who staff

New Study of Nurses Reveal Sources of Injectable Medication Errors

“Surgery Robots” Mean More Education and Training for both Nurses ...

Hanover works to recruit nurses

Thanks for the miracle

Traveling man

Copy That Creates Questions

Good copy should answer questions, not create them.

From an air filter commercial:

"Nine times better than the leading brand..."

Really?

If a product is NINE times better than the "leading brand," how come it trails behind? How come it's not the leading brand?

Either the consumers don't know what they're doing, or the copywriter...

Troubling questions that did not exist before the commercial.

Firefox Works on Mac OS 10 Tiger, well, "sort of"

Firefox browser works better than Mac-native Safari as far as some Google functions are concerned.

For example, one can reach all Blogger controls when posting onto a blog from inside Firefox.

However, Google Page Creator still does not work. The Fox cannot catch Fire on that one item, unfortunately.

If you are planning to edit your Google Page Creator web site you need to use IE browser on a Windows machine.

Is this Google's problem? The problem of Mozilla/Firefox or Apple/OS X team? Or all of them?

It seems like someone does not like us to use Google Page Creator on any platform other than IE/Windows.

That's unfortunate because I really love the simplicity and versatility of Google Pages and have my official site built with it (www.writer111.com). It really works for me except I need to switch to my IE/Windows machine every time I need to edit it.

I'm lucky and I have access to a Windows machine as well. But what about those who are operating only on Linux or Mac systems?

The Gobbledygook Word of The Year: “Specificity”

Perhaps it’s still too early for the nominations but I hereby nominate the following monstrosity for the Gobbledygook Word of The Year:

“Specificity”, and even worse, “Specificities”, in its plural form.

Try saying it three times in a row and you’ll instantly forget what time it is or where you are.

Examples from world press:

“Angola: SADC Secretary Acknowledges Country's Specificities” (Angola Press Agency)

"This White Paper … enhances the visibility of sport in EU policy-making, raises awareness of the needs and specificities of the sport sector, and identifies appropriate further action at EU level." (Ján Figel, European Commissioner in charge of Education, Training, Culture & Youth, including Sport)

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) Action Plans, which were signed in November 2006, take into account the specificities of the South Caucasus countries.” (Ambassador Per Eklund, Head of Delegation of the European Commission to Georgia and Armenia)

“Specificity” has two main definitions. Its medical definition means something.

But its non-medical definition is a true abomination. It describes anything but a state of being “specific.” It’s just a vacuous place holder for an idea not quite formed in an ill-informed mind.

MEDICAL definition: “The ability of a test to detect that a condition is not present when it is, in fact, not present. The proportion of people free of a disease who have a negative test.”

NON-MEDICAL definition: “The quality of being specific rather than general; "add a desirable note of specificity to the discussion"; "the specificity of the symptoms of the disease.””

To refer to a group of items that are not clearly defined as “specificities” is as ridiculous an act as calling a group of dead people “existentiaries”.

There should be an article in the penal code against using such words of obfuscation that pollute public communication channels and thus undermine common good, peace and harmony.