Everything I don’t want to become.

merlin:

We word types love to piss and moan for days about minor niggles in usage and grammar, but, I’m worried about something a lot bigger and a lot more malignant: a broadly held belief that deliberately opaque PR horseshit is not only okay, but necessary in order to sound — horrifically enough — “real.” And, that’s a shame.

Because, if you’re working in a job where your credibility is pegged to saying things that literally don’t make sense, then there’s a good chance what you’re doing doesn’t make sense either.

If what you’re doing does make sense, then, for Christ’s sake, talk like a human being. A lot of reptiles and primates died making bad decisions so that we could end up sitting in front of these keyboards, talking about “The Enterprise.” Whatever that is.

Let’s show our evolutionary friends some courtesy by using the brains (and books and active voice) at our disposal to sound like we’re real people talking with other real people about real things.

Think of it as a “Program.”

-- 30 --

Posted on October 19, 2009 at 4:33pm with 84 notes and was reblogged from kung fu grippe

Post Notes

  1. wka reblogged this from merlin and added:
    Merlin Mann, For Immediate Relief: Speaking Like
  2. bsag reblogged this from merlin and added:
    “A gerund attacks some peaceful pronouns”:...that’s why you never start
  3. daserbeam reblogged this from merlin and added:
    kung fu grippe: For Immediate Relief: Speaking Like
  4. neckbeard reblogged this from merlin and added:
    whole critique isn’t perfectly caustic, but as...former practitioner
  5. danielpietzsch reblogged this from merlin and added:
    NewsGator’s “NewsGator Platinum Partner Program Leverages Best Enterprise Social Computing Minds
  6. wkenworthy reblogged this from merlin and added:
    Merlin rocks: merlin:
  7. steampoweredmedia reblogged this from merlin and added:
    Or take my class. I teach one section of ENC 1101 in the fall and one section of ENC 2210 in the spring. We meet...
  8. simongoudie reblogged this from merlin
  9. ampersandean reblogged this from merlin
  10. kaching reblogged this from merlin and added:
    Write a Press Release T his
  11. pascal reblogged this from merlin and added:
    rest @ kung fu grippe »
  12. morrowplanet reblogged this from merlin and added:
    my office colleagues...soon as I’m done reblogging this. Yes. Sweet creamy Josephus, yes.
  13. cubicleparty reblogged this from merlin
  14. merlin posted this