clear writing

Onboarding, buying-in and re-skinning: Gerunds gone wild

Today’s hottest buzzword is “onboarding.” A group of corporate Internet professionals has “onboarding” an official part of a major, inter-departmental project, as in “The onboarding phase will continue until buy-in has been obtained from a significant majority of players in this space.”  See what they’ve done here: defined one buzzword with another in a passive […]

How to write a report I will read

My last post focused on fiction: how to write a novel I would enjoy reading. There are far more people in the world who have to write other kinds of documents: letters, proposals, memos, instructions, report — which may or may not be fictitious. These writers also need some guidance, at least to judge from […]