If you are reading this, you may not be at IPCC 2012 on the campus of the University of Central Florida. No worries–I am happy to bring you up to date on the sights, sounds, and bright ideas that have emerged during Day 1 of …
I was happy to see that Marta Rauch–PCS member and principal information developer and team lead at Oracle and Senior Member of STC– sharing her expertise with members of the Society for Technical Communication. In a presentation entitled “Mobile Usability Guidelines to Implement Now,” Marta described …
IEEE Professional Communication Society will be holding the e-voting election of Administration Committee members soon.
The following people have been nominated for the Professional Communication Society’s Administrative Committee(AdCom). Each of the candidates was asked to respond to a set of questions. Please review their responses to …
To engineer is to write.
I was reminded recently about the amount of time working engineers spend on communication. As Jon Leydens explained in his 2008 PCS Transactions article,
“engineers spend between 20% and 40% of their workday writing, a figure that increases as they move up the career …
I need this t-shirt!
I am ready to confess: I do care a lot about the Oxford comma. The purpose of this post is to make you care too.
The Oxford comma, or “serial comma,” is meant to separate three or more items that appear in a …
Obama’s Reddit session was so popular, he crashed the site. Oops.
During an election campaign, I usually notice which candidates are using media and technology in novel ways. Think of Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1992, or Barack Obama dancing …
Calling communication a “soft skill” implies that it’s easier, less technical, and of reduced value.
Recently the phrase “soft skills” created a heated debate among the members of the PCS AdCom. The question was, should communication be referred to as one of the “soft skills,” or …
Do you know why it’s called an “em dash”?
My day job — as an English professor at an engineering college — gives me plenty of opportunities to comment on and correct the grammar of my students. I don’t often do the same kind of correcting …
Can a MOOC teach writing?
As Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, gain in popularity and media attention, it seems that the course format–featuring 1 instructor and many thousands of students–may not provide a good environment for helping students with their writing. As Steve Kolowich reports …
Japanese Prime Minister Kan Naoto apologizing to the people of South Korea
Recent events in the news have reminded me of the vexing nature of apologies. Each of us has seen public apologies in the media: Jimmy Swaggert apologizing to his congregation, Representative Kevin Yoder apologizing …
