Getting a job involves more than just updating your resume!
As part of my Professional and Technical Communication course at Rose-Hulman, I ask students to revise their current resume and job application letter to target a particular job and company. For many students, the notion of …
Teaching communication to engineers looks a lot like conducting an orchestra.
On Monday, November 26th, we started a new academic term here at Rose-Hulman, my home institution. That means I met with students in the two sections of the Technical and Professional Communication course that I …
Normally, watching a segment of 60 Minutes is a bit of mind candy for me. There are some interesting facts, a little nice storytelling, and perhaps I’m made to think a little bit more about something that I had not pondered before.
But on the November …
You can turn each of these nouns into a verb, but do so at your own peril!
I thought I would recommend Helen Sword’s recent posting in the NYT Draft column on the topic of mutant verbs. Be warned–the creation of verb forms from nouns doesn’t make our …
Ben Yagoda has provided more information on the m-dash in today’s New York Times. I am pleased that my own ramblings on the subject in a previous blog inspired others to explore this dainty bit of punctuation goodness!
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 …
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 …
