Observed

If I knew about a problem that causes problems for my clients AND DID NOTHING ABOUT IT FOR YEARS, I'd deserve to have someone bite off my head!

If no one hears a college administrator fall in the forest, does the dude really fall?

The excuses given for a long-standing, vexing and high-stakes programming error in the widely used and vaunted Common Application tells me that someone is hard of hearing.  The responsible party was quoted this morning as follows:

Mr. Killion said the issue of “truncation,” as it is known within the Common Application offices, is not new, and had been a reality of the process for more than a decade, causing barely a ripple.

Read the rest of the article and tell me what you think.

Are we sacrificing our ability to communicate with one another in thoughtful, measured, memorable ways...in favor of the speed driven by our appetite for greater social intensity?

I sometimes see IM’s that include an apology.  The author seems to realize they’re about to send out something that’s pretty unfiltered and unedited.

Or, as they put it, it’s *raw*.

What a sweet, old school gesture!  I see enough tweets and the like to know that politeness isn’t much valued in the IM world.  It slows things down.

Courtesy may be just one of the things we’re losing as we deepen our attachment to the digital end of the spectrum in the ways we communicate. (more…)

Bill Clinton WAS president in 1996.

Mr. Kett admonished me one day not to get hung-up on grammar.  Of course, he was right.

He was right about the importance of putting my reader at ease…even if that means relaxing the *rules* that govern punctuation, usage, syntax and the like.

I’m better at putting first things first.  Yet, I still catch myself correcting word errors (mine as well as those of others).  Even if it’s just a mental edit.

For example. (more…)

The recent incident with Steve Martin at New York City’s 92nd Street Y might hold several lessons.  In this morning’s Times, he suggests that things could have worked out better if people had shown a little more patience with their mid-interview e-mailed questions and suggestions.

I have a slightly different take.  I wonder, Why do we give so much power to the digital? (more…)

Q. You mentioned you’re doing less e-mail.

LBJ was a master at face-to-face persuasion. Rhode Island’s Senator Theodore Green was, in this case, the mastered. Johnson would probably prefer to cut off one of his own fingers than to send an e-mail.

A. I think e-mail is very often disruptive in corporate cultures. You sit next to people and send e-mail to each other instead of walking over or making a call or just trying to look for the personal interaction. I use e-mail more and more as text messaging — just very, very short messages. It’s very efficient, but I am convinced that e-mail does not replace presence. Also, I never read cc e-mails.

From “Corner Office,” Aug. 29, 2010, in The New York Times, an interview with Kasper Rorsted, the chief executive of Henkel, the consumer and industrial products company based in Düsseldorf, Germany.

I wonder what price we pay nowadays as a result of having a device or app or a something to tickle every fancy. Whether we stunt or lose our ability to imagine. The kind of imagination it took when all we had were a few radio stations...and the glow from the dial.

[Note:  This was first posted on my Facebook page, June 11, 2009.]

A Facebook friend recently posted an I-don’t-get-it message about Twitter. He speaks my mind, and we’re not alone in our resistance.

He reminded me of an article I read recently (OK, on-line) by Michael Winerip in the New York Times.   Winerip and I came right after the generation for whom radios and telephones were still slightly novel. It’s from our parents and grandparents that he and I learned to appreciate the simpler basics. (more…)

A hero of mine died today.  As a writer and adviser to President Kennedy, Theodore C. Sorensen gave hope in troubling times and helped inspire a generation of Americans.

He also gets very high marks (at least from me) for resourcefulness.  Here’s what caught my eye in today’s New York Times obit: (more…)

Diego Della Valle appreciates the value of consistency.  The story of how he and his company — Tod’s — have leveraged Made in Italy quality is proof that patience is rewarded.

Come dolce.

Today’s “AFTER DEADLINE” post offered the following example of the misuse of the word “like” along with a suggested fix:

At times it seems like the mayoral race here between the two front-runners — Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who is seeking a second term, and Vincent C. Gray, the City Council chairman — is boiling down to a personality contest.

Make it “seems as though,” “seems as if,” or simply “seems that …”

I’ll go one better.

At times, the mayoral race here between the two front-runners — Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who is seeking a second term, and Vincent C. Gray, the City Council chairman — seems to boil down to a personality contest.

I call this editing by subtraction.

OK, maybe the only place where size counts is in sumo wrestling.  After reading a reporter’s account of what it took to cover the Tour de France, however, I was reminded of the size of the platform it takes for some stories to get told.

It’s not that newpaper reporters are typically smarter or harder working or whatever than bloggers and others in the non-MSM. (more…)