Get to the Point

Ten minutes of top-of-the-hour cable television news can make you feel like your head is going to explode. Or maybe you’ve just read some total bozo’s post. You may want to grab your phone and immediately post your own views about the candidates ...

The parade of presidential candidates across my television screen has reminded me of the transactional analysis best-seller, "I’m OK, You’re OK." Transactional analysis is a psychoanalytic therapy method. It defines three ego-states: Child, ...

Caution: Mature Content. Yes, yes, I do want you to stop. A recurring theme of “Get to The Point” is that even if some of your listeners or readers are ...

Incorrect pronunciation can signal there’s something not quite right about the speaker. The speaker means to sound impressive, but incorrect pronunciation is a sure way to undercut a message. Generally, only your mother will correct you, so you ...

Cat got your tongue? Our special two-week holiday series, “Connect the Dots: A Lawyer’s Guide to Networking,” continues today with good tips on starting and sustaining conversations. You’ve heard about the elevator speech, the 30-second ...

You don’t have to be afraid of ghosts this Halloween. In fact, you might consider these five thoughts about working with one. 1. Why would I want to work with a ghostwriter? Most lawyers tend to write, well, like lawyers. A ...

“Your Honor, this is a motion to vacate the most recent order and request for rehearing. Unfortunately, our failure to appear was caused by a calendaring error in our office.” How embarrassing. Yet, “calendaring” or “docketing” (depending on ...

"One of the only": the ambiguous phrase that keeps popping up. I don't know what this means — and neither do your readers. A recent newspaper story about Martha Stewart’s sale of her brand quoted a branding maven: “When [Stewart] started, she ...

Even the best writer can sometimes confuse words that sound almost the same — call them sound-alikes. A prior post reviewed many of the ...

Maybe you’ve read the stories about the candidate who wasn’t hired because of spelling errors in the resumé. Or the firm that lost the bid in response to a request for proposal because of grammatical errors on its website. It’s not just lawyers ...