Get to the Point

A basic rule of good writing is to make every word count. “There is,” “there are” and “it is” are the weakest ways to start a sentence. Used this way, “there” and “it” are placeholders for the real subject of the sentence. They are particularly ...

Similar-sounding words can have very different meanings. Sound-alike words have tripped up many a scribe. Because you may be spelling the word correctly but misusing it for the context, spell-check is of no help. Watch out! Incorrect usage will ...

Theodore Bernstein created an analog to the economic maxim that bad money drives out good: bad words tend to drive out good ones. Bernstein, a journalist and professor, wrote or co-wrote seven books on grammar and usage. As an addict of grammar ...

Sending an email is fast, and you can transmit at any hour, but that may be where the effectiveness and efficiency ends. Remember the bad old days of telephone tag? You would waste time swapping phone messages until you could finally have a ...

Ethics rules require you to keep your client informed (see ABA Rule of Professional Conduct 1.4). The client’s guidelines may require interval and event reporting. But sometimes it feels like nobody on the other end is reading your client status ...

Here’s one for the books. You can bank on it. Clichés are overused phrases that everyone knows. Pundits of good communication advise shunning clichés as unoriginal and boring — which is why readers of these posts may be surprised to see me take ...

Previous Attorney at Work posts have discussed how to use Twitter for maximum effect while assuming you have an interest in it as a marketing tool. But some lawyers say they do not have Twitter accounts because it is irrelevant to their practice.

In her "Get to the Point" columns, Teddy Snyder has led us all to question our writing and speaking habits (and our Theda C. Snyder - May 21, 2014

Your vocabulary is probably better than the average reality-show star, but if, you know, you are addicted to “amazing,” or find yourself, like, OK, wanting to, like, break some of your, uhm, bad speech habits, this post is for you.

These days it seems like everybody wants to claim, “I gave a TED talk.” The reason? These talks are famous for being fresh and interesting. TED talks are no longer than 18 minutes — ever. Official TED talks take place at TED or TED-licensed ...