8 words that may not mean what you think...

In one of the early scenes of the film The Princess Bride, a mysterious man in black is pursuing the kidnapper Vizzini. [Editor’s note: If you haven’t seen this movie, stop reading this article right now—slap yourself across the face—and go watch it.] When Inigo Montoya (one of Vizzini’s hired hands) points out that they are being followed, Vizzini responds that it is “inconceivable.” With the man in black closing in, and Vizzini still insisting that this is “inconceivable,” Inigo says to him: “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you...

24 lazy corporate verbs you need to fire

by Laura Hale Brockway A common problem with corporate writing is that it’s full of lazy, meaningless verbs. Utilize, implement, leverage—these words litter our writing and weaken our message. “We are leveraging our core competencies to meet our customers needs.” I stopped reading when I saw the word “leveraging.” The verb is the powerhouse of your sentence. Choose clear, active verbs instead of throwaway ones. I hereby call for a ban on the following verbs from corporate writing, press releases, social media, and websites. Try these alternatives...

43 odd, awesome, unbelievable town names

As a lover of words, I have always been curious about how things are named — in particular, the names of cities and towns. In Texas, where I live, we have 2,751 cities and towns, some with the most unusual names you can imagine. Many of these towns are no more than bends in the road, but it’s interesting to think about how these towns were named. What went on at those meetings? 1. Battle 2. Blowout 3. Content 4. Cut and Shoot 5. Dimple 6. Ding Dong (located in Bell County) 7. Dull 8. Earth 9. Elbow 10. Eulogy 11. Fate 12. Foot 13. Frog 14. Frognot 15. Golly 16. Good...

Is that different from or different than...

by Laura Hale Brockway, ELS I’m hoping my readers can help me out on this one.  This week, my associate editor and I disagreed about using different from versus different than. Here is the sentence: “Physician surveys have shown that primary care physicians in rural areas have a notably different work experience than primary care physicians in urban settings.” My associate editor insisted that different than is always wrong and different from should be used. I argued that different than makes better sense in the sentence. A quick check of the rules on the usage of...

18 more words that are fun to pronounce

by Laura Hale Brockway  In a previous post, I wrote about words that are fun to pronounce. On the list were polydactyly, contumelious, and mundungus. At the end of the post, I asked PR Daily readers to share their favorite fun-to-say words—though the allure in some cases may lie more in their definition than their enunciation Here are some of the responses. Click on the word to hear its pronunciation. (Definitions and pronunciations are from Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com.)   Aficianado — a person who likes, appreciates, and knows about an activity or...

Edit the editor: how would you correct t...

This week has been a rough one for editing. From pronoun/antecedent mismatches to sentences that are a parsec long, it seems like I’ve corrected every possible writing error. So, I thought I would call on the collective experience of my readers. How would you fix the following sentences? I’m sharing what I did with them; do you agree? What would you have done? 1. But having a discussion on end-of-life issues could well be the most important discussion you, as a physician, ever have with your patient; helping them through this process allows your patient to think about...