“I don’t know what that was supposed to be — looks like a case of miscommunication to me.” So said the commentator as the ball drifted harmlessly out of play, leaving the coach fuming on the sidelines. Yes, it’s the World Cup, and I’m as caught up in it as everyone else seems to be. [...]

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Yesterday I heard about a site that takes pieces of text and analyzes them for overused words, jargon and “gobbledygook”. It also gives the level of education someone would need to have in order to understand it. I thought I’d give it a try, so I took a paragraph from my service provider’s “getting started” [...]

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I had an interesting chat with my hairdresser yesterday after he told me about a conversation he had had with his twenty-year-old daughter. She apparently made the statement that “love has become devalued” today. Asked what she meant, she said, “Well think about it. We say we love our lovers, we love God, we love [...]

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What’s an oxymoron? It’s a phrase made up of two words that usually contradict each other but now form part of the same idea. Someone recently sent me these examples, and I want you to think about the meaning of each word and why the pairing is odd: clearly misunderstood exact estimate small crowd act [...]

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Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make someone smile, and often that can create a better communication experience. There are standard dull, boring messages that usually pop up on your screen when you make a mistake filling in a form online. You know the ones: We are unable to connect with this URL; unable to [...]

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