Being Unfriended Is Not So Bad

December 11, 2013 //
2

A friend of mine suffered a LinkedIn unfriending the other day. He wasn’t sure whether he should be traumatised or relieved.

Getting unfriended or unfollowed in social media is like hearing some direct feedback from someone who doesn’t know you’re within earshot. You don’t get a note saying that someone has unfriended or unfollowed you. Instead, you find out about it indirectly.  In my friend’s case, he started getting daily suggestions to link in with this person. My friend has connected with this person, met him, they attended a social function, and then this person had deemed the relationship not worthy of maintaining and so severed it.

This is a good thing, in my opinion. It’s like getting an early ‘no’ in sales, so you’re not being strung along for weeks and months by someone who can’t or won’t say no. I think it’s good for two reasons:

1) They’re saving you the time of currying their favour. This buys you back time to figure out how to bypass them and their influence.

2) They’re not worthy of connecting with you anyway. Some accurate self-esteem is required to adopt this position!

Do you agree? Like many things, you can argue both ways.

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Categories Communication, Marketing, Sales, Technology

Email Typos You Wish You Could Get Back

December 9, 2013 //
0

This could be post-titled ‘part 1 of several’, but anyway…

A little humour to get your week moving. How many of us have sent an email that features an embarrassing typo? Sometimes it’s just fat finger syndrome, sometimes it’s an unfortunate autocorrect that you miss. And sometimes you think you depress a key and it’s a milligram less than required and you lose your letter.

Here’s one of mine from a couple of weeks ago.

[His email] Do you need anything from me on this?

[My email] No, I’m god, thanks.

Overplaying my importance a touch, methinks.  :-).

PS For those so put off by my blasphemy that they can’t see straight, I meant to type ‘good’.

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Categories Communication

Folk’s Drive Me Mad with Their Punctuation Sometimes

December 6, 2013 //
0

Why oh why, dear reader, do folks put an apostrophe before the ‘s’ in your common-or-garden plural?

As we’ve talked about before, an apostrophe only ever signifies possession, as in the dog’s bone, or a missing letter or letters, as in the dog’s got a bone which is short for the dog has got a bone. But to start a sentence with ‘The teacher’s taught the pupils’ betrays an alarming lack of knowledge of that simple rule.

While we’re on the subject of plurals and apostrophes, let me just remind those unsure of how the possessives work with singular and plural nouns. The apostrophe goes immediately after the thing or things doing the possessing. So we write the dog’s bone, but the parents’ association. Where it gets confusing is where the thing doing the possessing has a built-in plural. So, we say the children’s toys, the and the couple’s daughter, but the couples’ children when it’s more than one couple doing the possessing :-). And then we get onto ‘folk’, from the German word volk, meaning people. Some people prefer to say folk, some say folks, so where do you put the apostrophe then? Wherever you like in my view.

Like I say, folk’s punctuation drives me mad…

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Categories Communication, Language

Let’s Put the Emphasis on the Right Syllable

December 4, 2013 //
0

In an earlier post I talked about the differences between American English and British English. One area the two homes of English speaking differ markedly is in pronunciation.  For example, I might say missile, they say ‘missle’.

When you get to polysyllable words, then you’ll often hear the differences. I might say controversy, they might say controversy. I definitely say laboratory, whereas our American friends prefer to put the accent on the first syllable and let the others trail behind like the links of a chain dragged along the ground.

Wherever you choose to place your accent, be aware that it’s a real differentiator, and not just between these two countries. When you get it wrong altogether it signals that the language is not your first choice. ‘It’s really important,’ as a former boss of mine is fond of saying, ‘to put the emphasis on the right syllable.’

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Categories Communication, Language

Deja Vu? Deja Entendu more like…

December 2, 2013 //
0

At this time of year marketers like to bring out the cues that tap into our past, as we tend to get all nostalgic and reach for our wallets in a feel-good fog of warm fuzziness.

These cues can be visual, but the one cue that really strikes a chord and brings the memories flooding back is the musical cue. A few bars of the right ditty can bring you back to a precise time and place like very little else.

It’s not just the sounds constructed by composers that bring you back. It can also be sounds constructed by product designers.

We have one of those indestructible kettles in our kitchen. Sick of forking out every year for an electric kettle that seemed programmed to last a month beyond the guarantee period before conking out, Mrs D opted for a more traditional version. It takes a while to boil on a gas hob – and probably uses more energy than an electric plug kettle – and when it boils it emits a gradually more insistent high-pitched whistle that takes me back to my grandmother’s house from a long time ago. In fact, there’s nothing like a kitchen to draw on all 5 of our senses.

The online marketers have the same challenges as television advertisers: you can only rely on sight and sound to evoke the right feeling. The medium of radio can only rely on one sense. That’s an advantage that physical stores have over the remote media: smell, taste and touch. The smell of cinnamon in home and garden stores in December. The taste of the sample turkey food at the supermarket. The all-important squeeze of the avocado or the apple to indicate whether it’s the right time to buy.

Maybe that’s why, when we say ‘I’m getting a sense of deja vu,’ which means ‘already seen’, we often mean any sense of our senses.  For me it’s the sense of sound that brings me back the most strongly.

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Categories Communication, Marketing, Sales

I Should Of Paid More Attention at School

November 29, 2013 //
4

Of all the spelling mistakes that jarr the senses, the use of ‘of’ when we mean ‘have’, is the worst.  It makes me cringe – which one should pronounce as ‘curringe’, with the accent on the second syllable, for emphasis – as it betrays a lack of understanding of the basics of our beloved language.

It stems I think from the use of the shortened form of ‘have’ in common parlance, as in ‘I could’ve been there’.  Two things stick out for me here. Firstly, surely they know that the full length version is ‘should have’ and can make the micro-leap to ‘ve?  Secondly, isn’t it odd how words like isn’t and should’ve are spelt as one word, not two?  You would logically expect to see is ‘nt, or should ‘ve, but I guess we’ve been economical over time and moved the orphaned word into the bosom of the main verb.

For more on this, see a rather good summation from Dave’s ESL Cafe.

It’s not really acceptable to use it in texts either, since ‘ve’ works perfectly fine as its own word in that medium, with or without the apostrophe. Our use of language in mobile device texts is a whole other ball game though, and will probably provide plenty of fodder for future posts.

Of course, you could avoid looking a bit stoopid by saying ‘shoulda’.  As long as you don’t write shouldo…

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Categories Communication, Language

Oh For a Cognate Accusative

November 27, 2013 //
2

I do like a good cognate accusative, or internal accusative as it is also termed. I first came across the term when doing Greek at college. Those ancient Greeks liked them in their literature. The accusative case, as you may remember from your language classes, usually signifies the direct object of a verb. When you do something, that something is accusative, and in some languages the pronoun or noun changes to indicate a direct object.

The cognate accusative is where the direct object and the verb share the same root word. We fought the good fight, I dreamed a dream, she walks the walk.  He lived a life worth living. A bit over the top that last one, but you get the idea. They sound simple, direct, weighty, aphoristic. I like them a lot.

Incidentally, while we’re on the subject of linguistic quirkiness, the word ‘dreamed’ also has a variant ‘dreamt’, which is the only word in the English language ending in ‘mt’. One for you quiz aficionados to store away for safe keeping. No charge for that.

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Categories Communication, Language

In Praise of Roger Bannister

November 25, 2013 //
0

I’m a huge fan of human endeavour in the ‘pure’ sports. Pure in the sense that they are just us against each other, without the use of equipment – sticks, racquets, machines. I’m talking about boxing, running, that sort of thing. ‘Chariots of Fire’ is my favourite film of all time.

In these sports, it’s down to our genetic inheritance, our training and our dedication. The track part of track and field athletics has always captivated me, along with millions of others. I guess that’s what makes the 100 metres the attraction it is, the ‘citius’ part of the ‘citius altius fortius’ Olympic motto.

Sir Roger Bannister breaking the 4-minute mile in 1954 is for me one of those man-on-the-moon moments. It was back in the day when these Renaissance men strove to be the best in the world while also playing a full-time trade.

I had the good fortune to meet Sir Roger in the mid-1980’s. I use ‘meet’ in the loosest sense.  I was captain of the university table tennis team for my final year of studies. The annual varsity games weekend hosted a bunch of sports between Oxford and Cambridge. Some of the sports were very prestigious, attracting ‘full blue’ status for those that represented their University at it. Other sports were not as prestigious, and even though you might have been the world’s best, all you could hope for was ‘half-blue’, thanks to the stuffy, sports caste system that existed. I sound bitter, and in fact I contradict myself, because the pure sports belonged in the full blue camp. Table tennis did not.

That year Sir Roger was the VIP on hand to present the trophies to each captain of the University that had won their sports varsity match. My team had squeaked through 6-4. All sports had a trophy. All sports, that is, except table tennis. As the trophies were handed out one at a time, I debated what to do. When the turn of table tennis came, I walked up, as Sir Rog looked to the table on his left for a trophy that did not exist. He looked back at me in a somewhat confused state, then smiled a big avuncular smile. We shook hands, made eye contact, and that was it.

It was good to brush shoulders – or hands – with true greatness for a brief moment.

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Categories General

There’s No H in H

November 22, 2013 //
0

H is a funny letter. In the English language, it almost always signals aspiration, the obvious exception being ‘herbs’, which our American friends pronounce ‘erbs’.

The letter itself is actually spelt ‘aitch’, and as a letter is pronounced without an ‘h’ sound. Most people, especially certain regions of England, routinely pronounce the letter ‘haitch’, and my daughter finds it particularly difficult to drop the ‘h’ when I test her spelling. ‘There’s no such letter as ‘haitch’, sweetie.’ ‘but Dad, listen to the word ‘house’, or ‘hello’, it must be ‘haitch’.

She’s right of course, it’s completely counter-intuitive. Your plosives, consonants which coincide with an expulsion of air, tend to begin with the sound they signify.  Examples are b and p. Dental consonants, same thing really, examples being d and t.  Your fricatives and labials – like f and and l – are harder for our mouth to form in order to start the word, so instead we prefer to prefix their names with a ‘e’ sound to get the syllable going.

The letter h, though, goes out of its way to avoid the sound that it signifies. In that sense it’s a bit like the letters w – ‘double-u’ – and y – ‘wye’ – which are also a bit maverick, but nobody ever mispronounces those two letters.  Which leaves the letter h to glory in its own eccentricity.  Hawesome.

Categories Communication, Language

Endorsements on LinkedIn – Belt and Braces?

November 20, 2013 //
0

What is the deal with LinkedIn endorsements? Well, you know what the deal is from the link I just gave you.  But, really, what is the deal?

Not a week passes by without me getting a handful of these endorsements.  I’m grateful for them, but I’m not sure what purpose they serve.  For this reason I’ve never given anyone an endorsement, because I don’t see the value – to them.

I’ve always tried to make sure I connect on LinkedIn with people I have worked with, or at least had some dealings with. I don’t connect with people I don’t know, even if we share common groups.  Occasionally I will craft a recommendation for someone without being asked.  I’ll also recommend someone if they ask me to, but only if I can be genuine in my recommendation.  If they recommend me back, great.

I view endorsements as a different kettle of fish.  I view them as simply an additional – and often redundant- extra layer of connection.  It sometimes feels like those people who have a whole bunch of connections that they don’t know are now having to curate a ‘proper’ level of connections through endorsements.

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Categories Communication
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