Archive for November 2006
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Content Formatting and Engaging Readers
November 30th, 2006 |Michael Stelzner asks how a document’s appearance engages readers and he also shares lessons from a well-formatted paper. Yes, formatting matters. My mom’s (Happy Birthday!) three kids are power users with careers revolving around computers and the web. Yet, she sends long emails where she gives the impression her Enter key is broken. I gently remind [...]
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Teapot Designs
November 29th, 2006 |Just started reading Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, the author of the famous and often recommended The Design of Everyday Things (my poor copy sits on the shelf collecting dust waiting to be read). Norman opens his newest book with a discussion of three teapots he has. [...]
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Snickers Ad Doesn’t Satisfy
November 28th, 2006 |I wish I had a camera with me when I saw a bus drive by with a huge ad with, “Hungerectomy” emblazoned on it using Snicker’s famous design. Searched for it on the web and plenty of people caught the same ad. Apologies for this cliche, but isn’t this neologism wrong on so many levels? Anything [...]
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T-Mobile Spotty Service
November 27th, 2006 |For the past couple of weeks, Paul and I have had trouble communicating with each other through our Sidekicks. We haven’t been going to out of the ordinary places. In most cases, we’re in the same places when we typically communicate with each other through the Sidekicks. Yesterday was the last straw. We had a family [...]
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Day of the Week Confused
November 24th, 2006 |Yesterday was Thanksgiving in the U.S., one of my favorite holidays. It’s simply a time for family and friends to get together, have a good meal and enjoy each other whether it’s with football or something else. No gifts. Little work (just the cooking). Paul and I were talking about the kids. I said, “… tomorrow [...]
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Innocent English Isn’t So Innocent
November 21st, 2006 |When I created the Grammar Gotchas page a few years ago, I had hoped to creat a resource similar to the one at Innocent English. It didn’t work out, but sites like these fill the gap for us grammar geeks. Occasionally, I find a This Is Broken post that involves a language boo boo. I’m all [...]
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Gift Turns into a Verb
November 20th, 2006 |Nowadays, it’s chic to turn nouns into verbs. The latest to receive verb status is ” gift.” Milk a cow. Water the grass. Fax a document. Some experts estimate that as many as one in five verbs began as nouns, Mr. Nunberg says. But that’s not to say that he — or his colleagues on the usage [...]
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Stupid Product Names
November 17th, 2006 |How do you pronounce “Casio’s G’zOne?” That’s what Strategic Name Development asks. Just the other day when I volunteered at my kid’s school book fair, a few of us were talking about Mo Willem’s Knuffle Bunny because we all love the Pigeon books. I thought it was pronounced “nuffle bunny” like “know.” The librarian thought [...]
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Customer Service Pet Peeves
November 16th, 2006 |Pet Peeves in Customer Service looks at common annoyances with customer service (yeah, this article from WSJ is supposed to have 10 tips, but AOL’s next page link breaks). Considering it takes me longer to make phone calls using the relay, I probably get annoyed faster than the average user. Pet peeve #1: Calling a customer [...]
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Gift Ideas for All Occasions
November 15th, 2006 |In 2005, I created a list of original gift ideas and popular 2005 gift items. I thought it would be helpful to create an entry of this sort without a year tacked on. So I’ve combined web sites mentioned in the past and will continuously add to the list. Of course, no gift beats one [...]
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