by Dwayne Phillips I find it good to be specific. There are, however, times when being specific limits thinking, and that is not good. Precise, concrete, and specific: three concepts that are good for writing and communication. I try to remember these things that were burned into me in my first semester of college way […]
Entries Tagged as 'Communication'
Specific and Thinking
March 10th, 2025 · No Comments
Tags: Alternatives · Choose · Communication · Improvement · Influence · Thinking
We’re Not Paying You to Be a Typist
February 10th, 2025 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips One of the reasons to use these chattering bot word generators is simply to stop wasting time. A typist is a professional who specializes in accurately and efficiently converting information into digital format. This may involve transcribing handwritten notes, audio recordings, or printed documents into electronic files. They also possess strong data […]
Tags: Authentic · Change · Communication · Questions · Thinking · Work · Writing
One More Adjective, One More Adverb
February 3rd, 2025 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Often, with the best of intentions, groups of people writing something add needless adjective and adverbs. There is a group of persons. They are writing directions, a memo, something important or seemingly so. Someone, earnestly with the best of intentions, suggests, “We should change ‘calculate performance’ to ‘carefully calculate detailed performance.’” Just […]
Tags: Authentic · Brevity · Clarity · Communication · Meaning · Reading · Writing
Inconvenient Facts of Fact Checking
January 27th, 2025 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips A problem with fact checking is that people write so poorly these days we cannot find the facts in seemingly factual statements. Fact checking and the absence or removal of fact checking has been in the news recently. Some society media outlets have removed fact checking and such for something else called […]
Tags: Accountability · Clarity · Communication · Data Science · Error · Science · Writing
Facts and Adjectives
January 20th, 2025 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips We can’t have both facts and adjectives. Can we? Facts are facts. It is 27° F outside. Adjectives are, well sort of fuzzy. It is cold outside. (Cold to whom? Cold compared to what?) “The fact is, they were aggressive.” Oops. “Aggressive” is an adjective. “The fact is, he is tall.” Well, […]
Tags: Authentic · Communication · Engineering · Word
A Meeting Test
January 9th, 2025 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Should we have a meeting? Here is one test to help answer that question. Should we have a meeting once a week with everyone attending? Probably not. We can use a bulletin board to tell everyone this week’s news. We’ll put the news on the computer network of course because we have […]
Tags: Communication · Management · Meetings · Testing
Story Quilters
December 12th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips An age-old method of writing long pieces comes from writing short pieces without a plan or outline. The “outline” comes later. I recently stumbled across a description of writers as Story Quilters. This is not a method of planning or outlining a large piece before writing anything. This is not a method […]
Tags: Alternatives · Communication · Experiment · Ideas · Improvement · Stories · Writing
Useful and Recommendable
December 5th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Non-fiction books should be useful and recommendable. It is easy to lose sight of these qualities. A book by Rob Fitzpatrick is full of these qualities. I recently finished reading a book of simple fundamentals for writing non-fiction. “Write Useful Books. A modern approach to designing and refining recommendable nonfiction,” Rob Fitzpatrick, […]
Tags: Authentic · Communication · Consulting · Notebook · User · Writing
My Book and Wikipedia
November 28th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips Was my book or speech or seminar replaced by Wikipedia and ChatGPT? Time for me to learn. Was my book replaced by Wikipedia, i.e., each section of my book can be read or the reader can just go read a few Wikipedia pages? Is my book redundant to Wikipedia? The same can […]
Tags: Artificial Intelligence · Communication · Information · Knowledge · Learning · Teaching · Wikipedia · Writing
Listen to Understand vs Listen to Reply
November 25th, 2024 · No Comments
by Dwayne Phillips An old adage that still applies today as long as we apply it wisely. Some wise and famous person stated the title of this post long ago, I think. Still, it bears repeating in one variation or another. I am here to tell you something. What I have to say is important. […]
Tags: Communication · Learning · Listening · Talk