a conversation on communications :: harbor sights

Conflicting priorities

2011-06-01T16:46:00.009-04:00

I thought this was an interesting paradox: one construction project trumping another construction project. Though both projects yield a permanent product, management prioritized the structure.

Prospective mothers will hopefully be inconvenienced for just one week.

What's another way management could've handled this conflict? Please comment below.

Having a good friend in your back pocket

2011-03-29T22:48:00.008-04:00

I once took a course on television (!), culture, and their effects on each other.

We spent a lot of time on Marshall McLuhan and his messages of global village, electronic interdependence and how the medium is the message. Basically, he said electronic technology could shrink the world (slightly, and global audiences would learn how they were more similar in their expectations than dissimilar.

In that same class we saw different TV shows which had formed micro-communities, like Cheers, I Love Lucy, All in the Family and every soap opera. For the characters inside these shows, there was no world outside their communities. If the audience identified with the characters and grew an affinity for them, the show would succeed.

I've been making new friends lately. I'm working remotely on my own, and have befriended Tony Kornheiser, Terry Gross and Bill Simmons. I found them on iTunes and download their podcasts to my iPhone. While taking long dog walks or coding on my laptop, I listen to their stories, their conversations with interesting friends and gain a new perspective on the world. I keep them in my back pocket and listen to them on demand.

I'm not alone.

I met an NIH worker who moved his family from Bethesda to Hagerstown to save 70% on his mortgage payments. He commutes at 3:30 a.m. to drive 90 minutes (any later and the highway is filled). In 3 years, he's listened to 200 books on tape.

Judo Chuck at Penn State is raising three girls at home and wants to participate in a virtual party program, if only someone would create it. His idea: Have people around the world attend an online party, so isolated people like himself can hang with them online, dozens at a time. He wants more than a chat room, something in which he can connect with online friends – new and old.

I've turned Mike Barnsback on to podcasts; he listens to recorded episodes during his 30-minute commute and keeps his radio off. Mat Edelson is about to produce podcasts for an audience to learn more about the towns in which they live.

I've been thinking about the online communities I've joined through podcasting. I've sat in on online history classes on Cal-Berkeley, taken a New Media class through the University of Michigan – all through podcasting.

I'm addicted to my daily doses of Tony Kornheiser on local radio, and he's addicted to serving me. Previously, Tony's podcasts would be in iTunes about 24 hours after his daily, 2-hour show is done. Now they're available about 90 minutes after the show's over. The podcasts are in two parts for a total of 70 minutes – all the commercials are trimmed; it's all Tony and crew.

My iPhone staples are several shows from WFAN sports radio in New York. Because only the 10-minute interviews are posted online, they're still topical if you can hear them within a week. NPR's Terry Gross' Fresh Air show is evergreen, so I get to it when I can.

I'm intrigued by my own reaction to my new fifth-best friend, Bill Simmons, the Page 2 (columnist) Guy from espn.com. His podcast is a rambling conversation with semi-interesting people on sports and some similar stuff. It feels like he knows his guests from past lives: growing up around Boston; college at Holy Cross; Los Angeles lifestyle; past jobs as sportswriter, bartender, comedy-show writer; family man.

On podcast, he's connecting and re-connecting with people throughout his universe. Do I care about his teams, the Celtics and Red Sox? No, and hell no, but I care that he cares. It's fun to listen to his passion and his friends' myriad answers and thoughts on UConn basketball, Clippers stars, movies with The Rock and Nicolas Cage, and comedy shows.

Sometimes, it sounds like the glory days of the Cheers cast where different people with different lives share a good time at the bar. Often they have little in common but for the walnut under their elbows and a good thirst. Individually, they're kind of losers; they're there so often because they don't have another place to be.

Simmon's podcast friends are kind of like that: one-trick ponies who know their topics very well, We're not asking them about other topics. Why should we? The guy who explains how the wise guys bet in Vegas broadens my horizon just a litte bit, and he's gone. Trent Dilfer offers his insight on what it was like being a quarterback on a Monday morning, and he's gone.

Bill Simmons hasn't become my best friend, but he feels like my fifth-best friend, and I hear a lot more from him than I do my extended family. He's available on my demand, in my pocket, when I'm ready for him. If I get busy and don't listen to him for a month, we can re-connect – on my schedule.

In a shrinking, global community, he's my old college roommate, available on demand.

Remembering Bill Koenig

2011-03-16T13:43:00.001-04:00

David Broder, a Presidential and political scholar who wore a press ID in his hat, died this week. His departure extinguishes a generations-wide career in which he precisely informed those who wanted to know and kept a mirror up to reflect of those whose deeds needed monitoring. His back-of-the-section insights were always on the first page of my aggregator.

His passing reminds me of my friend, Bill Koenig, who's been gone 11 years now.

I first met Bill on my first day at Baseball Weekly. Over a beer, he told me was thrilled there were no assholes on the new staff. I told him he hadn't known me long enough and we became fast friends. I was his best man at his second wedding.

Bill casually observed nothing. He saw, anaolgized and started writing what seemed like volumes. He understood details and how you responded to his second question formed his third.

On the phone, Bill interviewed people on every minor league team every week. That volume doesn't leave time for more than five questions. Bill didn't need more than five questions; his work was often the best in the book each week.

I didn't see Bill in long form, when he was covering the Red Wings and the Olympics in Rochester, NY. They appreciated him in Rochester; he's in their Hall of Fame.

Fare thee well, David Broder, and I still miss Bill.

http://www.harborsights.com/bill/

Editor's note: Since I wrote this post, the NCAA men's basketball tournament has announced a first-round game between Penn State (my school) and Temple (Bill's) in Tucson. Bill always traveled to see the Owls in the tournmant, regardless of how far he had to fly from his spring training baseball assignment. Well, not even for you, Bill -- go Nittany Lions.

Attracting and engaging the elementary school user

2011-03-15T13:42:00.010-04:00

This week, I was one of the chaperones for my daughter’s first-grade class on a field trip to the American Museum of American History. I have been waiting for this day since the kids were born.

Once inside the museum, I had my group of three girls and 90 minutes to explore the museum. The girls offered their attention only to the exhibits that offered one of four attractions:

Tactile multimedia. The Star Spangled Banner exhibit offered touch screen table tops. The kids could touch the screen and make the text and images slide. The kids were concerned more about the motion than the slide. With guidance, they were able to read and absorb the text.
Text which they could read in short amounts. The words were not as important as the sounds of the word.
Video. Any video had an opportunity for attention.
Audio. Everything that talked directly to the user. If an exhibit played period music, they walked right past. If the narrative had spoken words, they stopped. If the narrative had children speaking, they stopped and listened.

Our group’s favorite exhibits were Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, the elevator and water fountains.

Walking through the exhibits, kids have an attention span of about 20-30 seconds. The adults walking behind them are no different.

In a Civil War exhibit, the kids pointed and shouted, “TV, TV.” It was a multimedia presentation a screen, audio and five buttons, which started five different narratives. Each narrative had a 5- to 8-second intro, with an opening text slide and period music. The kids’ attention span was … 5-8 seconds. Each of the kids wants to push a button to make something happen.

Once the kids watched an entire narrative (about 60 seconds), they were engaged. The stories were well told. But the narrative designer didn’t take into account the audience. The opening doesn’t require 5-8 seconds. In an room with 50 competing artifacts and distractions, the narrative start doesn’t need more than 2 seconds. Museum exhibits need to adapt to Internet audiences, whether they’re 8 years old or 50.

Tactile takeaways: The Smithsonian information desk offers bookmarks with URLs () and iTunes to search the museum online. The kids liked the bookmarks. Each held their hands out to get a bookmark, then handed them to for me to hold. Along with their coats.

Getting it right is everything

2011-03-13T16:30:00.006-04:00

Reading The Ombundsman column today in The Washington Post reminded me of why I canceled my 7-day subscription to the paper last year, and also why I renewed it last month.

This ombundsman (Patrick B. Pexton) is new to the job and was recounting his first week, filled with complaints from online and print readers. Some believe The Post is subjective instead of objective, or subjective from an opposing viewpoint.

Other print readers complained ”mistakes lead to a steady drip-by-drip erosion of their confidence in The Post.” I was one of those readers and I stepped off the print subscription bus last year. I was too tired of errors and lazy writing in the paper to have the confidence I once had in The Post. Writers were no longer trying to engage me before the jump and too often the graphics were obvious. The sports section gave little to mid-season baseball during the week, figuring readers would follow the season online. But online doesn’t get me through a morning Metro ride when I’m trying to read the box scores.

I wrestled with having the paper only on Sundays, then still railing at thin sections. But other small publications can still inform me and engage me. The Post seems to be saving it for the big stories on their own time. When The Post can roll out a Walter Reed medical story when it’s ready, it’s terrific. When The Post needs to run engaging features and explanatory packages on the Nationals and Orioles on a regular basis, I get writing at a 5^th-grade level.

The Post has fallen most dramatically in the Style section, which I always thought was the differentiator from The LA Times. When I lived on the West Coast in the early 1990s, the LAT was tremendous: covering California and the Pacific Rim as if they were a suburban beat, sharply focusing on pro sports and major college events. They lacked a fun or critical Style section, mostly because LA is an industry town; if the paper crushed a new movie, they could lose studio advertising.

But in DC, the Style section was always sharp, biting and nearly always a must-read. Now it’s simply tired, with look-at-me-writing and Charlie Sheen focus.

I no longer felt luck to be in the subscription area for one of the great newspapers in the world. The Post had become a local paper, in which readership believes about 70% of what it reads, then cross-references it online against the New York Times.

What brought me back were my elementary-school kids. Where are the comics? Where’s the paper, we need it for a school project? I learned how to read from the NY Daily News, and I killed time in study hall in middle school with the Mr. Cohen’s New York Times, reading the Supreme Court docket for the coming week.

Was I denying my own kids the same opportunity? So when a Post telemarketer called and said I could get the rest of the week for 31 cents, I came back.

I still see the errors. While I understand why, they’re still unforgivable. In the ombundsman report, Pexton focused on one concrete issue: A print graphic that listed pension liabilities in millions of dollars instead of billions. According to Pexton, the online graphic was correct.

I can see how the error could have been made; I’ve been on both sides. Pexton credits the writer with having the figures right, but he probably never met with the artist who created the graphic. The information was most likely passed in an editor’s meeting, then through a graphics editor to an artist, who very well may have thought the millions figure was correct. The error could’ve been made by a content editor, graphics assignment editor, research or the artist.

Mistakes are made by the dozens daily at a newspaper. What keeps the information flowing – and correct – are the multiple readers by copy editors. In the old days, like 10 years ago, stories (and graphics) would’ve been read and cross-referenced by five different people, whose job it was to get it right and keep it right. Most stories are now getting two reads by people whose focus is split on multiple monitor screens.

I hope The Post gets it right and gets it right soon. This kind of close-enough communication leaves the online door open for the pros at Huffington Post, Slate and AOL, who simply aren’t good enough or too obviously biased. Digg amateur linkers give your money’s worth with their free service.

And good luck to us readers. We can only vote with our dollar, which equals about three weeks of weekday newspaper subscriptions these days.

Secret. Agent Man.

2009-06-01T23:34:00.011-04:00

"With every move he makes
Another chance he takes
Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow."

We live in a world of great opportunity, which is another way of saying layoffs, foreclosures and corporate financial ruins afford us a new opportunity to find new ways to keep on keeping on.

Gerry Dunn is an example of a social media entrepreneur who defines his era by re-defining himself.

Dunn was a long-time Maryland realtor and real estate investor who morphed into a Virginia mortgage broker. To connect with his customers and peers, and to differentiate himself from his competitors, he sent out a Friday e-mail. In half the message he'd recount the week's mortgage rates and news. In the other half, describe a bottle of wine. Among Dunn's passions is wine, and once he created a blog with his backlog of wine reviews, winegent.com become a niche favorite.

The mortgage business soured last year and Dunn was looking for a new career. He decided to sell residential homes in Potomac, MD. But real estate is a closed market for a new broker, even one with decades of experience. So Dunn invented a new persona: Potomac Secret Agent.

On his blog, potomacsecretagent.com, Dunn has posted nearly 100 reviews of open houses in the area. With a single cellphone photo from the street, Dunn describes the attributes of each home, but rates the value of the asking price — and for what price it should sell.

Four years ago in the Washington, DC, residential market, everything with a doorbell and a toilet sold at 30% over value. In 2009, homes are aging on the market longer and longer and Dunn is telling owners why.

Following another of Dunn's passions, the Potomac Secret Agent urged Montgomery County drivers to "drive gently," by placing bright red signs under the speed cameras on Memorial Day weekend.

Local television pounced on the story. Dunn became the face of a cause against speed camera tickets, sort of a bureacracy hiding behind a lens — a different kind of secret agent.

What other ways do you think the Potomac Secret Agent can spread his message through social media?

if you were organized, how little could you work?

2009-05-27T12:27:00.005-04:00

Timothy Ferriss should fire his marketing staff. He has an interesting concept, but his marketers are delivering the wrong message.

I first heard Ferriss on NPR, talking about his book, The 4-Hour Workweek. I was drawn to the message for the wrong reasons. His concept is spot on, though his packaging is flawed.

If you judge this book by its cover, you might think Ferris is a snotty slacker (from Princeton, don’t you know), trying to avoid work while raking in millions. The author isn’t sidestepping work, but embraces enormous “outside” tasks and interests.
Ferriss lumps adults into two categories, then challenges the reader to accept their role:

New Rich: Those with options and personal goals as first priority.

Deferrers: Those work and save for long-term reward.

Ferriss challenges the status quo and demands readers address and organize their lives: Manage that which you can manage.

Emphasize your strengths, he preaches, and avoid your weaknesses.

Less is not laziness. Focus on being productive instead of busy.

Are you being productive, or just active?

Are you inventing tasks to avoid important tasks?

Ferriss urges readers to read e-mail twice a day: at noon and 4 p.m. It is the reader’s job to train those around him to be effective and efficient.

Twas this point that made me read the book after hearing the NPR interview. I’m a slave to my Outlook and Gmail inbox, and have forever believed my multi-tasking efforts were the definition of productive. Ferriss helped me understand the difference between busy and active, between busy and cluttered.

Is Ferriss a slacker? No. An ultravagabond addicted to travel? Yes.

He must be bright; he talks about making $40,000 a month on a business that runs itself. He works hard, but doesn’t want to be accountable to conventional standards and workflows. Could he make more if he stayed in one place? Sure, but then, he wouldn’t be traveling the globe several times a year.

Ferriss’ marketers present him as a vagabond, lazing in a beach hammock. I see him as incredibly organized, pursuing his life work: seeing and enjoying the world now while maintaining a comfortable income stream.

How about you: With which lifestyles and cultures do you best align?

drop the "social," and Twitter works for corporate

2009-05-25T10:05:00.014-04:00

Odds are, I guess I should've skipped Twitter by now. Or at least a 60% chance.

I joined Twitter about a month ago, and according to popular Internet stats, that's about the time 60% of new users leave. The novelty's gone, the intrigue has faded and those Tweeters they'd been following just weren't that interesting anymore.

Who blames them?

Twitter allows you to follow people globally. Hear from Australians going to bed in the middle of your day and New Yorkers waking up late in your morning. And, for the most part, they're spewing a lot of crap.

"I'm over my blue funk."
"Morning cappuccinos are the best."
"LMAO"

It's not 140 characters that are limiting these lame posters; it's their lame attitude.

Corporate tweeters have a unique opportunity in this forum. Like much of social media, Twitter is a one-trick poiny, but it's a different trick for different ponies. Most users focus on the individual > individual(s) broadcast method. I encourage corporate clients to focus on corporation message > sea of individuals.

I'm most interested in two corporate Twitter users: @homedepot and @matrix group. They speak intelligently and respectfully to their followers, always informing, always stimulating and never selling.

My favorite individual tweeter is Jeff Veen (@veen). He's started (another) new business: Small Batch. Just before he opened the business, he only occasionally tweeted. Regular readers knew he was up to something. Following the release, he used Twitter to inform customers and guide friends and visitors.

So I give the following Twitter advice to my clients:

Say more by saying less
Be honest
Be transparent
Be smart
Be right
Be brief and be gone

it takes a village. but what if they're all village idiots?

2009-05-22T23:22:00.007-04:00

The wisdom of crowds? mmmaybe not.

James Surowiecki’s book, The Wisdom of Crowds, explores the concept of how large groups of people can be smarter than an elite few: Better at solving problems, fostering innovation and coming to wise decisions.

Mr. Surowiecki might have been startled by a story in The Washington Post about how an unremarkable T-shirt soared to the very top of Amazon’s best-selling clothing list. The very, very top.

The black T-shirt pictures three wolves howling at the moon; you’ve seen it — basically — in every T-shirt shop on every boardwalk. According to The Post, the shirt got a push from collegehumor.com. And then, people were able to post images of themselves wearing the shirt. And other people wearing the shirt. This week, hundreds of reviewers gave their heartfelt recommendations of the shirt on Amazon’s comments area. Wisdom of crowds? Really?

I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women

I have worn the T-shirt many times and have yet to exhibit any skill at bounding through the woods or sniffing. My growling abilities still suck too.
The Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt gave me a +10 resistance to energy attacks, +8 Strength, and added 30 feet to my normal leap.

Since owning the Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt, I have successfully solved 7 crimes in my city, including 4 cold case murders.

Most shirts like this only contain one wolf. This shirt has three wolves, plus a moon. You are basically getting three wolves and a moon for the price on one wolf. You won't find that deal anywhere else.

So it’s just a lot of people getting silly over a shirt, right? Except I saw Jared Spool speaking at a recent Usability Experience conference. He talked about another item on Amazon that had attracted an enormous crowd: Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz. More than 1,000 reviewers offered their opinions. Among them:

Once upon a mid-day sunny, while I savored Nuts 'N Honey,
With my Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 gal, 128 fl. oz., I swore
As I went on with my lapping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at the icebox door.
'Bad condensor, that,' I muttered, 'vibrating the icebox door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Has anyone else tried pouring this stuff over dry cereal? A-W-E-S-O-M-E!

Horrible service, I bought my milk and went with the 7-9 day super saver shipping method and it arrived warm and curdled. What the hell?

So maybe it’s not wisdom the crowds are displaying here, but they are showing incredibly, collaborative creativity. Maybe you’ll look at milk differently, or notice someone – in a crowd – wearing a wolves T-shirt. These crowds have built a scaffolding environment upon which others can add.

How will you contribute?

creativity in ruled bursts

2009-05-21T00:37:00.012-04:00

Ever have a friend who thinks quantitatively, with a razor wit? That MBA with a wildly creative flair? Who draws Venn diagrams on cocktail napkins with a karma outlook?

Me, neither.

Then I learned about Jessica Hagy, a writer and illustrator who writes insights in diagrams on index cards .... just something she publishes while the coffee brews.

A walking Visio, Hagy has the unique talent of organizing and categorizing "random" subjects and theories, and identifying their commonalities.

Thanks to Whitney Hess at RedUX DC for introducing me to Hagy's site, thisisindexed.com.

This is another example of finding a brilliant idea just as it's being created, or in my case, two years later. Someone once told me, don't worry about who got the cherry, if you're the one holding the sundae. Give me that cocktail napkin and let me see if I can draw that ...

online news, competing with television and newspapers

2009-05-12T12:38:00.010-04:00

In The Washington Post this week, media writer Howard Kurtz lamented the Death of Print in an online world. Will anyone pick up the newspaper anymore?

"(Newspapers) created sites that were largely a static replica of their print editions," wrote Kurtz. "There was little updating, little sense of the dynamism of the Web... "

And I wondered, how can print journalists provide great journalism online. I see excellent examples online today, combining quality "print-style" writing with online delivery.

On Feb. 12, 2009, a Colgan Air flight from Newark to Buffalo crashed on a cold night, killing all 49 on board one person on the ground. The National Transportation Safety Board started hearings today and two newspapers reported their stories today — online.

The news story I saw on washingtonpost.com in the late morning, Sholnn Freeman reported the "pilots discussed their lack of experience flying planes under icing conditions and expressed anxiety about their training as they looked out of the cockpit windows and saw ice built up on the wings."

I wondered what the pilots sounded like when they said that. The Post didn't have a multimedia package available for this story, but The Buffalo News did.

They offered a live webcast of the hearings, though I couldn't find the plug-in for my Firefox browser. Jerry Zremski ended his account of the hearing proceedings with: "The recording ended with Shaw's screams."

The Buffalo News will lose street sales tomorrow from readers who saw the air crash information online today. But they'll gain online readers who will want to hear the audio, watch the videos, view the multiple images and link back to archived accounts of the crash.

This is the quality of online delivery with the standard of print journalism that will keep newspapers alive, whether your fingers are typing or smeared with newsprint ink.

As Kurtz said, "Maybe serious journalism will reinvent itself in new and unexpected forms. But if everything goes electronic, I'll always miss the feel of newsprint."

I will miss newsprint, too, but I know I can adapt my learning style for on-demand information — now.

What do you think?

telling stories with pictures

2009-05-10T15:21:00.007-04:00

In this time between jobs (a nicer way of saying I was part of another layoff), I have been re-connecting with peers.

I was lucky enough to get coffee with Lynne Perri, who was more than a peer at USA Today, and in ways, a mentor. As Deputy Managing Editor in Graphics and Photography, she taught me some interesting negotiating skills. She's still teaching, as Journalist-in-Residence at American University.

Lynne has been in two projects that I think broaden the definition of communications. With her energy and insight, I'm still learning from her:

Lynne was part of an experiment at USA Today: Ask top designers and students to redefine the Food Pyramid. See all the designs.

Roger Black inverted the pyramid, using text and color to represent proportion. Lucie Lacava used a circle and a bull's eye.

I was fascinated with the work of a North Carolina State student, Adrienne Yancey, who broke the mold of the pyramid. Trading lines and angles for curves and bowls, Adrienne used memorable and connectable icons — food bowls. Like the Three Bears, the bowls are proportionate and identifiable: a thimble for oils and a big bowl for grains.

Adrienne also added a qualitative element, a great, heaping bowl for exercise. Kids (and overweight adults, like me) can easily recognize the priorities and proportions of healthy, daily eating.

Lynne was part of an instructional team to teach backpack journalism during the New Hampshire primary in the 2008 presidential election. Packing faculty and students into several vans, they spent five days all over the state covering the primary, in print, video, photography, graphics and online. Working out of backpacks, so to speak, student were expected to shoot video, photograph and write on what they saw and heard.

The primary was a walking, talking test, with no correct answers. The students met met professional journalists and interviewed professional politicians. Opportunity rubbed against talent. You find out quickly who the good students are, and they learn fast if this is a career they crave. See their work.

Marrying images with narratives is a natural; you engage the reader and diminish most language barriers. Even slightly interested readers and viewers will glance at USDA graphics and briefly written posts on a primary.

Can you contribute a visual narrative or package that stays with you to this day?

the (tee) time is now

2008-06-16T14:33:00.003-04:00

Win or lose, Tiger Woods has created a real-time, right-now case study of how the world is ready to integrate Web 2.0 tools into their lives through appointmet television.

Tiger created a playoff yesterday in the U.S. Open, which has an unusual playoff format. Instead of playing overtime holes, the Open requires an 18-hole playoff the next day. (Kudos to The Washington Post for putting together video on author John Feinstein railing against the format.)

usopen.com offered a live simulcast of the event and it seems to be the perfect nexus of introducing internet sports viewing to the general public: one-on-one golf, available in the office and at home. The event is simple to understand, gorgeous to watch and exciting. A viewer can keep it in the background, watch when available. Excited viewers could IM on the site, send the link to friends and click on "flyovers" for future holes.

The number of eyeballs that have seen the 15-second American Express commercial at the start of the simulcast will be a record ROI for the AmEx interactive marketing budget.

Today is the first day of truly viewing sports on your laptop. And it's all free.

When a comma is like a choo-choo train

2008-06-10T13:05:00.005-04:00

I help my clients with writing tips. Here's one on commas:

When's the right time to use a comma in a series, and more importantly, when do you — not? Think of a series of items in a sentence like a freight train.

In a train, the first car is the engine. It pulls the entire train, is usually the most powerful car on the train and sets the tone for the experience. The caboose brings up the rear of the train. The caboose is usually red and well-lit to signal the end of the train, houses the employees during a journey and, most importantly, signifies this is a train long enough to warrant a caboose.

All the cars between the engine and the caboose mean money for the train, whether they're carrying people, milk, petroleum or lumber. The more cars, the more money. If the only car behind the engine is the caboose, the train is making no money.

So.

Put a comma between every train car in your series. Every single one except the one before the caboose. Cabooses can't stand commas. The very thought of them turns them red. Use and instead of a comma.

Imagine reading a series aloud: The commas tell you, hey, another car's on the way.

"I’ll have one hot dog, one milkshake, one hamburger and french fries."
"You’ll have nothing and like it."

Here's another kind of train, this one for semi-colons. On this train, the cars themselves are filled with different items, so you save the commas for inside the train cars and semi-colons for between the train cars.

"My dream vacation would be going to Las Vegas, for gambling and pool-hopping; New York, for clubbing and baseball; and Paris, for the women, wine and museums. Now if I could only take a train ..."

Lastly, place a semi-colon and and before a caboose. That's right; in a series with semi-colons, the and goes inside the caboose.

When punctuation should be like a carrot

2008-05-10T19:46:00.003-04:00

I learned my language skills through three years of high school English, memorizing the AP style book in college and enduring newspaper editors calling me mocking names. Reading the world's blogs, I see everyone hasn't been blessed by my editors. As I tell my clients, let me help you out.

Let's look at one of the founding rules in punctuation: Placement within quotes.

"How can you leave Michael Anthony out of a Van Halen reunion," shouted one angry fan. "He is the band!"

This fan's heart is in the right place, as is his punctuation. When do punctuation marks stay inside the quote marks?

Always.

Pretend you're planting a vegetable garden. You have fresh soil, a handful of seeds and a nifty wire fence to keep out the rabbits. Where do you place the seeds? Inside the fence.

If you leave your seeds or punctuation, outside the fence, the rabbits will eat them up. It makes no sense.

As Bugs Bunny once said: "And remember, 'mud' spelled backwards is 'dum.' "