What Corporate America Can't Build: A Sentence

New York Times ^ | December 7, 2004 | SAM DILLON

[Redleg Duke]

Very good!

[Iwo Jima]

Have you ever played "Boardroom Bingo"?

[RushLake]

"Do you mean you actually reached a live person by telephone?"

No, lots of people screen calls with the voice mail system. Sometimes it was effective to drop in for a visit.

[June Cleaver]

Well, actually I grew up here in the states, though my mother is German. My Dad, however, spoke mostly in grunts. I don't know who to blame it on (my lack of syntax) . . . public schooling? :)

[TChris]

Wanting more formality in writing smacks of Jane Austen snobbery, not better communications.

What I got from the article was not that people want more formality in writing, but simply regular English. Like many fields, writing has some rules. Anarchy in writing leads to misunderstanding and frequently, as the article points out, to hard feelings. Actually, one of the subjects of the article was criticized for being too formal!

[Carolinamom]

I like your semicolon suggestion better than my suggested period between those closely related sentences. (Comma splices are a no-no.)

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Well said.

[SuziQ]

Comes from reading way too much 18th and 19th century writing, where a paragraph easily and often runs over one page.

My eyes start to glaze over if I have to read any Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy. I love listening to someone else read them on audiotape, but I just can't bear to read them myself!

[Knitting A Conundrum]

I have trouble with Hardy myself. I love his poetry, but I just can't do his novels.