Want to Sharpen Your Vocabulary?

Be suspicious of writing consultants who tell you which words to avoid using in business writing. Before long, you'll discover that they do not always practice what they preach. Nevertheless, since the business world is a breeding ground of buzzwords and jargon, reviewing lists of taboo words can prove a simple technique for maintaining a fresh writing style.

A Vocabulary.com post, Words to Avoid in Business Writing, covers author Bryan A. Garner's list of verboten words. After reviewing them, browse the Vocabulary.com website. Using its quiz features regularly will help you pick up fresher words to replace the dropped stale ones.

BOOK REVIEW: "Moonwalking with Einstein"

There's something cinematic about Joshua Foer's Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. At certain points in the book, one can understand why it has been optioned for a movie deal, especially when Foer recalls his interviews of scientists and the subjects of their investigations, when he engages other memorists in divulging the tricks of their trade, and when prepares for and competes in the United States Memory Championship. Those moments move from wistful to comedic, from poignant to suspenseful. 

Participating in mind games was the farthest thought from Foer's mind only one year before, while engaged in a routine journalism assignment on the national memory competition in New York. There he happened on Ed Cooke, a British Grandmaster memorist, who claimed that he could teach Foer to be an excellent memorist in no time. True to his word, Cooke coached Foer all the way to becoming the US Memory Champion within one year.

The best quality of Moonwalking with Einstein is Foer's gift of understatement. He claims early on that he does not intend it to be a how-to resource for memory improvement. Yet it is. By describing the techniques he used to improve his recall, Foer provides numerous techniques and tips the most amnemonic among us can use to remember almost anything on demand. In describing his encounter with Tony Buzan, the English educational consultant whose outrageous claims of transforming humanity make him an easy target of ridicule, Foer prefers to objectively report his findings to let readers decide for themselves whether they should subscribe to Buzan's mind mapping techniques. 

Foer's documentarian approach to memory uncovers stories of individuals past and present whose virtual total recall confounds their contemporaries and makes them the envy of people who long to remember pi to the thousandth place or to summon on demand the weekday, weather, and major headlines of any recorded day in human history. He looks at the remarkable tale of S, the famous patient of early twentieth century Russian psychologist A. R. Luria. S could summon every seemingly insignificant event that ever occurred to him, a skill which actually hurt him professionally because it prevented him from the more important ability to generalize. The author discusses at length the sad case of his meeting EP, whom he calls the most forgetful man in the world, to better understand the characteristics of remembering that are present in some and absent in others. By sharing these situations and the known science underlying them, Foer grants us access into what make our memories work, why we forget things, why we should forget most of them, and how we can recover more than we think.

Some reviews suggest that reading Moonwalking makes one feel like a voyeur touring a curiosity shop, but Foer's crisp prose, earnest inquiries, and interesting summations about the human capacity to remember are more than sufficient reasons to pick up a copy.

Thoughts on Visual Design, Part 3: Tips

This is the last in the three-part series on using visual design theory in documents and slide decks.] 

Readers viewing illustrations that accompany reports may closely analyze them than the text. Applying graphics is as critical a skill as writing content. Most problems in using graphics result from a failure to see how the text balances the illustration and vice versa. The visually inclined author might think that the illustration trumps the text; meanwhile, the linguistically inclined writer might minimize the great value of the illustration.

With these challenges in mind, consider these eight tips for using visual design in slide decks or documents:

1. Employ the 6-Foot Rule. Use text and illustrations for slides that are readable from 6 feet away when not projected to ensure that they will be readable from the back of the room when projected.
2. Apply the 6 X 6 Rule. Limit text on slides to no more than 6 lines per slide and 6 words per line.
3. Show proportion. Start graphs and charts at a zero baseline, justify your baseline choice when you do not, and draw graphics to scale.
4. Keep backgrounds transparent. Ensure that the text and graphics are readable in the chosen background.
5. Place graphics strategically. Insert the graphic in an easily accessible, logical spot of the slide or document for the reader to process the combination of textual and graphical data.
6. Label graphics thoroughly. Remember that people often read the graphics out of context, so label the heading and components clearly (e.g., x and y axes) and tell a complete story with the visual aid.
7. Highlight the graphics in the text. Even though the visual aid should stand alone, you still need to focus the reader on its significance in the text. Show relationships among discussion points to increase reader interest and support your position.
8. Minimize stylistic features. Use text styling (bold, underlining, and italics), color, and animation features sparingly.

Thoughts on Visual Design, Part 2: Principles

[This is the second in the three-part series on using visual design theory in documents and slide decks.] 

Visual design achieves the five goals of stimulating interest, clarifying complexities, promoting retention, inducing action, and imposing enduring impressions by adhering to the following six principles:

• Openness – Keep as much white space as possible. Take the attitude that space is money, so you won’t want to lose too much of it. As for text, less is more.
• Emphasis – Capture the meaning of what you want to say in a focused theme—then work from that theme. This practice will help the visuals drive the idea you need to get across.
• Relevance – Include only visuals that contribute to understanding and remembering the central idea. Make the image purposeful before you make it beautiful.
• Uniformity – Keep the theme consistent throughout the page. A minimalist and repetitive approach to color, spacing, margins, and font helps establish and reinforce the theme.
• Clarity – Create a design that enhances the text and does not get between the text and the reader. An eye for contrasting—not clashing—elements is essential.
• Balance – Cultivate a total picture to be symmetrical when evoking an image of order and to be asymmetrical when reflecting randomness or chaos.      

Thoughts on Visual Design, Part 1: Goals

[This is the first in the three-part series on using visual design theory in documents and slide decks.] 

Using visual design theory in business and technical writing is important because busy readers lose interest easily, so they need to capture information quickly. For these reasons, we employ illustrations such as tables, charts, photos, drawings, and screenshots to focus our reader.

But a lot goes into visual design. Start with the premise that document and slide deck design depends on the principles that define powerful writing: Establish your purpose, identify the most important points, and determine your audience’s level of understanding.

The graphic designer seeks a layout that achieves five goals:

• stimulate interest – The illustration must capture the reader’s attention.
• clarify complexities – The illustration must simplify the text.
• promote retention – The illustration must capture the key content for quick scanning.
• induce action – The illustration must invoke participants to achieve the intended results.
• impose enduring impressions – The illustration must have a memorable impact.

New Chinese Wisdom, Part 4: On Chinese Generosity

Beijing International MBA students celebrating a winning basketball game.

One of my MBA classes in Peking University.

[This is the last article in a four-part series on Chinese culture, business, and education from a visiting Westerner’s perspective.]

While in China, I have had the great pleasure of dining with many Chinese business professionals and students. Over my strongest objections, they always want to pick up the tab. I have watched them work hard on their classroom assignments and play hard too, as evidenced in the photo of a class basketball team after winning a key game. The standing player pointing at me while I was taking the picture is imploring me to join the photo because he considered me part of the team, another sign of Chinese generosity.

But those acts of benevolence did not prepare me for what I saw at an event celebrating twentieth anniversary of the National School of Development (NSD) at Peking University. In between Las Vegas-like song-and-dance numbers, popular local personalities came onstage to auction professors' items of little commercial value: handwritten lecture notes, a scroll of Chinese calligraphy, or a future lecture. Buyers included former students who are now successful business people and NSD supporters. The winning prices reached as high as 2 million RMB (US$320,000).

I shook my head in disbelief when hearing those numbers. While some might argue that this show of largess was an example of pure ostentation, I would disagree. The audience was too small and the event too local to capture wide recognition. Rather, I would suggest that spending so much money on items with little apparent return on investment indicates the Chinese willingness to endow entities with potential to advance their country, beliefs, and lifestyle.

New Chinese Wisdom, Part 3: On Chinese Identity

The Great Wall at Badaling, China

[This is the third article in a four-part series on Chinese culture, business, and education from a visiting Westerner’s perspective.] 

I was surprised by the result when I Wikied how many Chinese live overseas, away from mainland China: merely 50 million. I would have bet well over double that figure. Perhaps my bias comes from the fact that my ancestors, the Maltese, number only 1 million worldwide, with 600,000 living outside and only 400,000 living inside of Malta. With the exception of Australia and Malta itself, no matter where you live in the world, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single Maltese, while Chinese people seem ubiquitous where I live (Central New Jersey) and mostly work (New York City). Meanwhile, the Chinese comprise nearly 1.5 billion people worldwide--no comparison, really.

Regardless of the statistical accuracy of my unsophisticated research, Chinese expatriates stand out to me more than any other because of how they view their homeland. When teaching an adult ESL class in the United States, I like to privately ask students whether coming to the America was a good decision. Most Eastern Europeans will say, "Without a doubt, yes," even if they left behind highly skilled medical, engineering, or managerial positions in favor of lower-ranking clerical ones in the US. Indians would agree, but many say they would enjoy doing business internationally between the US and their homeland so that they could live in both countries. The Chinese response to my question, however, is remarkably different, especially when the younger generation opines. A slight majority says, "I could be wealthier in China, but I prefer the way of life in the United States, so I'm staying here." Nearly as many say, "I would like to return to China because of the greater opportunities there." 

Clearly, China is a land of opportunity, as it will soon surpass the US as the world's number one economy in terms of purchasing power. This fact causes conflicting feelings for Chinese across the globe. While they understandably feel great pride in their homeland and strong confidence about its economic prospects, they still have reservations about its future for political reasons. 

My 2012 trip to the Great Wall at Mutianyu and more recent one at Badaling symbolize this Chinese dilemma. The Great Wall stands as a bridge between the past and the present, drawing millions of tourists a year to its magnificent architecture and sprawling expanse. How will the Chinese move ahead as an economic superpower while maintaining their glorious traditions and unique cultural identity? This unfolding story is being closely watched with deepening interest globally by business people, politicians, economists, political scientists, historians, anthropologists, and educators.