Punctuality Rules!

General

Revisiting Civility

Let’s revisit one of my favorite old posts, shall we? One that explores what is still my favorite analogy for Civility. We’re All Traveling Together I have a book called Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy by Stephen L. Carter. It talks about the collapse of basic manners,…

Education

When I started this blog almost ten years ago, I said: Punctuality is not just about making meetings on time, but about being exact. It’s about doing what needs to be done at exactly the time it should be done. To me, that’s an issue that transcends mere punctuation. That…

Being Carded

Let’s talk about business cards, shall we? It’s true that a lot of business is done electronically, these days, and it’s not like we pay polite visits that require calling cards anymore. (Though, let’s pause a moment and reflect on a society that used to have time to ramble from…

Get it Out There

So, say you’ve been writing for years. You’ve pretty much mastered the niceties of punctuation, you know your grammar and can parse a sentence with the best of them. Your vocabulary would blow away the SAT people, and you read, read, read just like all the writing books recommend. Yet,…

Out of Line?

You might not know, but I have a site where I review knitting books. So, imagine my surprise when I got this co-written email the other day. As a “LYS owner” we are thrilled to read your messages about upcoming books and your reviews. It helps us to stock our…

Calisthenics for the Brain

I was reading an interview in Time with David McCullough (the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, if the name doesn’t ring a bell), and this question caught my attention: Q: We don’t write letters on paper anymore. How will this affect the study of history? The loss of people writing–writing a composition,…

WWSD?*

I’ve been watching the BBC series of “Sherlock,” a modern update of the classic Holmes and Watson stories. (It’s fabulous, by the way.) One of the hallmarks of the Sherlock Holmes character has always been his relative arrogance. He has such absolute confidence in his abilities and has such a…

Grammar Day!

It’s National Grammar Day. How are you going to celebrate? Turn all the extra apostrophes you find into little winky emoticons. Parrot back the word “like” whenever it gets misused in sentence (“like, you know, a Valley girl). Carry your blue pencil with you so you can correct incorrect commas.…

And the winner is…

Thanks to the handy-dandy random number generator (known to my friend Jenny as “Randy”) … comment #10 wins! sprite I love reading interviews with people that actually make me feel like they’d be interesting to talk with. Thanks for asking great questions, Deb! So, Sprite, come on down and claim…

SitStay

Okay, here’s a wonderful example of great marketing. This box from SitStay.com arrived at our house today. They have the BEST shipping material. Really. Check out what it says on the top: “WARNING: For your own sake, please do not stand between this box and your dog. Dogs have been…

I YA, Do You?

I just read this quote on an Amazon book review: “Although the point of view shifts between many characters (with even the Coleman’s maid and cook getting their say, sometimes unnecessarily), Falling Angels is essentially the children’s story, since it is their lives that are most open to change. ”…

Truly Obnoxious Spam

Spammers, this is NOT the way to win my attention. I think we can all agree that spammers are, well, annoying–like telemarketers used to be. They clutter up your comments and email with links for products and sites that usually have nothing to do with what you’re blogging about. To…