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Persuasion: Make Your Expertise Known
If you are trying to persuade someone on a topic that you are knowledgeable about, convey your expertise up front. People who try to make a decision while listening to expert advice often stop analyzing and simply accept the recommendation. People often seek expertise...
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Converting Nouns to Verbs has a Long History
Language traditionalists bristle when people use nouns as verbs and vice versa, but such conversions have a long history in English. Just be careful about using new forms that readers might interpret as sloppiness. Many people are convinced that words are one part of...
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Why the Brain Likes Visual Content
The use of visual content continues to increase, but what many people don't know is why the brain likes visual content more than a descriptive sentence. For several years, the popularity of videos and pictures has surged, even on Facebook and Twitter, which were not...
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Use Helping Verbs Only When They Help
Helping verbs (is, are, was, were, will be, etc.) often are necessary to express a point in time (verb tense), but you can strengthen your sentence by stripping them when they are unnecessary. Write with strong verbs, a valuable piece of wisdom for centuries, doesn't...
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Storytelling: How to Elevate an Article to a Story
Corporate intranets contain many articles but fewer stories. Adding narrative elements can elevate a ho-hum article to an engaging story. The word story is loosely applied to almost any article, and for the sake of discussion we can use the term broadly, because...
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Use Short, Vivid Stories to Influence an Audience
We know that stories can be entertaining and inspirational, but they also can be persuasive, for a reason many people are not aware of. When an audience focuses on a story line, they pay less attention to the subtle message intended to influence them. We persuade...
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Create Tight, Crisp Writing with a Semicolon
To make your writing a little tighter and more snappy, become friends with the semicolon. The semicolon is a misunderstood punctuation mark. Some people have a strange notion that a semicolon is for academic writing or that it is used by people trying to look...
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Starting sentences with “and,” “because,” or “however”
People often sit at the keyboard, staring at the screen, hearing voices from the past. "You can't start a sentence with and, because, or however," old Miss Grumplebee cautioned them. Well, relax, folks. Such "rules" are mythical. We learned valuable lessons about...
read moreBy Ken O’Quinn
As a contributing author in this book on leadership, Ken offers insights and tips for managing difficult conversations, providing effective feedback, and being authentic. Order here.
Perfect Phrases for Business Letters (McGraw-Hill)
Provides the right words and phrases for any situation - quickly. The book was reprinted in Japanese because of high-volume sales there.
TD at Work — Business Writing for Managers
The Association for Talent Development invited Ken to write this 22-page booklet for the TD at Work series.
Current Blog Post
Persuasion: Make Your Expertise Known
If you are trying to persuade someone on a topic that you are knowledgeable about, convey your expertise up front. …