Enough with the mumbles!
Here’s Strong Language, a Web log devoted to the English language and its use in business.
If you use the written word at work — if you write to persuade, sell, explain, or instruct, or you manage those who do — SL is for you.
If you’re curious about language, and enjoy making new discoveries about its majestic power to clarify or confuse, reveal or conceal, sell or repel — SL is for you, too.
Strong Language listens and enjoys. We know rules, respect most, break some. We can write without jargon but we love it. We chase slang to exhaustion, find raw power in the passive voice, and give old clichés one more squeeze. We’re not stuck in the past but we have deep roots there. (When it comes to grammar, we’re King James Bible men at heart.)
Unschooled, unchurched, and far from ivy
Strong Language is unschooled in the canon, unchurched in the ritual. We are without credentials, portfolio or purse, and far from the groves of academe. Faced with a complex question of syntax, we want to know two things: What did Tom Sawyer say, and what’s the business model?
We’re not MBAs, marketing gurus, reference librarians or merchants of coffee mugs, and we don’t offer much News About Us. Neither are we a remedial English reader — if you confuse comprise and compose, do what we do: 1) Find a dictionary; 2) Pay attention.
We don’t mourn the death of “good English,” but rather let the dead bury their dead. We’re here to celebrate the best of the beast.
And one more thing: When it comes to finding errors in the written word, we don’t shoot fish in barrels — we only skewer Him (or Her) What Ought Know Better.
