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Grammar Girl: My Superhero

“Grammar Girl? She must be a superhero!” exclaimed my daughter Katey last week when she was peeking over my shoulder as I read some of my tweets.

After I finished laughing, I stopped to think about what Katey said. I guess Katey’s right: Grammar Girl is my superhero. Anyone who can take a subject that could be dry (at best) and turn it into an intriguing, humorous and award-winning podcast and then a book has done something amazing, something that most humans cannot do. That sounds like superhero work to me!

I’ve been a listener of Mignon Fogarty’s Grammar Girl podcast for about six months now. My favorite episode of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips is the one on when to use lay and when to use lie. My tendency had been to substitute a word rather than figure out the rule. Now I think I may understand it! (The true test of this will occur when I explain to my public relations students when to use which word.)

Wednesday evening, Katey and I are making a girls-only road trip to the Atlanta area to meet Mignon in person and have our copy of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing signed.

To subscribe to the Grammar Girl podcast, visit the Quick and Dirty Tips website. You’ll be glad you did.

Take the Grammar Girl Challenge; it’s on the right sidebar of Public Relations Matters. Let me know how you did!

And finally, if you know what the punctuation mark is right under the letter G in “girl” in Katey’s poster, drop me a comment here. Hint: Look close; it’s not a question mark.

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Del.icio.us link for 2008-07-16

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Wordle Me This

Have you tried Wordle yet? It’s fun, and it’s addictive. I took my resume and tweaked it slightly*, and then imported it into Wordle. Here you can see me, in about 99 words. Fun!

*To tweak my resume, this is what I did:

  • for words that I wanted to have joined together (like “public relations”), replace the space between the words with a tilde (public~relations)
  • took my name and copied/pasted it about 15 times, so that I was sure my name would be the largest word in the image
  • replaced variations of a word (like communicates, communication, communicate) and standardized it to one word (communication)

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Del.icio.us link for 2008-07-13

  • The Gobbeldygook Manifesto
    So few marketing and PR people write well. Many of the thousands of Web sites I’ve analyzed over
    the years and the hundred or so news releases I receive each week from well- meaning PR people
    are laden with these gobbledygook adjectives. So I wanted t
    (tags: PublicRelations newsrelease writing)
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Real Talk in Tough Times: Communicating for Change

Reposted from Natalie Tindall, Student Advisory Committee for the National Black Public Relations Society (NBPRS)

Would you like a chance to win a scholarship to attend the NBPRS Conference and Career Fair in Atlanta (November 12-16 2008) –the largest gathering of African American PR Professionals?

The conference will provide four inspiring days of networking, training and honoring those who have paved the way for African Americans in the PR field.

Themed “Real Talk in Tough Times: Communicating for Change,” the conference will offer solutions for the practice of public relations in the economically, socially and politically challenging times society now faces.

Write a 250-word essay about our conference theme – “Real Talk in Tough Times: Communicating for Change.” Tell us how you will make your community better with Real Talk.

Send your completed essay to Dawn.jones@nbprs.org

Limited student scholarships available—All applications must be received by October 1, 2008.

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Groundswell as a Textbook?

GroundswellI’ll be using Groundswell as a text to augment Reputation Management in a Corporate PR class this fall. Are other public relations educators using Groundswell? If so, perhaps we could collaborate on discussion questions and exercises. Please drop me a line!

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WSAV’s Obama Oops

My husband noticed this on the news at 6:31 this morning (July 8, 2008). I jumped out of bed, grabbed the camera and took a picture of the TV screen. WSAV had a video of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, with the caption saying “Ardsley Park Shooting Suspect.” They ran this not once, but twice. I bet someone’s in trouble now. . .

It will be interesting to see if WSAV apologizes for this mistake.

 

UPDATE: During the 6:30 a.m. hour on July 9, I heard Kim Gusby apologize for the mis-captioned video clip.

 

 

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What the [bleep] is Social Media?

Todd Defren sent a tweet a few days ago, pointing his followers to a great slide deck by Marta Z. Kagan. I’ll be sharing this presentation in my Public Speaking class on Thursday, and with my many public relations classes in the fall. This presentation is clear, fresh and fun!

 

 

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New Media Academic Summit 2008 : People Are Talking

People are talking. Actually, they are blogging about their experiences at the New Media Academic Summit 2008, co-sponsored by Edelman and PR Week.

If you attended the Summit and I have not mentioned your blog here, please drop me a line.
 

 

Photo credit: kryptonite, originally uploaded to Flickr by ? marc_l’esperance

 

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Pix from New Media Academic Summit 2008

The Flickr photostream for items tagged with Summit08 is an interesting conglomeration of photos from several of us who attended Edelman’s New Media Academic Summit. Below are a few of my favorite ones.

Here’s a photo of me with Neville Hobson (blogger and co-host of For Immediate Release), taken by Edelman’s Rick Murray.

Barbara Nixon and Neville Hobsom

Charlene Li, author of Groundswell, posed with me for this one. (I’m the queen of arm’s length self-portraits.)

Charlene Li and Barbara Nixon

At the Avenue Hotel, there was a zebra chair in every room. Not knowing this, I brought my zebra shirt with me. I couldn’t resist another arm’s length self-portrait.

Barbara Nixon in a zebra shirt on a zebra chair

And finally, Clarke Caywood, one of the participants at the conference, carried the Beijing Olympic Torch in China in June. He graciously allowed many of us to pose with it.

Barbara Nixon holding a Beijing Olympic torch