Me and him are killing English

In today’s Hon­olulu Star-Bulletin, Doug Carl­son dis­cusses how poor gram­mar may affect careers. While his empha­sis is on con­ver­sa­tional uses of pro­nouns, Doug’s tips also apply to writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion, includ­ing reports, memos and e-mails.

Doug’s book, Me and Him Are Killing Eng­lish!, will be pub­lished next month. He is tar­get­ing young adults and col­lege stu­dents, and some of them really need the advice. I can’t help but over­hear stu­dent con­ver­sa­tions as I walk around cam­pus hall­ways and ride the ele­va­tor. I get many good oppor­tu­ni­ties to prac­tice my poker face, espe­cially when I over­hear stu­dents who are curs­ing while they are talk­ing to friends or con­vers­ing on their mobile phone.

Many com­pa­nies have sent their man­agers and exec­u­tives to train­ing sem­i­nars. Cuss Con­trol Acad­emy in Chicago trains busi­ness­peo­ple on how not to curse in daily con­ver­sa­tion. The mes­sage is sim­ple: pro­fan­ity can ruin a professional’s rep­u­ta­tion and image.

Doug started his blog (http://yourchore.blogspot.com/) to dis­cuss com­mu­ni­ca­tions prob­lems in Hawaii after the Octo­ber 15, 2006 earth­quake. I wrote some arti­cles about the earth­quake for my old blog on Octo­ber 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21.

Recently, Doug wrote about the Uni­ver­sity of Hawaii’s emer­gency response plan and the Vir­ginia Tech tragedy. See my arti­cles from April 16 and 17.

Tagged as: Hawaii, Honolulu, Oahu, security, university, USA