Tag Archives: language

Good riddance!

Here’s former Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang’s memo explaining his departure to employees. Notice the highlighted clichés. Related posts:If clichés can kill, these probably willTo be honest with you

Con job

Before I left Shenzhen for Singapore on vacation, I received this mailer from English First with the last page about some activities held at a local bookstore throughout November for people to experience the joy of learning English. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get it right and called it “English Conner”.

No shit

One day in the locker room, Bob sees a fat man with a cork in his ass. Curious, he asks the man how it got there. “Well,” says the man, “I was walking along the beach when I tripped over a lamp. There was a puff of smoke and this great big guy in a… Read More »

The sky is blue

Every law partner fancies himself a grammarian. He would edit Strunk and White. There is no sentence so straight-forward and simple that he will not happily torture it beyond recognition. Take the sentence “The sky is blue.” No junior associate would be so naïve as to think this proposition could pass muster in a big… Read More »