Letters Remain

Author: Lloyd Morgan

  • Science Journalism’s Manifesto for the Simple Scribe

    “To make somebody read it”. That is the only reason for writing, according to the renowned Guardian editor Tim Radford, author of the “manifesto for the simple scribe”. This manifesto, previously distributed to editors at Elsevier and Nature, consists of twenty-five writing tips that collectively tell a science writer all they need to know to write…

  • Rhetorical Devices to Incite Timely Applause

    Any delay between the end of a speech and the audience’s applause can send strong negative signals to those watching and listening. In order to prevent this awkwardness, there are rhetorical tricks we can implement that trigger applause or laughter at appropriate moments. Speechwriter and political speech advisor Max Atkinson, in a critique of UK Deputy…

  • Non-Design Skills Needed by Designers

    Like in many other specialised fields, to become a great designer one must master or be acquainted with many non-design skills. User interface designer Aza Raskin — ex-Creative Lead at Firefox and son of Jef — offers up this list of what he believes to be most important to do and master in order to become a designer: The…

  • Login Is Not a Verb

    We do not signup, login or checkout when we buy products online. We do not startup, shutdown or backup our computers. The reason: these words, primarily used in computing contexts, are not verbs. These are just some of the “bad bad verbs” featured on a site dedicated to “informing people about words that are not verbs, even though…

  • Art in 140 Characters

    Is it possible to encode and compress an image to such a degree that the raw data can fit in a single Twitter message (140 characters) that, when decoded again, is still recognisable? The answer to the questions is a resounding Yes, as confirmed by a coding challenge inspired by Mario Klingemann’s attempt to compress…

  • Avoid Boring Writing: Tips (to Avoid) from Scientific Articles

    Most scientific papers consist of “predictable, stilted structure and language”, leading to consistently boring journal articles. Kaj Sand-Jensen, writing in the ecology journal Oikos, decided to investigate this problem and concluded his research by providing a set of recommendations for how to write consistently boring scientific articles (pdf): Avoid focus Avoid originality and personality Write…

  • Narratives for Selling Premium Goods: The Grey Goose Story

    People want to pay more in order to own luxury goods, but you need to give them a reason to do so. That excuse? A compelling story. One man that subscribed to this idea was Sydney Frank, as is evident from the strategy he developed for Grey Goose: the ‘superpremium’ vodka that Barcardi bought for $2…

  • The Virtues of Rationality

    The name Eliezer Yudkowsky immediately conjours in my mind the word rationality (thanks to his addictive piece of fan fiction, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality). On a recent visit to his site, this connection has now be strengthened after I saw his excellent essay on the twelve virtues of rationality: Curiosity: A burning itch to…

  • PlentyofFish and Unusability

    In an early 2009 profile of Markus Frind–the founder and CEO of the online dating website PlentyofFish—Inc. briefly touched on the topic of the site’s famously bad user interface, with Frind explaining why he believes that, sometimes, user experience should take a back seat as a better experience isn’t always linked to greater profits. Plenty of Fish is…

  • WordPerfect Business Advice

    In 1980, as a $5-an-hour part-time office manager, W. E. Peterson joined the small company that would go on to become WordPerfect Corporation. Then, twelve years later, after helping grow the company to half a billion dollars in annual sales and becoming the Executive Vice President, Peterson was forced out of the company and set out to…