by Franklin Wordsmith | Oct 12, 2015 | Culture, Persuasion
It’s a pie chart that unnerves me every time I see it. When it comes to getting information from other people, only 7% — the smallest percentage – comes from words. Frightening! But it’s a 7% over which we have a lot of control. So let’s try to do it well.No...
by Franklin Wordsmith | Apr 29, 2015 | Neuroscience
In high school, a teacher had us do two-hour in-class themes. We read a book in advance and had two hours to handwrite a long essay in response to a question she posed – using solid reasoning and quotes from the book. There was a pendulum schoolhouse clock in the...
by Franklin Wordsmith | Dec 8, 2014 | Persuasion
Here’s the truth. No one wants to read what you write. Everyone is time-starved. For many, the best moments in the day are when we see an email we don’t have to read and can hit “delete.” Because we’re time starved, we write something,...
by Franklin Wordsmith | Nov 19, 2014 | Persuasion
You have a million things to do at the office. You can’t give everything equal attention. So you select where you’re going to spend your mental energy. Too often — when it comes to thinking about what we want to say or write — we wing it. And...
