The Danger in Dangling

And this news just in from TheAnimalRescueSite.com...

While Shooting This Video, A Homeless Dog Comes On Set And Literally Adopts The Singer!

A clear case of the "dangling" modifier.

A modifier dangles when it isn't pinned to the noun it's supposed to describe.

When Groucho dangles a modifier, audiences laugh ("I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know.").

When an unwitting writer does it, audiences scratch their heads:

• Before rebooting the computer, the power should be turned off.

• The employees were told they had been fired by HR.

• By inserting keywords into the text, statistics show that SEO improves.

• Though only 14 years old, the company made Han a developer.

• Having driven 20 years without an accident, the CEO welcomed Ruth onto the stage to receive the award.

Beware of those doggone dangling modifiers!

All Hat, No Cattle

The world is filled with big, stupid companies.

When it comes to the customer experience, they're "all hat, no cattle."

A story to illustrate.

I encountered a bug in the software from one of today's top 10 providers. The bug is so serious, it prevents any use of the product. 

My first plea for help spawned this canned email:

Thank you for submitting your case. My name is Henjie from Support. I have taken ownership of your Case number 12483149. I understand that you need some assistance. I won't be able to call you. For now, I will need to have your case endorsed to a team to make sure that we will be able to assist you further with your concern. Thank you for choosing [name withheld].

Four weeks, hours of my time, and 31 comparably inane messages later, no remedial action has been taken.

Disney likes to say, "no employee ever 'owns the customer,' but one employee always 'owns the moment.'"

At stupid companies, employees own neither customers nor moments. The only "owners" are the legal ones, who spend all their moments minding the share price, while buzz-talking auto-responders are left minding the store.

Entrepreneurs can take heart.

Prevent Slow Burn

In the 1930s, film-goers loved comedian Edgar Kennedy for his mastery of the "slow burn."

When thwarted by a foe, Kennedy would glower, then slowly rub his hand over his face as he fought off—and inexorably succumbed to—his fury.

I find myself doing the slow burn whenever I encounter a self-indulgent blogger; the writer who, rather than informing me from the get-go, drowns me in silly eyewash.

A prime example can be found in a recent post on Hubspot, "Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing."

The author uses 118 words to tell us why she's telling us what she plans to tell us. Her long warm-up leaves me cold:

I had a co-worker email me the other day asking for a blog post about the benefits of business blogging. "It's for a friend," she said.

Sure it was.

I told her I'd shoot over one of our up-to-date blog posts about why businesses should blog and... I couldn't find one. Whoops. Quite the meta mistake.

So I'm doing it now. If you're trying to explain one of the core tenets of inbound—business blogging—to your boss, a coworker, your mom at Thanksgiving, whomever, then send them this post. I hope it helps. For even more reasons why you should blog for business and marketing—and how to get started—download our free e-book here.

Please, spare readers false starts—especially jejune ones.

Remember, only you can prevent slow burn.

Maybe I'm Amazed

This month, were he alive, John Lennon would have turned 75.

Fans can only imagine what he'd have to say about life, love, and the lunacy rampant in our world today. Or how marvelous his musical output might have been during the 35 years that have passed since his murder.

Not long ago, I rediscovered a 45 year-old solo album Lennon's partner Paul McCartney made entitled, simply enough, McCartney.

It contains Sir Paul's own all-time favorite composition, "Maybe I'm Amazed," plus a dozen other songs he penned, all quite wonderful.

Listening to the album and remembering just some of the nearly 200 songs McCartney wrote and performed with Lennon, as well as all the fabulous music each Beatle produced after the band's breakup, leaves me in awe of their talent.

If only I had a shred of it, I'd be a happy camper.

Miracle on 34th Street? Or Ploy to Sell CDs?

In the wake of Pope Francis' three-city tour, brisk sales of his forthcoming rock album Wake Up! are assured.

In Central Park, just one of many stops, he drew more than 80,000 fans—20,000 more than Beyoncé turned out the day after Francis appeared there.

You might argue the Vatican planned the trip to max out Christmas sales of Wake Up!—an acceptable stunt, provided the profits are actually used to aid refugees.

But your argument would be sheer casuistry. 

Apropos, given that Francis is the first Jesuit pope.

Casuistry is a method of moral reasoning perfected in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries by the Jesuits. 

It is still used today to solve moral puzzles in business, law and science.

Casuistry, derived from the Latin word casus (meaning "case"), studies all sides of a question. It becomes useful when values conflict. For example:

• Should a CEO's duty to maximize shareholder return take priority over protecting the environment? 

• Should employees' right to privacy yield to improved productivity? 

• Should an employer benefit from the knowledge of workers it hires away from a competitor?

• Should an employee take advantage of a discount offered by a supplier, if free tickets to a football game come with the deal?

But, sadly, the word casuistry, as well as phrases like "Jesuitical reasoning" and "Jesuitical arguments," are most often used as pejoratives implying intrigue and equivocation.

The Oxford English Dictionary in fact claims that casuistry "often (and perhaps originally) applied to a quibbling or evasive way of dealing with difficult cases of duty."