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September 2020–Tell Your Story Newsletter (TYSN)

Specializing in Entrepreneurial and Organizational Storytelling Let me tell your story!

IN THIS ISSUE:

ARTICLE 1: Do you use email templates to make business communication efficient?

STORYTELLERS’ CORNER:

Bryan Garner on “plain English”

SHOP NEWS

ABOUT US

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Welcome Mid-September 2020!

As I prepare this issue of “Tell Your Story Newsletter,” the cool fall air and shortening days remind us that autumn is here and winter not far behind.

In this month’s newsletter, as we all face pressures to be more productive in less time (pressures exacerbated by the current pandemic), I visit American copywriter Kaleigh Moore’s simple strategy of using email templates to communicate more efficiently with prospects and clients.

And in “Storytellers’ Corner,” I cite Bryan Garner’s example of the need for what he calls “plain English,” across all disciplines (business, academia, politics, etc.)

May the best of autumn–the warmth (physical and emotional) that can be cultivated, the nourishing food and stories we can share–be with you, as we survive the last four months of a very tumultuous year.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth

Principal, Storytelling Communications

www.elizabethshih.com

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Wordsmiths of the world unite! . . . Grammar guffaws to make you laugh

Plenty of friends and colleagues prefer not to use Facebook. But the following posting, from friend Evelyn Mackenzie, brought some needed laughter to my day! This was written by Jill Thomas Doyle and shared by Hilary Harley and then Evelyn. If you haven’t seen this listing before, then here’s some laughter for you!

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk and smoking cigars.
• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

Continue reading “Wordsmiths of the world unite! . . . Grammar guffaws to make you laugh”

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Want your business to stand out? Personality branding offers one way (with Ed Gandia and Danielle Hughes)

In earlier postings, I have referred to some episodes of the “High Income Writing” podcast of American copywriter, Ed Gandia. Gandia is usually insightful and often gathers intriguing solo professionals to the “microphone.”

Recently, Ed interviewed New York-based branding and copywriting consultant, Danielle Hughes, about how to increase our success as creative professionals by developing our own “personality brand.” Ed prefaced the interview by observing how reluctant self-employed creatives are “to let our personalities shine.” We either don’t know how to do that, or we fear that by doing that we’ll “alienate potential clients.” Continue reading “Want your business to stand out? Personality branding offers one way (with Ed Gandia and Danielle Hughes)”

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August 2020 –“Tell Your Story Newsletter”

August 2020 Vol 2 Issue 8

Tell Your Story Newsletter (TYSN):
Specializing in Entrepreneurial and Organizational Storytelling
Let me tell your story!

Welcome Mid-August 2020!

 After passing an extremely windy past weekend, with cool air, but little rain, some of us felt like autumn had nearly begun. During this Covid year, the changes in seasons feel especially uncertain, as we closely watch the statistics of contraction, recovery, and tragically, deaths.

Since February, many of us in our various fields have learned Zoom, Web-Ex and/or Skype, conducting most of our meetings online, from home. Zoom use has brought with it plenty of jokes, such as the observation that participants in its meetings often look like Jim Henson’s famous puppets, in the stage gallery that opened “The Muppet Show.” I visit the puppets’ entrepreneurial nature in a lighthearted first article, in this issue.

In “Storytellers’ Corner,” I visit the word “fogy” or “fogey,” a derogatory term that often can be heard when people speak unempathetically of the aging. Continue reading “August 2020 –“Tell Your Story Newsletter””

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Want your stories to succeed? Build them on ideas that “stick,” say Chip and Dan Health

I often blog on issues pertaining to stories and storytelling. But thus far, we haven’t discussed much about what constitutes a good (or compelling) story.

Thirteen years ago, Chip Heath (a professor of organizational behaviour at Stanford University) and his brother, Dan Heath (a senior fellow in social entrepreneurship at Duke University), combined their research interests and wrote Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck (London: Penguin/Arrow, 2007).

The book, which has fascinated entrepreneurs, authors from multiple fields, researchers and academics alike, asserts one overarching tenet: Thinking, writing and other story-based endeavours that provide “sticky ideas” (i.e. ideas that succeed by becoming popular and influential in contemporary culture) all exhibit the following six principles (“SUCCES”):  Continue reading “Want your stories to succeed? Build them on ideas that “stick,” say Chip and Dan Health”