RICHTEXT

I recently completed work on the launch of MASSIVEGOOD.
It’s a new way of giving. You can click a $2 “micro-contribution” to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and improve maternal health every time you book a flight, hotel or rent a car through most travel agents and online travel sites in the US and Canada. It [...]

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I recently received feedback on a article I had written for a company magazine. I wrote it first in English and then translated it into French. The French version came back to me with corrections from the French-speaking client, which they wanted integrated into the original English version.
One of the corrections presented a real problem. [...]

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I was taking a break from doing some tedious proofreading when I came across this blog post. It reminded me of just how tough a language English can be for non-English speakers. Just in case our spelling isn’t weird enough, how about the punctuation?

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Eurostar’s website gave me a scare this morning. I logged on to check a reservation that I made a couple weeks ago. The trip is tomorrow. After entering the reference number and my email, the system told me the reservation had been cancelled. Yikes.
A couple frantic calls to customer support (my penny) revealed that you [...]

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I’m fascinated by accusations of exploding iPhones in France. Are we witnessing the birth of an urban legend or is this a real product quality problem?
Everyone has an opinion on whether Apple is handling it correctly or not.
But what I find fascinating is how similar the reports are to the accusations made back in [...]

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A brochure project came off the rails the other day because the printer told us he didn’t like to print pages with the dimensions we asked for. It was technically possible, but his “policy” wouldn’t allow it. And he couldn’t assemble the pages in the order we wanted. Didn’t make sense to him. We [...]

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I’ve been working on a big website redesign project that has got me thinking a lot about the the role of words in user interface design. Words are often an afterthought for designers, but they can help simplify an interface.
Case in point, this label that I spotted on a water heater in the men’s room. [...]

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Some of my work involves writing collateral and websites in English for French clients. I’m brought in on these projects because I’m an English-language copywriter. But recently I ran into an interesting problem: vocabulary timidity. In both cases, the French clients didn’t want to use perfectly good English words, either out of fear or incomprehension, [...]

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I’m looking for a new car, so the other day I spent some time browsing a few auto maker websites. Overall, I found the quality of the content and interaction to be pretty lacking. Navigation was all over the place. Documents weren’t up to date. Car configurators were either too shallow or turgid. I couldn’t [...]

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This poster was a great excuse to try my new mobile blogging software. I came across it at the Montparnasse train station this morning.

“All our staff is at our disposal and will assist you in your whereabouts wherever you are in this station including the staff of the way-finding desk (near the end of platform [...]

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