If you enjoyed the Merriam-Webster quiz a week or so ago, you’ll like this new quiz here.

You’ll find more commonly confusing words.

Is A a capital or capitol letter? Is it the moral or morale of the story?

Take the quiz and find out.

And have fun!

“We should not speak so that it is possible for the audience to understand us, but so that it is impossible for them to misunderstand us.”
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus

So how can we do this?

By simplifying our messages.

We can
• use simple words and expressions—words that are familiar to our audience.
• avoid long phrases and sentences.
• avoid jargon and technical terms, and
• avoid idiomatic language and abbreviations.

Communication is often difficult and challenging. So let’s do our very best to communicate clearly and effectively.

How would you like to be perceived by others?

Imagine you’re going for a photo shoot. What are you going to wear? How are you going to style your hair? What kind of emotion or feeling would you like to portray?

In German we have the saying, “Kleider machen Leute”. In English we might say, “Fine feathers make fine birds”. Or quite simply “You are what you wear”.

Look at this 4-minute video to see how a change of hairstyle, posture and clothing can make you look like a completely different person.

It’s quite amazing, isn’t it?

(Special thanks to Susan Graul for pointing this out to me in her weekly Newsletter, THE Schubs!).

I love playing card and board games (my favourites are Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Wizard). However, I’ve never really understood online games.

But CityGuesser is quite different. And a game that I enjoyed.

Perhaps you’ll like it, too?

In CityGuesser you need to try and guess cities or famous buildings. Just choose your topic (‘Worldwide’, ‘Europe’ ‘Monuments’ and so on)—and then click on ‘Guess’ to get started.

I chose to play ‘Europe’ and ‘Monuments’. And you?

 

You’re looking for some bedtime reading? You might like Peter Littger’s “The devil lies in the detail”.

You’ll discover typical pitfalls in your everyday English so that you’ll know how to avoid being misunderstood.

After reading the books, you’ll never order “ice balls” in England again. Or tell someone that you went on a “photo shoot” and had a great time!

You don’t need to read the books from cover to cover to benefit from their findings. I like dipping into them and reading bits here and there. So you might like to do that, too.

Do you like reading books in English? Or do you prefer listening to audiobooks?

 

As business owners, we know that words are important when it comes to marketing our services and products.

But visuals can be just as important, if not more so.

If we use visuals rather than words to explain our business or concepts to our audience, we’ll find that our audience is more likely to remember our brand and what we have to offer.

As Elliott Aleksander says, “Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than words”.

Here are two examples of his work to prove this:

1. “You fail when you don’t even try …”

2. “Small steps forward …

 

(Don’t I always say that you’ll improve your language skills by taking small steps every day? That’s why I send you these Sparks on a regular basis.)

Take a closer look at some of Elliott’s work here or follow Elliott on Instagram for more inspiration.

So what do you think? Are you as impressed as I am?