GBA News

“You, too, can have the vocabulary of a Harvard English major.” You’ve probably seen that advertisement in airline magazines, suggesting that you, too, can develop knowledge of words that other people don’t know, making them feel stu...

It’s pretty common for people to mishear a word or phrase and then go on to use it improperly, and it’s also pretty common for those who recognize the corruption to say nothing about it, so as not to offend the user. Just a few you may b...

Remember the old days when you had to submit a paper that contained at least 1,500 words, so you did everything you possibly could to add words when your count came up short? All the words you added were worthless, of course, except to the e...

“You, too, can have the vocabulary of a Harvard English major.” You’ve probably seen that advertisement in airline magazines, suggesting that you, too, can develop knowledge of words that other people don’t know, maki...

Why can’t we all get along? Because we’re animals, meaning that conflict is inevitable as long as food, mates, and territory are limited. (In the case of humans, add money to that list.) These conditions are aggravated at work be...

One of the nicer features of GBA’s webinars is the speakers’ willingness to answer questions. An important question came in after the webcast of “Think. Be Accurate.”, a John Bachner-led presentation focusing on commo...

Dear Sir: I read your article in the July/August NewsLog promoting the newly released PowerPoint template focusing on the value of geoprofessional services. Here at TTL, the geotechnical-engineering side of the house has used this PowerPoint...

Good times just have to be around the corner and, when they hit, your number-one need is going to be employees whom you can trust to get the job done well. But why settle for good when you can have extraordinary? The problem is finding them,...

We’ve written about the difference between “which” and “that”; how “which” tends to be more specific than “that,” but “that” usually works well and is easy. But what about the...

“Including” does not mean “limited to.” Nonetheless, some people seem to write as though “including” doesn’t exist. What does? “Including, but not limited to.” How dumb does that sound? A...