A show that promises to be great for foodies and restaurateurs with a focus on local food and food rivalries premieres tonight, March 9, on the Travel Channel: Food Wars @food_wars on Twitter. This may be ideal for local restaurateurs to create a fun, healthy sense of competition in their markets in their areas of specialty! http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Food_Wars

It’s described as follows: “There’s a debate brewing across the
country, and it’s taking place in Everytown, USA, with legions of loyal
fans passionately defending… the local eateries and the iconic dishes
that make their towns famous. From Detroit’s hot dog war — Lafayette’s
vs. American Coney Island’s — to one of the most famous battles in the
country — the Philly cheesesteak war between Pat’s and Geno’s — it’s
time to end these rivalries once and for all as Travel Channel presents
Food Wars.

Host Camille Ford, travel enthusiast and lover of all things food, sets
out to find the country’s most celebrated dishes — foods that define
destinations and create local rivalries spanning generations. From
family feuds to stolen recipes to secret ingredients, Food Wars pits
the nation’s most famous culinary rivals against one another for a
final showdown, where a blind taste test will settle the debate: Who
makes the Best Dish in Town?”

While it may sound a bit comical to some, National Grammar Day and other events and sites promoting the importance of good grammar actually do mean something worth noting.

Check out Facebook and you might be surprised to see how many groups exist that are dedicated just to the promotion of using the language properly and making it clear that more people notice typos, poor style, and bad punctuation than you may think. Here are a few of these Facebook groups… and there are legions of others elsewhere on the Web:

• Good Grammar Is Hot
• Martha Brockenbrough, National Grammar Day founder and founder of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG)
• I judge you when you use poor grammar
• I know the difference between “there”, “their” and “they’re”. (now that one has punctuation issues as commas should go INSIDE the closing quote mark, but THEIR hearts are in the right place!)

The host of this year’s National Grammar Day, the bright and clever Mignon Fogarty—Grammar Girl herself–has posted the following on her site:

<snip>As National Grammar Day’s Language is something to be celebrated, and March 4 is the perfect day to do it. It’s not only a date, it’s an imperative: March forth on March 4 to speak well, write well, and help others do the same! <end snip>

It’s a good day to reflect on the caliber of your written communications, including e-mails, blog posts, Tweets, brochures, trade-show collateral, and all of the rest, including your business cards, which don’t have a lot of real estate but are critical to messaging who you are. Hiring a professional to do your graphic and Web design is key, as well—but the messaging that goes with it can make or break how you are perceived. I have built strategic partnerships/alliances with some amazing, professional, and truly creative designers specifically to ensure that the messaging and look and functionality of any communication are all working in concert with each other without any of those elements disabling the impression you make.

The National Grammar Day site, http://nationalgrammarday.com/, even has games and other celebratory events…My suggestion? Have fun with it while not disregarding its importance.

I came across this short piece entitled Using Proper English Grammar Is Important for Businesses at http://tinyurl.com/ya55w9f that warrants a look. It emphasizes one key point, which is that while many business owners think that they don’t need to be overly concerned about the grammar, punctuation, and style used in their business communications as if “close” were good enough—poor written communications can actually disable the impression you are working so hard to accomplish.

Of course, as helping clients with refining their messaging on the Web, in advertising and printed collateral, press releases, and in e-newsletters is one of the most-important services I offer, it’s wonderful to see others opine (and evangelize) on the importance of using the language properly.

Though I’ve mentioned Mignon Fogarty—Grammar Girl—in other posts, I still heartily recommend buying her CD set Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Better Business Writing that is featured on the Resources page of my site at  http://www.thegordongroupllc.com/resources/ as one of the easiest (and actually fun!) ways to brush up on some of the quirks of the English language that can stymie even the best of us. She also has a free e-newsletter that features a language challenge (such as the difference between “flesh out” and “flush out,” which was addressed a couple of weeks ago) and current thinking on the subject, often with amusing examples. She has lots of smarts and humor, and her podcasts are among the most popular in history!

It’s an interesting phenomenon to see the groundswell of grammarians creating special homes (pages) on Facebook to not only learn how to handle certain grammar and style issues but also express their frustration with people who don’t seem to care if they make mistakes. One of the pages I just came across illustrates with its own name how correct punctuation can save lives! ; – ) Granted the name is a bit odd, but the absence of a comma really puts “Grandma’s” life in jeopardy with the first version below featured on the Facebook page entitled as follows:

‘Let’s eat Grandma!’ or, ‘Let’s eat, Grandma!’ Punctuation saves lives.

http://tinyurl.com/yhxom7u (Ironically, there’s a bit of an issue with that title as those quoted statements should be enclosed in double quotes and not single quotes as they aren’t being used inside another quote–but the page founders get credit for their efforts and for their passion about the language. I posted a note about it–perhaps it will be fixed by the time you visit the page.)

Grammar Girl’s page is still absolutely among my favorites (go to www.facebook.com/GrammarGirl), and you can check out Mignon Fogarty’s great site and subscribe to e-mail updates. I also feature her Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing book and the clever and helpful CD set for the same book on the Resources page of my www.thegordongroupllc.com Website.

Other Facebook pages focused on grammar and style include Good Grammar Is Hot, presumably so we know we won’t be nerds for caring. Another one worth checking out is I judge you when you use poor grammar, which is also the name of a book that features photos of bad grammar as it appears in the real world on signs and elsewhere.

Yes, it’s true! Using the language properly, especially in business communications, not only impacts whether your message gets through as you intended—as Grandma found out above—but the failure to do so can have genuine impact on the success of advertising, RFPs, résumés, and other important messaging when you need to ensure that you’re showcasing yourself and/or your business in the best light.

MarketingProfs has created their new Marketing Addictionary, in which users can enter their own terms and/or definitions—some serious, some silly—and visitors also have the opportunity to rate contributions with their own thumbs-up or thumbs-down assessment. Here are two of the recent, popular terms:

Nglsh, noun, The rapid disappearance of vowels in the English language due to texting and Twitter.

Social Greedia, noun, 1. The act of abusing social media tools for the sole reason of making a profit and not giving back to the community or conversation. 2. Being overly concerned with one’s prominence within a social network whereby more time is spent “making friends” and “gaining followers” than actually engaging the community.

See more at http://words.marketingprofs.com/