Category: grammar

Best reason for a name change. Ever.

As regular readers know, I’ve been neck-deep in managing the communications for our university’s impending name change from the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) to Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). The challenges of communicating the rationale for a name change have been many and varied, but at least I haven’t had to deal with something like this. The rationale is pretty good, but the execution of the communication plan lacked a bit of finesse. And a good spell check.

Hat tip to Snark Hunting for this gem.

By the way, we announced our new Missouri S&T logo today on the Name Change Conversations blog.

Spinning a friendraiser’s blogosphere post about the annoying advancement words

Alumni Futures‘ Andy Shaindlin points to a Reuters report about the most annoying words in the blogosphere (blogosphere is among them) and wonder what the most annoying words in the advancement business might be. His two nominees — “friendraiser” and “funraiser” — have got to be pretty annoying for an alumni guy. (I’d never heard of alumni staff being referred to as “funraisers,” but I have heard the term “the punch and cookies people” applied to them, and boy would that honk me off.)

From my perspective as a PR and marketing guy, the word I most disdain is “spin.” It boils my blood when people refer to me or our staff as “spin doctors” or “spinners,” and refer to our work as “spin.”

Most annoying phrase I hear (though thankfully, not so much anymore): “best-kept secret.” As in, “UMR is the best-kept secret in higher education.” The implication is usually that it’s the PR or marketing shop’s fault, because we aren’t “spinning” about our campus enough.

Sometimes, the word “advancement” annoys me, too. I’m not sure why. It just does.

How about you? What words most annoy you? leave a comment here or on Andy’s original post.