The top 12 mistakes in corporate writing

We’re bringing style (and grammar) back in this refresher course on seventh-grade English

When Columbia University officials invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on their campus in September, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., protested the decision, arguing the head of state “comes literally with blood on his hands.”

Language curmudgeons everywhere were momentarily distracted from the larger issue at hand—or, um, on it, in this case.

“Er, literally? You mean he showed up with bloody hands? Is that a Macbeth thing?” jokes PR pro Mark Daly of the Davies Murphy Group in Burlington, Mass. “I’m certainly not defending Ahmadinejad here, but his hands were likely clean in the literal sense.”

According to some in our industry, these lapses in language are becoming increasingly common.