Attention writers, editors, and communicators of all kinds: Here are two good infographics worth printing out and pinning to your office wall, courtesy grammar.net and via Ragan:

The 12 most misunderstood English words

10 most commonly misused English words

There’s been a lot of chatter this week about all the new Facebook features and changes being implemented and on the way, all of which begs a few questions:

1. Why do people seem to get more outraged about Facebook changing the way their Wall looks than they do about what’s happening in the global economy right now?

2. Why do people expect that Facebook won’t change?

3. Why do marketers expend so much effort on getting their messages out on Facebook without taking into account that the way those messages get communicated could radically change without notice?

4. Why are people scrambling and expending energy and pixels to get the new Facebook timeline now? Is digital status really that important to them?

I guess I know the answers to these questions, but it’s kind of depressing to think about them too much.

“This train
Carries saints and sinners
This train
Carries losers and winners
This train
Carries whores and gamblers
This train
Carries lost souls
This train
Dreams will not be thwarted
This train
Faith will be rewarded
This train
Hear the steel wheels singin’
This train
Bells of freedom ringin’
This train
Carries broken-hearted
This train
Thieves and sweet souls departed
This train
Carries fools and kings
This train
All aboard.”
—Bruce Springsteen (turns 62 today)

… they can make you look foolish, or they can suggest that problems exist where they really don’t.

For example, I ordered a book from Barnes & Noble yesterday. Here’s the timeline of communications:

2:38 p.m. — Received email from PayPal confirming the order was submitted.

2:49 p.m. — Received email from B&N confirming that the order was ready to ship.

3:47 p.m. — Received email from B&N confirming that the order was received.

So wait a second: The order was received an hour after it’s ready to ship? Was a second order erroneously placed? Is there something else happening here that I need to be aware of?

Something in the B&N system is sending emails out of sequence, or perhaps in proper sequence with erroneous content. The result, though, suggests the existence of problems where they probably don’t exist.

Given the volume of email I would expect B&N to be dealing with on a daily basis, those non-existent problems are undoubtedly creating calls to customer service, which incurs very real costs to address very avoidable non-issues.

Takeaway for marketers: It’s always a good idea to audit your customer communications so that you know how your messaging is being perceived at every point in the transaction flow. This is messaging that occurs on the front lines of customer-company relations; don’t take it for granted.

With everyone cranky today about the Facebook facelift, let’s watch an ABC News report about the outrage generated by changes to the ubiquitous social network … three years ago.