As i was watching the Masters today, one of the biggest golf tournaments in the world, I was struck by how many players made the same mistake. On the 15th green, a severely sloped and long traverse, just about every player who was putting uphill (and all pros know it's better to putt uphill than downhill) came up short. I watched in amazement as over a dozen players made the same mistake, reading the green as faster than it actually was.

The object of my surprise is not that these players misjudged the green. Golf is so hard, and courses set up for the pros are unimaginably difficult, that any player from Tiger Woods on down is likely to misread a green. But I find it funny when a commentator says to us, "Every one so far has left this putt short…let's see if he does any better…nope, he left it short, too."

How is it possible that a television viewer is better informed than the players? This certainly is not a question of technology. It would be a simple matter for a tour player to have spotters on the greens who could communicate via text message or Twitter. (@Tiger watch out for 15 green slower than it seems. add 10 feet.)

Technology has outpaced the sport as the the rules explicitly prevent a player from being better informed. A player and a caddie are not allowed to receive any
information from "outside the ropes" — they can only glean what their experience and instincts tell them and what they see with their own eyes.

I am an avid golfer and I'm also a technocrat, so I can't decide how I feel about this. Would it help the sport for the pros to have access to outside information? They still have to perform, so what's the big deal? With a sport as steeped in tradition as is golf, this is a rhetorical question–any proposed change to the rules is a big deal!

But it is certainly fun to speculate. What would happen if tour caddies had access to a back channel? How would the sport change, and would those changes be for the better or the worse? Hmm…

In the Professional Speakers and Seminar Leaders group at LinkedIn, author George Torok asked a seemingly banal and innocent question:

What annoying phrases from popular culture are speakers overusing in their presentations?

In the space of four days, over 60 people responded and it became a cathartic vent session for everyone who finds him or herself driven up a wall by presenter quirks. Here are a few of the ones that resonated the most with this group:

"No problem" (I never thought it was a problem, until you mentioned that it wasn't. Now, I'm not sure.)

If I hear one more person use the phrase "think outside the box," I think I'm going to scream!

"Am I right, or am I right?" That makes me want to say "no!"

"In my book…"

Misuse of the word "myself."

When presenters show up drunk for a presentation, trip on the stairs to the dais, and throw up on the lectern (that was submitted on April 1…)

"I feel your pain."

"Food for thought."

"I'm going to tell you a funny story." (Just tell it!)

"This is true story." (Aw come on, tell me a false story!)

"You've got to have passion." (I'm passionate about not wanting to hear that expression anymore.)

"At the end of the day" (…I'd rather be home than sitting here listening to you).

"At the end of the day" (…I go to sleep, which is what happens when I hear most speakers).

"Let me unpack this for you."

"Irregardless."

"May or may not." Well, that narrows it down now, doesn't it?

"To to be perfectly honest."Is there an imperfect way to be honest?

"Can I be honest with you?" No, please continue to lie to me.

I use "bottom line" probably ten times an hour, I am seeking help…

"Research has shown…" and "Some people say…" Quote the source or shut up. It's a weak way to bring up a counter-argument. It's backed by nothing yet used to validate.

We could go on and on here, but you get the idea: no shortage of annoying phrases that presenters adopt. What are yours??

Over the weekend, I had the unique experience of seeing my reflection…or my antithesis…or my something-opposite. I attended and spoke at slideshare.net's PresentationCamp, billed as an "unconference." The primary idea behind an unconference is that there is no one central organizing body determining content, but rather a free-flowing dialogue at the center of decision-making.

For an anal-retentive conference host, this took a bit of getting used to—we sat around for the first hour, kicking around ideas for seminars and discussion groups, using up a lot of dry-erase markers and going through many post-its. "Couldn't this have been done in advance?" I wondered to myself on several occasions.

Yes, of course it could…but then it would have been a different event. It would have been more like PowerPoint Live, and I had to see past my own biases to appreciate the value of this event. Everyone had a say in building the content and the approximately 65 people who attended felt completely engaged in the process.

I did an hour on practical makeovers of slide design and message that anyone could undertake, irrespective of design background. Other topics ranged from mind-mapping to storytelling, to embracing the back channel of Twitter during a presentation.

To answer the question in my headline, no, I'm not qualified be become an unhost. My need to organize and prepare would disqualify me. Nonetheless, the idea of spending a Saturday with a group of colleagues, collectively determining topics of conversation, is attractive and compelling.

Watch for a presentation camp to be formed in a city near you…

Okay, one more grammar-related post and then I'm done for the season…

I suppose I cannot hammer my two teenage daughters too heavily in the face of what I just read. I am continually correcting Erica and Jamie for sentences along the lines of "Me and Nicole want to go to the mall," because I would like to set some minimum standard of speech for the two of them. I don't get on their case for the verbal twitch that is responsible for every third word being "like," and I don't go overboard and insist that they respond with "It is I," to every query of "who's there." I would just like them not to sound like morons when referring to themselves.

But they seem to be in pretty heady company these days. Here was former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in a major opinion piece in Newsweek:

"Considerations such as these induced Sam Nunn, William Perry, George Schultz and I to publish recommendations…"

Oy vey.

We all have our pet peeves in life, and I readily admit to this one being mine. It is particuarly sad because it is so easy to fix: Remove everyone else from the equation and it immediately becomes obvious which form of the pronoun to use. Erica would never say "Me wants to go to the mall." Mr. Kissinger probably would not have written "Considerations such as these induced I to publish…" You can almost always figure out which pronoun to use if you formulate the sentence without any other subjects or objects.

The more egregious misuse — the one that really is akin to fingernails across the chalkboard for me — is the butchering of "myself." Here is our 44th president speaking about a meeting he had with his predecessor:

"…there was a substantive conversation between the President and myself."

I suspect this is often used to soften the landing for someone who cannot deterine whether to use I or me, but to my ears it sounds worse. "Myself" is a reflective pronoun (I'm not sure that is actually a grammatical term, but it helps in understanding it)—it must reflect back to the person using it. You can't return the book to myself, forward the email to myself, or speak with myself. There is only one person who can have a conversation with myself and that is me…er, I.

In presentation content, the two errors I see most often are:

• Lose being spelled with two Os
• And the possessive "its" being given an apostrophe

Do you have a pet grammar peeve? Share the pain…

In honor of National Grammar Day, I posted an entry on Wednesday with eight subtle or not-so-subtle errors of grammar or prose. A few of you wrote in to suggest a handful of other errors that you THOUGHT you noticed. Harumph…

The Original Post:

Several of my readers have brought to my attention the significance of this day—March 4.

National Grammar Day

On this day, we all should resolve to try his or her best, myself included, to bring the penultimate, the highest, experience to the written and spoken word. For at least one day, gone should be the cute abbreviations that foreshadow text messages and the feckless disregard for proper capitalization.

For 24 hours, lets try to make every sentence count, every one of our words carry their proper meanings, and our intonations and inflections reflect our genuine intentions.

And the errors:

1. “…the significance of this day—March 4.”

Use of a dash is not correct here. A color or a comma would be better.

2 and 3. “On this day, we all should resolve to try his or her best, myself included”

“we” requires “our” best, or “each of us” goes with his or her.

Incorrect use of myself.

4. to bring the penultimate, the highest, experience to the written and spoken word

Penultimate means second from ultimate. Contradicts use of “highest”

5. “gone should be the cute abbreviations that foreshadow text messages”

Incorrect use of foreshadow.

6. “feckless disregard for proper capitalization.”

Incorrect use of feckless. Intended word here is reckless. (We suppose you could have feckless disregard for something, but we don’t recommend it.)

7. “every one of our words carry their proper meanings, ”

should be “carry its proper”

8. “For 24 hours, lets try to make every…”

“lets” missing its apostrophe

Friend and colleague Byron Canfield wrote in to suggest a ninth: “disregard for” should be “disregard of”. Hmm, what do you think, can one not have a regard or disregard for something? Or must it only be of something? He also cited me for using “we all”—I resent that only southerners can use that form of plural!

What do you do when you have one of the pickiest eaters in the world living under your roof, and you are about to enter into a religious observance that prohibits the consumption of two of the only three food items she’ll eat, pizza and pasta?

The Passover ritual is proof positive that wonders shall never cease. As we seek to identify with our ancestors who fled from Egypt many thousands of years ago, we rid our home of all food with yeast. After all, if the ancient Hebrews could eat cakes of unleavened bread for the months and years that they fled through the desert, certaily we could do it for eight days.

But how will Jamie eat matzah, the second coming of tasteless cardboard? And will she go anywhere near a hard-boiled egg dipped in salt water? Horseradish, literally cut from the root? And gefilte fish?? The Red Sea should sooner part than we should watch our 12-year-old resort to such torture.

But wonders never cease. “Hey Dad, can we buy some matzah early?”

“What, you want to get it over with? It doesn’t work that way!”

“No, I like it.”

“________”

“Dad?”

“________”

“Are you okay, Dad?”

She likes matzah. She who eats around anything red or green in her salad, she who would declare anything she doesn’t recognize to be inedible, she who would be fine with macaroni morning, noon, and night, she for whom we must buy pulp-free orange juice…she likes matzah?

It’s a miracle! Wait…that’s the wrong holiday. It is some sort of incredible affirmation of the mysterious power of faith-based rituals.

As for the gefilte fish…well, let’s not press our luck.