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Favorite Jargon-Busting Word Plugin   Comments

Anne Fisher’s recent Fortune column on “Business Buzzwords That Make You Gag” is a reminder that we all need to monitor our use of jargon, especially when we’re talking to people outside our field.

When you’ve been marinating in a particular discipline for a long time, however, your own jargon become invisible to you. So how can you tell whether something you’ve written for the press or the public will be comprehensible?

Enter Bullfighter, a Microsoft Word plugin first developed by Deloitte Consulting. It’s been taken over by FightTheBull.com, publishers of Why Business People Speak Like Idiots (also available as an audiobook).

Bullfighter is freeware, designed for use on Windows XP with Microsoft Word 2002 or above. Download, install, and reboot your computer. Next time you open Word, you’ll see the Bullfighter toolbar. When you click on the “Bullfighter” button, the program runs a “bull check,” similar to a spelling check, which highlights bull words and gives you explanations of why they’re problematic, along with the option to change them to plain-English words. You can also find out what the “Bull Index” of a given document is. And you can add new bull words as they get coined.

If you provide consumer products and services or work with people outside your own field, you’ll do yourself a big favor by using certified bull-free marketing copy. Download Bullfighter today.

For continuous commentary on bull trends, check out the Bull Blog .


Favorite Place to Learn about Web Design   Comments

I’m not a web developer, but I’ve done my own web design and written my own HTML since 1995. (Well, in 1995, anyone who could create a basic static web page was a web developer.)

Web design has long since outstripped my capabilities (and the time I can devote to it). I don’t do Flash, Java, ASP, DHTML, server-side includes, or any of those advanced, programmer-like things. But I still do my own websites, and a few for other people.

Fortunately for people like me, there’s Sitepoint.com. The Australian company’s slogan is “Empowering web developers since 1997.” Sitepoint’s articles, books, blogs, and forums are a terrific place to learn how to improve your website, from CSS layouts to Search Engine Optimization to running a web design business. One of the best things about the site is the opportunity to download free sample chapters from books like Firefox Secrets and The CSS Anthology.

These books are so clear and comprehensible that even I can understand them, and they enabled me to customize the appearance of my blogs and to set up the new Author-izer website with CSS-based layout.

Sitepoint’s commitment to plain English instruction is a rare and welcome thing in the world of high tech.