Correction: Writing Clearly at Work
Corrected by Selen Ikbal Uslu · Content Quality Analyst and English Language Specialist
Selen Ikbal Uslu found something wrong, outdated, or unsupported on this page and proposed a fix. The publisher accepted the correction.
- Role
- Correction
- Publisher
- When Notes Fly
- Status
- Accepted
- Date
- 30 July 2026
The exact change
Article mischaracterized Deborah Tannen's real 1994 book (actually about gendered conversational style, not written-vs-spoken prosodic cues) and fabricated a specific empirical origin story for Barbara Minto's real Pyramid Principle (her actual insight concerned junior consultants' argument structure, not an executive reading-behavior study). It fabricated specific statistics (48%, 2 million) for Josh Bernoff's real survey and misdated Rudolf Flesch's real book (1951, not 1952) while inventing client-response claims. It fabricated an entirely nonexistent SEC staff attorney ('Norm Brand') and a '40 percent' reading-time statistic. It fabricated an entire Boris Groysberg study of '500 executives' that does not exist in his real published work. It misapplied a citation to 'Richard Nordquist' (a grammar reference writer, not an original researcher) with a fabricated Journal of Business Communication finding. It fabricated a specific finding attributed to Laszlo Bock's real book Work Rules! that does not appear in the actual text. It fabricated sample size and swapped findings for a real 2016 NACE survey (real: 201 employers, verbal communication ranked highest; article stated: 400 employers, written communication ranked highest). And it fabricated an entire Nitin Nohria Harvard Business Review article and a '40 hours of senior editor time' statistic with no findable source.
Both sections were rewritten to keep only the real, verifiable content: Tannen, Minto, Bernoff, and Flesch's real work described accurately without the fabricated statistics and mischaracterizations; Orwell's fully accurate 1946 essay and quotes preserved; Amazon's real six-page memo culture, the real Plain Language federal initiative, P&G's real one-page memo standard, and the fully-accurate Theranos and Challenger/Tufte case studies preserved; the entirely fabricated Groysberg, Nordquist, Google/Bock, NACE, and HBS/Nohria claims were removed rather than corrected, given that no real underlying finding could be located for any of them.
Suggested change
See before/after.
Why this is better
This was one of the most heavily fabricated articles in this batch outside the two 100%-fabrication-rate cases - only 3 of 13 independently-checked claims were fully accurate, with fabrication spanning both mischaracterization of real sources and wholesale invention of studies, names, and statistics.
How this record is verified
- The contribution is tied to a real, identified contributor, not an anonymous byline.
- It counts only because the publisher, When Notes Fly, accepted it. Self-claimed work earns nothing.
- It is recorded against a specific page and cannot be bought or edited after the fact.