Hope you’re enjoying the Indians’ strong stretch run.

http://www.staccatomusic.org/14/2

Don’t worry, as Matthew said above, you’re still our “CSS-god,” even if you can’t work your tongue and brain together in an interview. ;-)

Give yourself a little credit… after all, many of us would lose verbal coherence in both cases. ;-)

One question: was the interviewer an attractive female? That’s another factor that often turns men into epilectic chimps. ;-)

Senator, you did not accurately represent my position. The Grove City College case presented two separate questions, and it was a matter being litigated of course in the courts. The universities were arguing that they were not covered at all by the civil rights laws in question simply because their students had federal financial assistance and attended their universities. That was their first argument. The second argument was, even if they were covered, all that was covered was the admissions office and not other programs that themselves did not receive separate financial assistance. Our position, the position of the administration, and, again, that was the position I was advancing, I was not formulating policy, I was articulating and defending the administration position.

None of the dreaded “filler words”. Totally unscripted, unprepared, unrehearsed — the man is a machine. Some people take comfort in others’ inability to speak in public (Thomas Jefferson’s problems come to mind). Somehow, Roberts’ eloquent words likewise give me comfort.

Eric, your admission to poor interview-giving doesn’t make you any less of a “CSS-god” in our eyes. I’d be just as bad at it if I were important enough to be interviewed.

has already called the article a “great read”, further cementing his reputation as the whacked-out loon of the standards world.

I am so putting this on all of my business cards immediately.

Verbal pauses like this keep the speaker in charge of the thought while giving everyone a chance to catch up. I really think that if those breaks did not work to aid in the act of communication, they would have been gone from our verbalization techniques by now.

So many times when I read a complicated thought, I will stop in the middle of a sentence and start again at the beginning of it. I might even start the paragraph over or even start at the beginning of the text again. This behavior cannot be emulated in speech as easily. Restating your thought or starting again with the same exact prose is often considered rude even.

And then, how many times do you type some text and then remove it and restate it?

Better for people who critisize those who are attempting to communicate verbally to consider the fact that the only thing that written communications have with verbal communications is that they share the same vocabulary (sometimes).

I too have been told that I write the same way I speak. I have no clue how to use punctuation anymore either, and I think the two facts are very much related.

Give yourself and everyone else a break is the best thing in most situations. Especially this one.

The only good thing to come of it was the realisation that I actually become *more* coherent in direct proportion to my beer intake. T

That said, there is a trick that I learned from having to do live performances of unscripted and therefore ‘thought up on the spot’ bits. – radio and TV and stage – and it’s DON’T ANSWER IMMEDIATELY!! I know that seems harsh using bold and caps, but it had to be beaten into my head, but it does work. Take a beat. Breath in and out. Then answer. No one thinks less of you for it. In fact, most people will think better of you because you seem calm, learned, wise, and considering. You will also reduce by approximately 75% your use of verbalized non-word-words.

(p.s. your field question below is “Whast is Eric’s first name?” which I think is wrong, it’s patently not a statement, as ‘Eric’ is Eric’s first name, and it’s not a question, as ‘Whast’ appears to be a noun…)

(p.p.s. your work in semantic markup helped to propel me and my team at my former company to rather large unscheduled bonuses, which is always nice, so do keep up the excellent and informative work!)

So, on behalf of all the epileptic chimps everywhere, thank you you know, like you know your work has helped a lot you know and that’s why I am saying thank you you know?

I think it’s the pressure of the interview that does it. I’ve met you and heard you speak at SXSW, and you definitely speak like you write. (That’s a compliment.) But if I’d been a reporter with a recording device, you, like anyone else, would have turned into an epileptic chimp.

Of course I could never be a reporter, because I myself sound like an epileptic hyena half the time…