When I was 19 and a sophomore in college, I frequented a Wendy's restaurant on Martin Luther King Blvd., just south of the UT Austin campus. It was 1980, and at that time the tabletops at Wendy's were made of plastic Formica-like stuff. The tabletops displayed replicas of ads from old-timey newspapers.

One of the ads asked readers, "Torpid Liver?" And then it described a tonic to cure torpid liver. I had to look up torpid. It sounded dirty, quite frankly.

I thought it sounded funny, too, and I determined that if I ever wrote a book the title would be "Torpid Liver." Didn't matter the subject matter of the book...it would have something to do with a torpid liver.

It's been 30 years since I determined that I'd write that book, and it is long overdue. So, it begins now:

Torpid Liver and Other Symptoms of Crappy Communication

In this information age, it's clear that many, many stupid people think they are brilliant communicators. The internet has given everyone a voice. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that some people suck at communicating. They don't know the first thing about influencing and inspiring readers. God help us.

So, I will make a feeble attempt at helping people (who want the help) to communicate more effectively.

Let's start with a few key points.

Communicating is rarely about you. It's almost always about your audience, whether it's one person or one million. No matter what point you're trying t