Want to know what it’s like working at The New Yorker back in the day? Janet Groth, a former receptionist at the magazine, worked there for 21 years and outlined the comings and goings, triumphs and tribulations of the 18th floor.

In her new book, The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker, Groth (now a college professor), dishes the inside scoop during her tenure from 1957 until 1978.

Groth told The New York Times her receptionist’s chair near the elevator provided her with “a bird’s-eye view of everything and a hot plate, which I brought.” Read more

We all know the wisdom of putting “action verbs” in your resume, right? How you should say “Achieved so and so” instead of “Was responsible for” since the former sounds so much more interesting.

JIST Publishing, which publishes career-related books, blogged about more words to use. They recommend:

• Achieved
  
• Analyzed
  
• Built
  
• Compiled
  
• Contributed
  
• Controlled

And so on and so forth. So far, so good (though “contributed” doesn’t strike us as that great). However, now we come to a problem.
“You can also add power adjectives to boost the strength of your selling verbs even more,” say Jim Bright and Joanne Earl, who coauthored Amazing Resumes, Second Edition. They suggest:

• Assertively
  
• Capably
  
• Carefully
  
• Competently
  
• Consistently
  
• Cooperatively
  
• Creatively

First, we as members of the Professional Society of English majors feel compelled to point out that those are adverbs, not adjectives.

Second, William Strunk and E.B. White are rolling in their graves.