Write It Well

Have you ever seen a colon in a sentence that looked impressive but didn’t sound quite right? The main secret to using a colon correctly is to make sure it follows a word group that could stand on its own as a complete sentence.

Here are two correct examples from Mark Bittman’s amazing article and chart “The Holiday Finger-Food Combination Generator”:

You begin by providing a base: this might be crackers, or croutons (little toast squares, really), [or] hunks of sturdy bread or vegetables that can serve as containers.

Then you have a spread, perhaps better (if less attractively) described as “the glue”: hummus or other bean mashes; soft, creamy cheese; “caviars” of eggplant or olives; pestos of basil or walnut; guacamole; [or] creamed deviled eggs.

It’s correct to put a colon after each word group in orange because either group could stand on its own as a complete sentence:

• You begin by providing a base.
• Then you have a spread, perhaps better (if less attractively) described as “the glue.”

It would be incorrect to use a colon after a word group that couldn’t stand as a complete sentence (e.g., “You begin by: providing a base”).

A final tip is that if a colon follows words inside quotes, then the colon goes outside the quotes.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two chapters on punctuation. We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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Here are two simple rules to keep track of commas in complex sentences:

1. Don’t use commas when removing words would change the meaning
2. Do use commas to set off word groups that only add extra details

Here’s a sentence with two correct commas and one incorrect comma:

Whole Foods began a weekly Twitter chat, for an hour every Thursday, to discuss topics such as holiday menu planning, with its followers.

The first two commas are correct because they surround a word group that does not change the sentence meaning. (Taking out those words would leave the intact idea, “Whole Foods began a weekly Twitter chat to discuss topics such as holiday menu planning.”)

The third comma is incorrect because the words “with its followers” are essential to tell the reader who was part of this Whole Foods Twitter discussion.

Since removing the words would leave the company discussing holiday menus with no one, here’s how the sentence should read:

Whole Foods began a weekly Twitter chat, for an hour every Thursday, to discuss topics such as holiday menu planning with its followers.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes a full chapter on commas. We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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Repeating the same part of speech can help busy readers understand you faster. This list of adjectives by David Pogue is a breeze to read:

Windows Phone 7.5 is gorgeous, classy, satisfying, fast and coherent.

This list of nouns is almost as easy to follow:

Each [tile] represents something you’ve put there for easy access: an app, a speed-dial entry, a Web page, a music playlist or an e-mail folder.

And these verbs hand readers an easy series of actions:

[The phone is] great at understanding its Big Four commands: Call, Text, Find (on the Web) and Open (an app).

Breakdowns in parallel verb structure are the bane of many business writers (e.g., “I should do four things: call Kim, text Joe, finding my wallet, and open an account”).

It’s necessary to keep verbs in the same tense (“call Kim, text Joe, find my wallet, and open an account”) to help readers zip through your prose.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes chapters on verbs and sentence structure. We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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Colons are slightly advanced punctuation marks, so it’s important to use them carefully.

Some writers still capitalize a word after a colon, as in this sentence:

Mary Ann thinks the presentation is flawed: She finds it too long and unfocused.

The capital letter in “She” is a bit old fashioned; we recommend lowercasing all words after colons except for proper nouns.

However, the traditional uppercase letter points to an important fact about colons. Like periods, colons should only follow groups of words that could stand alone as correct, complete sentences. (“Mary Ann thinks the presentation is flawed. She finds it too long and unfocused.”)

Even though it’s simpler to lowercase the word “she” after the original colon above, the old-fashioned capital letter can remind you not to use a colon incorrectly in sentences such as this one:

Mary Ann thinks that: the presentation is too long, lacks focus, and should be completely revised.

Adding a colon makes that sentence incorrect. You can add sophistication to your writing when you’re careful never to type a colon after a fragmentary idea.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes a chapter on sentence mechanics and two more on punctuation. You’ll learn how to write for maximum impact in all your business documents.

We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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Take a look at how active language frees up space in this pair of sentences:

BzzAgent was hired by Black Box last fall … to “increase awareness … and impact sales.”

Black Box hired BzzAgent last fall … to “increase awareness … and impact sales.”

Black Box is a company that sells boxed wine. The first sentence downplays the company through the passive voice, and the second sentence spotlights it with the active voice.

Passive verbs clutter up the first sentence with two unnecessary words: “BzzAgent was hired by Black Box.”

It’s faster and simpler to use active language and discard these unnecessary words: “Black Box hired BzzAgent.”

Concise writing helps you keep readers’ attention, and busy readers appreciate focused sentences.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes one chapter on sentence mechanics and another on verbs. You’ll learn how to write for maximum impact in all your business documents.

We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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This correctly punctuated sequence of sentences about the iPhone 4S is a perfect illustration of how you can avoid a comma splice:

Apple introduced its long-awaited new iPhone on Tuesday. But it wasn’t an iPhone 5. That will have to wait.

Those last two sentences would be incorrect if they were connected only with a comma:

Apple introduced its long-awaited new iPhone on Tuesday. But it wasn’t an iPhone 5, that will have to wait.

That sentence is a comma splice: two clauses, each of which could stand as an independent sentence, incorrectly joined with a comma.

When you have two clauses that could stand as independent sentences, you’ll always be safe if you use any of these other methods to join them:

A Semicolon:

Apple introduced its long-awaited new iPhone on Tuesday. But it wasn’t an iPhone 5; that will have to wait.

A Comma and a Conjunction:

Apple introduced its long-awaited new iPhone on Tuesday. But it wasn’t an iPhone 5, since that will have to wait.

A Semicolon, Linking Word, and Comma:

Apple introduced its long-awaited new iPhone on Tuesday. It wasn’t an iPhone 5; unfortunately, that will have to wait.

Or, of course, you could just make each independent clause its own sentence, as in the original example.

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Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two chapters on punctuation to help you boost the impact of all your business documents.

We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

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Three of the verb forms in this sentence are a great illustration of how the passive voice can be the best fit for a sentence:

Shucked oysters packed in their liquor will keep up to a week if kept quite cold.

Here’s the same sentence recast in the active voice:

If you shuck oysters and pack them in their liquor, they will keep up to a week if you keep them quite cold.

The passive voice usually streamlines a sentence by making it clear who does what. But in this case, the active voice makes the sentence longer with the unnecessary pronouns you, they, and them.

When you’re deciding whether to use the active or passive voice, just ask yourself if it matters who takes an action, and decide which option delivers your meaning more easily.

If you ran an oyster bar and retail outlet, you’d probably prefer the first sentence.

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Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes a chapter on verbs to help you boost the impact of all your business documents.

We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

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How often do you type a sentence, find it unclear, and then get a headache untangling your ideas? One effective detangling method is to identify your verbs and plant them right after their subjects.

Take a look at this sentence and ask yourself how it could be clearer:

Another problem for e-books that are not simultaneously published in print is that they pose a marketing challenge.

There are three subject-verb pairs in that sentence: “problem … is,” “e-books … are,” and “e-books [they] pose.”

For all three actions, it becomes easy to convey the central ideas more clearly by putting each subject right before its verb:

Another problem is that some e-books pose a marketing challenge: they are not simultaneously published in print.

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Do you have an important document but not enough time to clarify your thoughts and double-check your grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two lessons to help you master the parts of speech and parts of a sentence.

We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

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It’s usually best to use the active voice in business writing, but the passive voice can be appropriate when it doesn’t matter who performs an action.

Here are two sentences from an article about how everyone can ripen and store plums:

Plums can be ripened easily if left in an open paper bag at room temperature. When ripe, plums can be eaten immediately or stored in the refrigerator.

The passive voice is OK for these highlighted verbs because the article doesn’t focus on how you, the reader, can ripen plums. However, the active voice makes sense more quickly and adds more energy to the sentences:

You can ripen plums easily: leave them in an open paper bag at room temperature. When plums are ripe, you can eat them immediately or store them in the refrigerator.

Passive language is usually best when you describe the actions of team members whose individuality is less important than the actions (“The test tubes were sealed”).

Active language works best for instructions (“Next, seal the test tubes”) and almost all other writing.

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Do you have an important document but not enough time to keep your writing as correct, concise, and clear as it should be? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

Write It Well’s books Professional Writing Skills and Essential Grammar include sections on active and passive language.

We’ve made all the Essential Grammar exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

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Many business writers find it difficult to choose the correct verb tense for every sentence they write. Here are several subject-verb agreement challenges that business writers often face.

First, a plural noun takes a singular verb when it conveys a single expression of time, money, or another quantity. The subjects are underlined and the verbs are boldfaced in both of these correct sentences:

Ninety-nine cents isn’t much to pay for a song.

Three blocks feels like a long way to walk in some parts of this town.

Always use a singular verb after these pronouns:

anyone, anything

everyone, everything

nobody, no one, nothing

somebody, something

Here are some singular verbs to agree with those pronouns:

No one wants to do the chore.

Anyone in those four departments is welcome to sign up.

When there’s more than one subject, you nearly always use a plural form of the verb. The two subjects in this sentence are joined by and:

The office and the manufacturing plant need renovation.

Finally, consider using a singular verb after neither … nor when these words join two singular nouns:

RISKY:

Neither the manager nor the owner are in the store on Mondays.

SAFER:

Neither the manager nor the owner is in the store on Mondays.

The “neither … nor … are” construction is safe enough for informal e-mails between colleagues. But the plural verb is risky when you need to impress your readers with your carefully expressed thoughts. It might lower your credibility if you choose a plural verb for these sentences — especially in a formal business document.

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