Write It Well

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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Casual business writing can be tricky: how can you make your Web copy sound welcoming, yet professionally credible? If you’re concerned that your prose may sound sloppy rather than casual, grammar rules can offer you some safe and reliable guidelines.

Here are some nonstandard sentences in a pleasant T magazine article about Blue Bottle Coffee. The magazine’s handwritten text emphasizes the quotes’ intentional informality:

Since the first line is a question, standard English would require a comma after the name. Of course, the first words of the sentences would also be capitalized.

A businessperson might frown at the grammar of that last sentence if it were part of a formal commercial mission statement. Here’s a revised, correct sentence about coffee: “It makes us smarter, funnier, and healthier, and it is delicious.”

A little knowledge of parallel verb structure is all you’d need to dress up the informal look of this prose and feel sure that it’s appropriate for a formal business document.

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Do you have an important document but not enough time to double-check your punctuation or untangle your sentences? 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 section on parallel verb structure and two full 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!

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Colons and semicolons are like traffic signals: they tell readers how to steer through two parts of a sentence. The following sentence features a correctly used colon:

That’s the bottom line: The lawns go away when the water rates go up.

— “Author sees growth in the trend of replacing lawns,” sfgate.com, August 21, 2011

The colon signals that the second half of the first sentence follows logically from the first half. (I.e., the bottom line is that lawns are linked to water rates.)

The following quotation in the same article features a correctly used semicolon:

“I planted my native grass meadow in 1989; it’s never been fertilized.”

The semicolon merely links two loosely related thoughts. (It makes sense for the speaker to mention both fertilization and a planting date in a sentence about one meadow. However, the no-fertilizer choice doesn’t depend on the date.)

Using semicolons and colons correctly can help readers navigate through your prose and follow your ideas more easily. Being able to use them deftly adds sophistication to your business writing.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two full 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 untangle your sentences or double-check your punctuation and spelling? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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Few business writers know a simple technique to decide whether to add a hyphen to a two-word descriptive phrase. The following sentences feature an incorrect hyphen in red and a correct hyphen in green:

You’d be hard-pressed to find any other restaurant cooks afforded such luxury. Cooks rarely eat restaurant-quality food at work.

— “Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse turning 40,” sfgate.com, August 14, 2011

To determine whether you should add a hyphen, locate the noun or pronoun that a two-word or multiword phrase describes.

In the first sentence, the phrase “hard-pressed” describes the pronoun “you.” The hyphen between the two words is incorrect because the descriptive phrase follows the pronoun.

The hyphen in “restaurant-quality” is correct because the two-word phrase comes before the noun it describes: “food.”

Hyphenation is usually as easy as remembering to add the hyphen only when a two-word phrase comes before a noun or pronoun.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two full chapters on correct punctuation, including whether to include hyphens after words that end in -ly.

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 untangle your sentences or double-check your punctuation? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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Be cautious about using journalism as a model for your business writing: some excellent journalists use nonstandard English. Here’s a sentence that uses a colon in a nonstandard way.

To take an example of just one classroom convention that might be inhibiting today’s students: teachers and professors regularly ask students to write papers.

— Virginia Heffernan, “Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade,” nytimes.com, August 7, 2011

There’s a simple rule about a colon that follows an introductory thought: only type a colon after an introductory word group that could stand on its own as a complete sentence.

A colon is correct in both the following sentences because the reworded introductory thoughts could both become complete sentences if they were followed by periods instead of colons. The revised words are underlined.

I’ll take an example of just one classroom convention that might be inhibiting today’s students: teachers and professors regularly ask students to write papers.

Here is an example of just one classroom convention that might be inhibiting today’s students: teachers and professors regularly ask students to write papers.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two full chapters on correct 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 untangle your sentences or double-check your punctuation? 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’s a style tip that makes your formal writing look polished. A range of numbers — e.g., “from 250 to 350″ — should always have a typed-out “to” or “through” if you type out the word “from.”

Here’s a correctly typed example:

Professional publishing, which focuses on science, medicine, law, technology and the humanities, increased by 6.3 percent from 2008 through 2010.

— Julie Bosman, “Survey Shows Publishing Expanded Since 2008,” nytimes.com, August 9, 2011

It would also be correct to type “The 2008–2011 figures are in,” since there’s no typed-out preposition “from.”

But it’s incorrect to type “from 2008–2010.” That mistake wouldn’t matter much in a casual note: the meaning is still clear even though the punctuation is nonstandard.

Typing out both prepositions is a nice touch for formal documents. The matching words are easier to understand, while a mismatched “from” and “–” can look clumsy and distract readers.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two full chapters on correct 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 untangle your sentences or double-check your punctuation? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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How often do long sentences keep you in suspense before they deliver the second half of an idea?

The following 39-word sentence is an example of how writers can create unnecessary wait times:

What readers, writers, publishers, and retailers really needed to worry about, and catch up with, was the increasing potential of what a book’s content could be, the delivery of the content, and how we could interact with the content.

— Buzz Poole, “Is there hope for books?” Salon.com, August 4, 2011

The sentence’s subject and verb are in orange. The orange pronoun “what” stands for three things, but 14 words separate the pronoun from the verb.

That separation keeps the reader waiting to learn what the three things are. We’d recommend recasting the sentence as two shorter sentences:

There are three things that readers, writers, publishers, and retailers really needed to worry about and catch up with. These three concerns are the increasing potential of what a book’s content could be, the content’s delivery, and how we could interact with the content.

When your readers are busy, it’s best to keep your sentences short — say, 17 to 25 words long.

Short sentences can keep your subjects and verbs clear and also efficiently deliver your meaning to your readers.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes a full chapter on 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 untangle your sentences? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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Many businesspeople have to manage distractions as we write for work. Here’s a tip to keep your punctuation correct after an interruption takes you away from your keyboard.

Sometimes, a supplemental thought appears in the middle of a sentence. A second comma must follow the thought if an initial comma sets it off from the rest of the sentence. Here are two examples:

Economic competition, of course, is the only real reason … and, in my opinion, it is not a good enough reason to validate the resulting doubling of effort.

— Christopher Butler, “The case against apps,” Salon.com, July 27, 2011

It’s incorrect to omit that second comma after a supplemental thought. E.g., it would be wrong to type, “Economic competition, of course is the only reason.”

It’s especially easy to forget that second comma if you become distracted while you’re typing this kind of sentence. When you start typing after a distraction, rereading what you’ve typed and applying this rule can keep your sentences crisp and correct.

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Write It Well’s e-learning module Just Commas includes self-paced quizzes to help you master punctuation rules, and our 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 double-check your punctuation or untangle your sentences? Just use Write It Well’s editing services. We’ll make sure your prose is correct, clear, concise, and engaging so your readers will respect your voice and follow all your ideas easily.

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