Write It Well

Missing punctuation can confuse your customers and clients. Clear punctuation may take some extra effort, but it helps readers follow your ideas and realize you care about being understood.

Some sentences are simple enough not to need commas — e.g., to use a Wall Street Journal writer’s example, “Beets are available throughout the year but their flesh is particularly flavorful when the weather warms.”

Commas are often necessary to help readers follow your ideas. Here’s another correctly punctuated sentence:

Shaved into paper-thin rounds, spring beets provide an earthy, sharp flavor that’s different from the musky sweetness we have come to expect of the vegetable.

Notice how much harder it is to follow the sentence without the commas:

Shaved into paper-thin rounds spring beets provide an earthy sharp flavor that’s different from the musky sweetness we have come to expect of the vegetable.

Correctly placed commas help you signal readers where one idea ends and another begins. It can take effort to step back from your own thoughts and ask how a sentence will look to a reader, but that effort pays off in clarity.

Correct punctuation helps hold readers’ attention. It also signals that you respect them enough to communicate carefully by trying to think about how they’ll receive your message.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two full, user-friendly 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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Readers can get distracted or confused when business writers mix up hyphens and dashes. The following sentences about the new iPad feature a correctly used hyphen and dash:

Any company that wants to make a tablet computer that matches the iPad’s $499 starting price has to endure higher costs. As a result, Apple’s tablet-making competitors have flailed — and failed.

Hyphens (-) are shorter than dashes (—). Hyphens appear most often in two-word phrases that come before a noun and describe it (e.g., “tablet-making competitors”). Think of hyphens as glue that holds two or more words together, uniting their meaning.

Dashes are different from hyphens in two more ways. Dashes are for parts of sentences rather than individual words, and their function is more to separate ideas than to unite them.

Dashes set off a group of words from the rest of a sentence by adding emphasis. A hyphen with spaces around it can’t stand in for a dash. The result looks careless and unpolished, and it can distract readers from your message:

Apple’s tablet-making competitors have flailed - and failed.

When you want to set off a word group, a correctly typed dash adds polish and emphasis to your sentence.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two full, user-friendly 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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You might be better off rewriting a sentence if you get confused about how you should punctuate it. Consider this sentence on the Yelp debut:

At an opening price of roughly $22 a share, Yelp is trading at a $1.6 billion valuation —  far smaller than some of the recent Internet offerings, like Zynga or Groupon — but still an impressive debut for a start-up operating in a highly competitive environment that has yet to turn a profit.

The sentence is 51 words long. Most business writers find it easiest to follow sentences that are about half that length.

If you find a sentence going over about 30 words, look for a way to break up your ideas into two or three simpler sentences. Here’s one simpler way to rephrase the ideas above:

At an opening price of roughly $22 a share, Yelp is trading at a $1.6 billion valuation. That valuation is far smaller than some of the recent Internet offerings, like Zynga or Groupon. But it’s still an impressive debut for a start-up operating in a highly competitive environment that has yet to turn a profit.

The three new sentences present the same information much more simply by breaking it down with two breathing spaces. The new periods stop readers from having to take in the opening price, valuation, company comparisons, and the final question of turning a profit all in one breath.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes a chapter on ways you can keep your sentences easy to follow. 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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It’s more important to use a colon correctly than to decide whether you’ll capitalize an ordinary word that follows it. Here’s an example of a correctly used colon in a sentence about the Oscars:

The awards show is working hard to pump up its social-media clout as it tries to leverage a growing phenomenon: More and more viewers are supplementing the experience of merely watching their favorite TV shows by joining in simultaneous running commentaries on Twitter and Facebook.

That sentence is from the Wall Street Journal site; capitalizing all words after a colon is their house style. Style decision aren’t a matter of correct and incorrect language. It’s only important to be consistent by capitalizing each and every word that follows a colon if you capitalize just one in a document.

The optional capital letter after a colon is a reminder of an important fact: a colon should only follow a word group that could stand on its own as a complete sentence.

Many sentences with colons are longer than the maximum length of about 30 words that keeps it easy for a reader to follow a business document. The quoted sentence above is 45 words long.

If you find yourself asking whether you’re using a colon correctly, just try substituting a period for the colon. It’s always correct to write two shorter sentences, and two briefer bursts of information may be easier for your reader to follow.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes a chapter on ways you can keep your sentences easy to follow. 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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There are rumors that Amazon.com will start selling merchandise at brick-and-mortar stores. The following sentence about those rumors illustrates a common punctuation mistake:

“There wouldn’t have to be any [store] inventory, you would simply play with the stuff, talk to a professional …, and have it at your house in the next 24 to 48 hours,”  Jason Calacanis wrote in a recent blog post.

The comma in red makes this blogger’s sentence incorrect. Many readers don’t know the grammatical term comma splice but still wince at this particular punctuation mistake.

Comma splices can lower your credibility, including on blogs and in e-mails, but they’re easy to correct. Just ask yourself if you could separate two ideas into two complete sentences rather than with a comma:

• There wouldn’t have to be any store inventory.
• You would simply play with the stuff, talk to a pro, and have it delivered.

Since these ideas are full enough to stand as two complete sentences, they need a stronger punctuation mark than a comma to separate them. The handiest solution to avoid a comma splice is just to type two sentences, like this:

There wouldn’t have to be any store inventory. You would simply play with the stuff, talk to a pro, and have it delivered.

As a rule of thumb, if you think your punctuation may be incorrect, try backing up and typing two shorter sentences. You’re more likely to be correct and easy to understand.

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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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It’s easy to learn when and how to type a dash instead of a hyphen.

Hyphens (-) connect words, while dashes (—) connect larger parts of a sentence. This paragraph illustrates the difference:

Twitter, the minimalist-format social network that claims to have 100 million users, has built its reputation around its simplicity. Members can post to the service only in text messages of 140 characters or less. They can include a link to another site, or to a photo or video. They can repost other users’ messages on their own pages. They can send each other equally spartan private messages. That’s about it — or so it seems.

A hyphen is used most often in two-word phrases that come before a noun (such as the phrase “two-word” before the noun “phrases” in this sentence).

A dash dramatically separates one idea from the rest of a sentence, calling attention to the words that follow it. Before “or so it seems” in the quote above, a journalist uses a dash to emphasize that Twitter has more uses than the obvious ones he’s just listed.

In Microsoft Word on a Mac or a PC, you can use the hyphen key to type a dash:

• On a Mac, you can type a dash by holding down the Option key plus the hyphen key
• On a PC, you can type a dash by holding down the CTRL key plus the hyphen key

Add a space both before and after this kind of dash, and your prose can instantly look more polished.

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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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Lists are an extremely clear and user-friendly way to present information, but they can be tricky to punctuate. Here’s one tip.

Sometimes a paragraph ends with a statement that introduces several following paragraphs. In that situation, the introductory statement should end with a period instead of a colon — just like any other paragraph. Here’s an example of this kind of mistake.

Other [San Francisco] restaurants that have opened in the last couple of years [elicit positive emotions in a] sophisticated and subtle way. Here are six:

AQ. The newest restaurant that features great design is AQ on Mission between 6th and 7th streets….

Chambers. This space has been the home of Miss Pearl’s Jam House and Bambuddha Lounge….

Gitane. Located on tiny Claude Lane, Gitane feels like a speakeasy….

Bar Agricole. The whimsical  glass tubes that surround the skylights,  the brick walls, high beamed ceiling and molded concrete booths all work to give this industrial space a modern, joyful edge.

25 Lusk. Built in 1917 as a meat packer and smokehouse, the bunker-like brick walls make the place feel cozy….

Park Tavern. It feels like an upscale brasserie.…

The “Here are six” sentence calls for a final period instead of a colon. A colon would be correct only if each of these six restaurants were under a bulleted and indented list — an alternate, equally correct way to format the information above.

It’s great to end one paragraph with an explanation of the single topic that the next few paragraphs will cover. Just save colons for list introductions and end all your paragraphs with periods, and you’ll be in the clear!

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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’s a way you can use punctuation marks as traffic signals, building momentum and steering readers through your ideas.

Dashes call extra attention to the information they set off, and parentheses make information seem less important. Here’s an example:

Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest book chain, said on Thursday that it was considering spinning off its Nook e-reader division in an effort to help the nascent — and expensive — digital business grow.

Now compare the effect when parentheses are substituted for the dashes:

Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest book chain, said on Thursday that it was considering spinning off its Nook e-reader division in an effort to help the nascent (and expensive) digital business grow.

See how the parentheses make the expense look like a slight detour, while the dashes above make it look as if the writer were passing some especially interesting scenery?

Consciously using dashes and parentheses can help you highlight essential information (and downplay less important information) that you need to convey.

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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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If you get confused about whether to hyphenate a two-word phrase, try using numbers to help you remember.

Take a look at these correctly hyphenated two-word phrases in orange and the underlined nouns that follow them:

As mobile phones become bodily appendages for people worldwide, they too are emerging as instruments to verify identity. Google introduced its two-step process earlier this year. It sends a six-digit code to an application on a Google user’s cellphone to be entered along with a password.

Here are those same nouns and phrases, rearranged and correctly typed with no hyphens:

The process has two steps, and the code has six digits.

The usual rule is that you hyphenate a two-word phrase when it comes before a noun, and you omit the hyphen when a phrase with two words follows a noun.

If you forget that “before, but not after” rule, try thinking of a two-word phrase that includes a number. You can follow your instincts and avoid the odd-looking and incorrect hyphen in “The process has two-steps.”

In contrast, the correct hyphen in “The two-step process” looks natural to most writers. That’s how numbers can help you remember how to use hyphens correctly.

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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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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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