Write It Well

This whirlwind summary of Chelsea Clinton’s wedding shows a good use for semicolons: “The Wedding of the Year is over, and what have we learned? There was an interfaith ceremony; Bill lost the required weight, and then some; the cake was gluten-free.”

– Sally Law, “Personal Style,” The New Yorker, August 2, 2010

Semicolons are a polished way to connect two or more parts of a sentence that don’t have a clear logical connection. You use a colon instead of a semicolon when the connecting logic is obvious – e.g., “The wedding party was formidable … and so too was security: guests needed specially issued ID bracelets to board a bus to the ceremony.”

– Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger, “Chelsea Clinton, Marc Mezvinsky

wedding details,” The Washington Post, August 2, 2010

A semicolon would be right for the made-up sentence, “The bride wore Vera Wang; the guests wore specially issued ID bracelets.”

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Check out our new, one-page PDF “Semicolons: A Write It Well Guide”! And for a thorough guide to punctuation in business writing, see our updated book Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide.

Could you use some help making sure your punctuation is correct, and your prose is engaging and easy to understand? Write It Well offers proofreading and editing services for your or your employees’ business documents.

Just send us a document, noting any concerns or goals you have for it – e.g., whether the reader gets enough information from the text to understand your message. We’ll copyedit a sample portion for free and return it within two days.

You’ll get estimates of the cost and time frame for our sending you back a full, edited, engaging document that will make a great impression.

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Tags: attention fitness, list organization, monitor, mouse, noise-canceling headphones,paragraph sequencing, parallel structure, precise language, verbs

Performance goals should be SMART – an acronym for “specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound” – said Write It Well President Natasha Terk.

Natasha is the author of Writing Performance Reviews: A Write It Well Guide. Read an American Medical News article quoting Natasha here!

Listen to an interview about e-mail with Write It Well President and author of Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide, Natasha Terk!

“Probiotics are live micro-organisms that work by restoring the balance of intestinal bacteria and raising resistance to harmful germs.”

– Tara Parker-Pope, “Probiotics: Looking underneath the Yogurt Label,”
New York Times online, September 28, 2009

A recent New York Times article refers to (unhyphenated) “probiotics,” which are (hyphenated) “micro-organisms” in yogurt. Two days later, the paper ran a Home & Garden article about a “Fixer-Upper” on the housing market in St. Paul, MN.*

So how do you know when your nouns need hyphens? Hyphenation can change over time, so just check a current dictionary like Webster’s Eleventh. Webster’s keeps a hyphen in some multipart nouns, like a self-starter and a heads-up, but omits hyphens in other nouns like roundup, highlights, and microorganism.

Still, feel free to add a hyphen if you’re uncomfortable when a prefix repeats a noun’s first letter – e.g., two back-to-back letter o‘s. “Micro-organisms” is an OK spelling, too.

For more tips on how to use hyphens correctly, see Write It Well’s book Professional Writing Skills: A Self-Paced Training Program.

*Also see Michael Tortorello, “No-Fault Fixer-Upper,” New York Times online, September 30, 2009.

“Why do some chocolates cost so much more than others?

“Although chocolate is an ‘affordable luxury’ in a general sense, some brands demand a king’s ransom.

“Much like coffee beans, cocoa beans are sold by commodity markets. The global price of chocolate spiked in the 1970s, after which it declined a little, only to recover somewhat in the early ‘90s. Prices have never reached the highs of the 1970s, but they have remained pretty constant since the 1990s.”

– Mary Goodbody, “Four Chocolate Questions Answered,”
The Daily Beast, September 29, 2009

Have you ever wondered how to use apostrophes to type dates? Forget about the apostrophe s. Mary Goodbody shows you how.

The Chicago Manual of Style uses an apostrophe when a date is spelled with two numerals, as in “the early ‘90s” or “the class of ‘99.” It’s exactly like the apostrophe for the omitted letter o in isn‘t. The apostrophe in those two dates stands for the omitted 19 in “the early 1990s” or “the class of 1999.”

Finally, it’s also correct Chicago style to spell out a decade as a word with no apostrophe at all: “the nineties.”

For more tips on how to use apostrophes correctly, see Write It Well’s book Professional Writing Skills: A Self-Paced Training Program.

“Finance and clean technology—alternative energy, energy efficiency, the smart grid, etc.—are two vital industries centered on opposite sides of the country. Finance is New York, suits, and golf. Cleantech is San Francisco, khakis, and bicycling. The cultural differences between the two industries can also be seen in the attitude they have toward government intervention in, and assistance to, their markets….

“It’s common to hear bankers complain about the onerous terms of the TARP and how many banks didn’t really need it. The same folks, however, downplay the positive impact of other policies – the FDIC boosting deposit guarantees, the government guaranteeing the commercial paper market, the taxpayers standing behind the debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Fed’s zero-interest policy—that have allowed the banks to survive and even thrive in a tough environment. They’re like people who show up at a restaurant, chow down at the cheap all-you-can-eat buffet, and then complain that there wasn’t any pudding.”

– Daniel Gross, “Wall Street vs. Cleantech: How to tell a West Coast businessman from an East Coast businessman,”
Slate Magazine, September 16, 2009

Here’s a typo we found on the Slate website. The author uses dashes correctly, but someone typed one dash differently from the others, before “the FDIC.” Consistency matters, but there is more than one way to type this kind of dash.

First, hyphens are shorter than en dashes, which are shorter than em dashes. Here they are in a row:

It’s become standard to use any of these three punctuation marks to indicate a dash:

All these methods are correct, though the last two look more professional. The important thing is to pick one way to type a dash – whatever way you prefer – and use it consistently.

For more tips about dashes, see Write It Well’s book Professional Writing Skills: A Self-Paced Training Program.

“For decades, the drug-resistant germ called MRSA was almost exclusively a concern of humans…. But in recent years, the germ has become a growing problem for veterinarians, with an increasing number of infections turning up in birds, cats, dogs, horses, pigs, rabbits and rodents….”

“For protection, Dr. Oehler recommends hand washing or using hand gels before and after playing with a pet, not letting a pet lick people around the face, and not washing pet food or water bowls in the same sink that food is prepared in.”

– Brenda Goodman, “Tie to Pets Has Germ Jumping to and Fro,”
New York Times online, September 21, 2009

Do you see how Goodman uses commas in two different ways here? She leaves out a final comma in “pigs, rabbits and rodents.” Yet she does add a final comma before “and” in the last sentence.

Why? Because the Associated Press tells journalists to use commas in different ways for different kinds of lists. The last sentence isn’t a list of simple items like birds and rodents. The final list item includes a conjunction of its own: “not washing pet food or water bowls in the same sink that food is prepared in.” The list of three complex items would be confusing without a final comma before the list’s main conjunction: “and.”

We recommend that most writers always add a comma before the conjunction in all lists of three or more items. (Not “The flag is red, white and blue,” but “The flag is red, white, and blue.”) Then you’ll never have to ask yourself if you need another comma to make your meaning clear.

For more tips about commas, see Write It Well’s book Professional Writing Skills: A Self-Paced Training Program.

Communication is a two-way process. It takes place when the message you send has been received and understood by the person at the other end.

When you’re face-to-face with people, it’s easy to know when they have questions about what you’re telling them. Furrowed eyebrows, a vacant look, restlessness, and questions are all signs that listeners need more information. When you’re writing, though, it’s difficult to know if your reader has questions that need to be answered before they can give you information, approval, or another response you want.

Here’s a common situation. Jillian is working on an important new internal project. She needs Alan, her supervisor, to approve her budget as soon as possible. She sends Alan an e-mail message that outlines her budget and asks for approval right away.

How can Jillian increase her chances that Alan will approve her budget quickly?

One of the most important steps that Jillian can take is to make sure — in advance — that she has answered all of Alan’s questions. By taking the time to brainstorm a list of questions about your readers’s needs and interests, you can usually identify some of their questions before you start writing. Keeping those questions in mind, Jillian can try to overcome potential resistance, answer questions Alan might have, and even increase her credibility.

Example A (BEFORE):

Here’s what the memo might have looked like if Jillian didn’t take the time to think about Alan’s needs and interests.

Alan: We’ll be working for three weeks on the marketing campaign and would like your approval to get started and authorize the budget. The marketing campaign will include writing and a firm has been chosen. 

Example B (AFTER):

In this example, Jillian brainstormed a list of of questions that Alan might have and then answered them in her message.

List of Alan’s needs and interests:

• Wants to know when the project will be completed. Include: A timeline has been assigned to each deliverable.
• Wants to see the deliverables spelled out. Include: Identify deliverables and break them up.
• Wants to know who else is overseeing the project. Include: Rosanna will approve the first e-mail before the others are drafted.
• Wants to know more about the company named in the budget and why they were chosen. Include: More information about Write It Well and their role, prior experience, and our selection process.
• Wants to know that we’ve reduced the budget per Mark’s e-mail from last week. Include: Our budget has been reduced — we’ve reduced it by 30 percent.

Here’s the memo Jillian wrote after brainstorming:

Alan: Please see the following chart (with deliverables and delivery timeline) as well as the budget that follows. I’d like your approval by Friday, please, so that we can get started right away. Here are some key points to consider while reviewing the materials:

To make sure that we’re on the right path, Rosanna will approve the first marketing message before the others are drafted.

More information about the firm we hired, Write It Well, can be found on their site. We conducted a thorough search and chose them because of their wide range of writing and teaching experience, competitive pricing, and stellar references.

We’ve already reduced the budget by 30 percent per Mark’s e-mail of last week.

Which one, Example A or Example B, is more likely to be approved quickly?

“As with any public health intervention, the precise effect of a tax cannot be known until it is implemented and studied, but research to date suggests that a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages would have strong positive effects on reducing consumption.”  – Kelly D. Brownell, PhD, et al., “The Public Health and Economic Benefits of Taxing Sugar-Sweetened Beverages,” New England Journal of Medicine online, September 16, 2009

This sentence was taken from an article about taxing sugary drinks. Don’t you think that the quotation is longer than it needs to be?  We do   We re-wrote it this way:

“Of course it is difficult to predict, but research suggests that if sugary beverages were taxed, the public would drink less of them and would be healthier.”

 For more tips about writing clearly and concisely, see Write It Well’s book Professional Writing Skills: A Self-Paced Training Program.