Write It Well

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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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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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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Very few business writers use hyphens correctly in two-word descriptive phrases. Here are some quick tips.

A technology writer adds and omits hyphens perfectly in this sentence:

At the start of this year, app-related search engines and stores were too big a mess for the mobile software industry to leave as is.

Hyphenate most two-word phrases only when they come before a noun.

• as-is software
• the software was left as is
• the app-related search engines
• the search engines are app related

Here are some exceptions to the rule. Don’t add a hyphen when a two-word phrase comes before a noun, but one of these factors applies:

• a two-word noun is well known (e.g., “real estate deal” or “mobile software industry” above)
• the first word is more, less, most, or least
• the first word ends in -ly

Following these hyphenation guidelines gives a rare touch of clarity and polish to business prose.

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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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Bulleted lists are an excellent way to present complex business information clearly. Numbered items are better than bulleted items when you need to present an intricate sequence of steps.

This New York Times paragraph is a perfect example of information that cries out for a numbered list; just compare it to the reformatted version below.

Original

If you’re a business owner, a team coach or a performer who wants to keep everyone on Facebook apprised of your coming events, simply creating separate Facebook events for each one can be ineffective. These can get lost in the stream of events, making it hard for people to check for, say, your next game. As an alternative, use the Social Calendar app, which was not developed by Facebook. Go to facebook.com/SocialCalendar and click the Add to My Page link in the lower left corner. That will pop up a menu of pages you manage. Click Add to Page next to one or more pages, then click Close. Those pages will now include a Calendar link in their upper left corner, just below Wall, Info and Photos. Social Calendar is pretty smart — it will autocomplete the names of events you’ve already created, and if you type in an Address field, it will add a map link to the location on the calendar.

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Revised

If you’re a business owner, a team coach or a performer who wants to keep everyone on Facebook apprised of your coming events, simply creating separate Facebook events for each one can be ineffective. These can get lost in the stream of events, making it hard for people to check for, say, your next game. As an alternative, use the Social Calendar app, which was not developed by Facebook:

1. Go to facebook.com/SocialCalendar.

2. Click the Add to My Page link in the lower left corner. That will pop up a menu of pages you manage.

3. Click Add to Page next to one or more pages.

4. Then click Close.

Those pages will now include a Calendar link in their upper left corner, just below Wall, Info and Photos. Social Calendar is pretty smart — it will autocomplete the names of events you’ve already created, and if you type in an Address field, it will add a map link to the location on the calendar.

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In the original paragraph, the instructions are buried in a dense block of text, making it easy for readers to get confused or lost. The numbered list makes a clear sequence of steps stand out immediately.

Customers and clients can appreciate the clear guidance you offer in a chronologically numbered list. A little document planning on your part can boost their relief at your offering hassle-free, well-organized information.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two chapters on punctuation as well as tips for formatting a bulleted or numbered list. 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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Customers may give up trying to read your prose if you confront them with long-winded blocks of text. Lists can be an easy formatting solution to the challenge of keeping readers’ attention.

Here’s a beautifully formatted list from a New York Times article about a badly designed website:

When conceiving a contest — or any other attempt to drive traffic with user-generated content — it’s important to keep a few things in mind:

•    Make sure the contest aims at an audience of potential and current customers.
•    Give them incentives to contribute (prizes, recognition).
•    Give them reasons to keep coming back (picking daily or monthly winners).
•    Promote the contest through multiple channels (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube).
•    Promote the contest on appropriate travel blogs.
•    Create new contests and promotions on a regular basis.

See how much less appetizing those sentences look in paragraph form?

When conceiving a contest — or any other attempt to drive traffic with user-generated content — it’s important to keep a few things in mind. First, make sure the contest aims at an audience of potential and current customers. Give them incentives to contribute (prizes, recognition). Give them reasons to keep coming back (picking daily or monthly winners). Promote the contest through multiple channels (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). Promote the contest on appropriate travel blogs. And create new contests and promotions on a regular basis.

Even with a sequence of crisp sentences that all start with calls to action, the paragraph format buries the writer’s ideas.

Strategically deployed lists hand your ideas to a reader item by item – making you likelier to hold your reader’s attention through every line.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two chapters on punctuation as well as tips for formatting a bulleted or numbered list. 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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Business writers can make an especially polished impression by using hyphens and dashes correctly. This sentence shows advanced uses for both punctuation marks:

A study commissioned by HarperCollins in 2010 found that books bought for three- to seven-year-olds were frequently discovered at a local bookstore — 38 percent of the time.

The dash before “38 percent” is perfect because it precedes some surprising information. The writer skillfully uses this dash to emphasize the news that adults are over five times likelier to buy e-books for themselves than for their kids.

Dashes call attention to the words they set off. (And parentheses downplay the information they contain.)

Click here for Write It Well’s guide to using hyphens correctly. And click here for our guide for typing dashes and 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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Many customers and clients are reluctant to sacrifice significant time on long sentences in Web copy. Here’s a technique to help readers follow your thoughts more quickly.

The following sentence is correctly punctuated, but slightly hard to follow at 41 words long:

And despite the rebuff by Mr. Jobs to the health care executive, Apple ended up adding a number of business-friendly features — like better support for Microsoft Exchange, a common e-mail system inside companies — to a later software update for the iPhone.

Try breaking those flowing lines of text into a bulleted list with one idea per item:

• Mr. Jobs rebuffed the health care executive
• Yet Apple ended up adding a number of business-friendly features to a later software update for the iPhone
• One example was better support for Microsoft Exchange, a common e-mail system inside companies

Reframing these ideas as separate list items sharpens their logic and makes them easy to reassemble as two clear, user-friendly sentences:

Mr. Jobs rebuffed the health care executive, yet Apple ended up adding a number of business-friendly features to a later software update for the iPhone. One example was better support for Microsoft Exchange, a common e-mail system inside companies.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes one chapter on sentence structure and two more 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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Cookbooks can teach business writers a thing or two about presenting ideas clearly.

Take a look at this slightly revised, 38-word sentence about iPad cooking apps. It’s about twice the length it should be for comfortable reading:

Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy['s] book, The Geometry of Pasta, illustrated entirely in crisp black and white, with all pasta shapes drawn true to size, met Ms. Hildebrand’s goal of designing a visually informative cookbook without any photographs.

Try treating this sentence the way you’d write out the ingredients for a recipe. First, chop the flowing lines of text into a bulleted list with one item per idea:

• Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy’s book is The Geometry of Pasta
• It’s illustrated entirely in crisp black and white, with all pasta shapes drawn true to size
• It met Ms. Hildebrand’s goal of designing a visually informative cookbook without any photographs

Once you cut and assemble these related ideas, it’s easy to blend and remix them. 26 and 14 words make for a more appetizing presentation than the single 38-word heap of a sentence above:

Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy book, The Geometry of Pasta, is illustrated entirely in crisp black and white with all pasta shapes drawn true to size. It met Ms. Hildebrand’s goal of designing a visually informative cookbook without any photographs.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes one chapter on sentence structure and two more 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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