Write It Well

Some brilliant writers are terrible role models to imitate when you write your business documents. This beautiful passage about e-mail manners includes a bush-league grammar mistake:

In some instances, we are told that our e-mail went into spam, a statement that activates either our inner skeptic or our sympathy. (“It’s the permissible white lie,” Ms. McKean said. “It’s the equivalent of ‘I can’t go to your party, I came down with food poisoning.’”)

— Henry Alford, “When Your E-Mail Goes Unanswered,” nytimes.com, July 15, 2011

That orange comma creates a comma splice — a run-on sentence that could be corrected with a period or colon.

This writer can get away with a nonchalant comma splice because the rest of his prose is carefully crafted and error free. His grammar error is a conscious choice to strike an informal tone. But a comma splice in a high-stakes business document could make an educated stranger think you’re simply uninformed or careless.

Thorough grammar knowledge helps your writing project reliability. Building up your grammar knowledge is an ideal way avoid mistakes, maintain your professional credibility, and earn some confident elegance of your own.

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Write It Well’s e-learning module Just Commas includes self-paced quizzes to help you test your knowledge of punctuation, 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? Just use Write It Well’s editing services.

We’ll make sure your prose is correct, clear, concise, and engaging so your readers will follow all your ideas easily and respect your voice.

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Many business writers trip up when they add or omit commas. Here’s a comma that many writers would mistakenly leave out:

[A recent survey] ranked San Francisco sixth among U.S. metropolitan areas [in] providing goods or services that help the environment. San Jose [ranked] 26th, behind such contenders as Kansas City, Mo., and Albany, N.Y.

— David R. Baker, “S.F. ranked 6th in U.S. for green jobs by survey,”

sfgate.com, July 13, 2011

It’s necessary to mention Missouri in that sentence since there’s also a Kansas City, Kansas. And it’s necessary to include commas both before and after the state name since the quoted sentence continues after it.

Commas are the most frequently misused punctuation marks in U.S. English. Using them correctly makes your own prose look carefully written, and careful, correct writing boosts your credibility as a businessperson.

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Write It Well’s e-learning module Just Commas includes self-paced quizzes to help you test your knowledge of punctuation, 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? Just use Write It Well’s editing services.

We’ll make sure your prose is correct, clear, concise, and engaging so your readers will follow all your ideas easily and respect your voice.

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Careless writing can confuse your readers even when it sounds perfectly clear to you. Correct punctuation can prevent this confusion.

Careless punctuation leaves this article title unclear:

“No Pseudonyms Allowed: Is Google Plus’s Real Name Policy a Good Idea?” Audrey Watters, nytimes.com, July 12, 2011

Adding a hyphen makes the article topic immediately clear: “Google Plus’s Real-Name Policy.” This hyphen is also grammatically necessary.

Without a hyphen, it’s not clear if the article topic is the company’s real policy about names. The hyphen makes it immediately clear that the policy concerns real names as opposed to pseudonyms.

It pays to spend some time and effort on your punctuation: readers will grasp your ideas immediately, and they’ll see you as a effortlessly clear communicator.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar is a thorough review of the punctuation rules you need to project credibility, clear thought, and professionalism through all your writing.

The book includes two user-friendly chapters on punctuation, including hyphenation guidelines that enable you to project an especially polished image as a business writer.

Do you have an important document but not enough time to polish it or boost reader comprehension? Just use Write It Well’s editing services.

We’ll make sure the prose is correct, clear, concise, and engaging so your readers will follow all your ideas easily and respect your voice.

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Bulleted lists can help readers follow your ideas as easily as they’d step down a staircase. Here are two illustrations, starting with an intricate sentence about an array of covers you can buy to protect an iPad 2:

There is the shockproof CoverBuddy from SwitchEasy.com, available in 10 colors (plus ultraclear) for $25; the Snap Shield cover from Belkin.com, which comes in clear, Apple Pink and Smoke and sells for $30; the BackBone from ifrogz.com, which sells for $35 in matching Smart Cover colors, plus white and clear; or the higher-end iFrogz Summit for $60, which combines a folio style with a snap-in core.

— Mickey Meece, “Options Abound to Protect the iPad,” nytimes.com, July 6, 2011

The same information is much easier to read when it’s unpacked and reformatted as a bulleted list:

Here are four cover options for the iPad 2:

• The shockproof CoverBuddy from SwitchEasy.com is available in 10 colors (plus ultraclear) for $25
• The Snap Shield cover from Belkin.com sells for $30 and comes in clear, Apple pink and smoke
• The BackBone from ifrogz.com sells for $35 in matching Smart Cover colors, plus white and clear
• The higher-end iFrogz Summit sells for $60 and combines a folio style with a snap-in core

Any time a series of items gets longer than about 30 words, back up and ask yourself if the information would be easier to follow in list format. Your readers may thank you for helping them move forward.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar is a thorough review of the fundamental grammar you need to project credibility, clear thought, and professionalism through all your writing. The book includes two user-friendly chapters on punctuation, tips for using colons correctly in list introductions, and tips to maintain parallel structure inside a list.

Do you have an important document but not enough time to polish it? Just use Write It Well’s editing services. We’ll make sure the prose is correct, clear, concise, and engaging so your readers will follow all your ideas easily and respect your voice.

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You convey leadership through your writing when you master nuances of punctuation. For example, this sentence features a strong, strategic colon:

Though he is routinely armed with an iPhone and at least one iPad, the man who oversees the entire animated film output for both Pixar and Walt Disney Studios prefers doing things old school: warm-embrace greetings followed by face-to-face meetings.

— Peter Newcomb, “A Day with John Lasseter, King of Pixar,” wsj.com

The journalist’s colon is correct: it introduces an explanation of the preceding idea. John Lasseter has an old-school style. In what way? He greets people warmly and he meets face to face.

Readers follow punctuation marks instinctively even if they themselves don’t know how to use them. It can feel like struggling through a traffic jam to try to follow poorly punctuated sentences and paragraphs.

But when you punctuate your sentences correctly, readers can be grateful for your clear directions through a maze of complex ideas. That’s one way high-quality writing can convey the quality of leadership.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two user-friendly chapters on punctuation. It’s a thorough review of the fundamental grammar you need to project credibility, clear thought, and professionalism through all your writing.

Do you have an important document but not enough time to polish it? Just use Write It Well’s editing services. We’ll make sure the prose is correct, clear, concise, and engaging so your readers will follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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People sometimes make punctuation mistakes because they don’t type the way they speak. Here’s an example:

[The view from the rear of the property] displays the canopy of a 150-year-old, live-oak forest.

— “Killingsworth ‘Case Study’ home in Piedmont,” sfgate.com June 10, 2011

That comma is as incorrect as it would be in this parallel sentence: “I saw an old, oak tree.”

Punctuation should often reflect the patterns in how we speak. You wouldn’t pause between the adjectives if you said the words “old oak tree” out loud.

By speaking sentences out loud and trusting your ear, you can usually avoid these kinds of incorrect commas in your own writing.

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Write It Well’s e-learning module Just Commas covers everything business writers need to know to use commas correctly.

Our new book Essential Grammar includes a full chapter on commas. The book is a thorough review of the fundamental grammar you need to project a credible, professional image through your writing.

Do you have an important document but don’t have enough time to polish it? Just use Write It Well’s editing services. We’ll make sure the prose is correct, clear, concise, and engaging so your document will create an excellent impression.

Correct hyphenation sets business writing apart. Here’s a tour de force example of it from the Wall Street Journal:

There are five dwellings on the property, including a 7,500-square-foot stucco-and-tile Tuscan-style house with three bedrooms.

— Candace Jackson, “Napa Estate Asks $35.8 Million,” wsj.com

These hyphens are correct because the three multiword descriptions all come before the noun house. No hyphen would be needed if you put any of these descriptions after the noun, as in “The house is stucco and tile.”

A hyphen would be necessary for the phrase “three-bedroom house” if it were before the noun. But before nouns, you do leave out hyphens for well-known multiword phrases like ” a tour de force example” or “a real estate listing.”

Using hyphens incorrectly is such a commonplace mistake that most readers won’t notice it. But correct hyphenation adds unmistakable polish to any document.

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Write It Well’s newly updated book Essential Grammar includes further tips on correct hyphenation as well as a thorough review of the fundamental grammar you need to project a credible professional image through your writing.

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Correctly used semicolons signal that you know English well and want to help your readers follow the logic of your sentences.

Here’s an illustration. It’s from an excellent writer’s interview with the editor of a magazine that had just been redesigned:

“Joe and I both loved the old New Republic,” [editor Franklin Foer] says. “We felt that we were drawing on a really rich aesthetic tradition; magazines used to know how to make type look beautiful.”

– Emily Gordon, “Primary Colors,” Print magazine, November/December 2007

In other words, the New Republic‘s rich, individual design tradition stretches back to 1914; many magazines from the early twentieth century still look beautiful.

Foer knows that the second fact doesn’t follow automatically from the first. That’s what makes Gordon’s semicolon perfect.

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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 servicesfor 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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