Write It Well

It can confuse readers to see inconsistent styles across one organization’s documents. Editorial style guides can solve that problem. They’re collections of rules for all employees to follow – ensuring a standard quality for all the writing an organization sends out.

This weekend, someone at the New York Times website mixed two capitalization styles in one article link. “Case Study” is a regular feature in nytimes.com’s T Magazine, and “Rhubarb Syrup” is an article by its author. The lowercase s in the ad on the top clashes with the Times‘s style guide. It’s inconsistent with both the linked article and even the words immediately before it.

A style guide lays a solid groundwork for an organization’s consistent identity. Once a style guide is distributed, careful proofreading keeps the organization’s image crisp and coherent.

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For guidelines on parallel style in lists and sentences, see our updated book Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide.

Write It Well offers proofreading and editing services for your own or your employees’ writing. Just send us a sample document, noting any concerns or goals you have for it. 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 document that will make a great impression.

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“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.