Dashes as Digital Traffic Signals

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

Natural-Looking Numbers and Hyphens

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

Finger Foods and Miniature Sentences

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

Hyphens, Apps, and As-Is Phrases

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 asis

E-Mail, Customer Service, and a Company’s Image

The Alexander Communications Group has written an article for its current Customer Communicator newsletter that quotes Write It Well President Natasha Terk on the importance of carefully written e-mail. The article includes five important questions that professionals should keep in mind as they write e-mail to customers. Check out the article here for more tips on how employees and managers can make sure outgoing e-mail reflects well on their company’s image!