Think Twice before You Imitate Elegant Writing

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

Break a Sentence to Make a Message Clear

Long sentences can be correctly punctuated, but too intricate for busy readers to follow easily. Here’s an example: Employers who fail to provide timely and accurate performance appraisals risk exposure to age discrimination claims, but more importantly, they deprive themselves of good workers who, with proper guidance and honest feedback, could be productive employees for years to come. — Laurie McCann, “Do Older Workers Need a Nudge?” nytimes

Commas, Careful Writing, and Your Credibility

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

Not Making Your Readers Wait for a Verb

How often do long sentences keep you in suspense before they deliver the second half of an idea? The following 39-word sentence is an example of how writers can create unnecessary wait times: What readers, writers, publishers, and retailers really needed to worry about, and catch up with, was the increasing potential of what a book’s content could be, the delivery of the content, and how we could interact with the content. — Buzz Poole, “Is there hope for books?” Salon.com, August 4, 2011 The sentence’s subject and verb are in orange

Preventing Readers from Having to Reread Your Sentences

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