I’ve been writing and editing for companies large and small, U.S.-based and international, for about 12 years. This, combined with a background in linguistics and semantics, has given me the opportunity to examine language and grammar on a level most people haven’t.
English is a fluid language; that is, it is constantly in flux, ever-changing and evolving. Just consider some of the words we use today that didn’t exist 12 years ago: webinar, hoodie, celebutante, agroterrorism, crunk, emulsion, hardscape. Each of these words has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, the authority on the English language.
Good editors and writers make a conscious effort to stay abreast the changes in the language — and when in doubt, consult an authority. For most businesses, that authority is the Associated Press Stylebook, published annually and available at http://apstylebook.com. This is the stylebook used by the Associated Press in its news writing.
If AP style doesn’t work for your business, then consider other style manuals: MLA, Chicago, AMA. The key is to have something to refer to for consistency in your writing. You will likely have a house style list of industry words and terms that vary from your main stylebook. When I worked in the payments industry, I had a running list of accepted industry terms that appeared in no dictionary or stylebook but were accepted by major newspapers and trade publications. However, no matter how often certain employees tried to use “electronificate” (and its various forms — “electronify,” “electronification”), decisioning, in-source or a host of other non-words, they never made it past my red pen.
Although language and its words are fluid, grammar is not. Grammar has taken a hit from the deluge of social media. No one punctuates properly anymore, and for someone who has been called the grammar curmudgeon, the slow death of proper grammar burns my eyes and breaks my heart. It also causes miscommunication, communication barriers and misunderstanding in business and in other areas.
I’m not saying you have to punctuate your text messages properly. That takes too long, and even I don’t punctuate my text messages with commas or apostrophes. But the printed word is there for all (or many) to see, and you don’t want to look like a dummy by having someone who does care about proper grammar read your website, blog, e-mail, printed material or even a sign in the window of your business and conclude that you are yet another victim of poor (or no) education and the trap of useless social media.
You needn’t read grammar and English textbooks to refresh your writing skills. Lynne Truss, a British writer and author, wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves just for you. It provides an entertaining way to refresh your punctuation and grammar skills. I think I fell in love with Truss’ writing when she mentioned the movie Two Weeks Notice. That movie has irked me since the previews first hit theaters, and Truss hates it for the same reason I do: The movie title is improperly punctuated. It should be Two Weeks' Notice. Now, that absent apostrophe might not make a difference to some people, but to those who know grammar, it’s an eyesore.
What Truss does superbly in Eats, Shoots & Leaves is convey how grammar and punctuation exist to make our communications more effective — to enable us to express our ideas to another person in a manner that facilitates understanding by that person. When you allow punctuation and grammar to fall by the wayside, your writing is less effective, you can’t communicate your ideas as intended and problems arise as a result.
The title of Eats, Shoots & Leaves is an amphibology derived from a joke about bad punctuation:
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
“Why?” asks the confused, surviving waiter amid the carnage, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“Well, I'm a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. “Panda: Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
Yes, something as small as an apostrophe or a comma makes a difference in how your writing is interpreted. And people do judge you based on your writing. Granted, not everyone is a great writer, and if they were, I’d be out of a job. You might be stellar at your job and in your business, but writing just isn’t your forte. In this case, hire a professional to write the copy for your business and edit e-mail and other communications, and ask a grammar-savvy friend to edit your blog and website before you publish them for all the world to see.
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