You must remember, Madame Harris, elegance is in the details.
—Lynn Sheene, The Last Time I Saw Paris
Ever see a man dressed in what should be the ultimate of business professional wear, yet somehow he just doesn’t look right? Or a woman who should send the image of a competent careerist, but who comes across instead as a wannabe?
Those who know can tell you what’s wrong: perhaps the lapels on the man’s jacket are too wide, his pants an inch too long, her shoes inappropriate to the outfit, or the skirt sagging a bit in back. These details are often the devil to get right, yet like the proverbial icing on the cake, they determine whether the efforts succeed or not.
Much the same occurs in your business communication. You can get the 5 W’s right and have a dead-eye aim for your audience, but if the details are wrong, your image sinks. You can have a great Italian suit, handmade shoes, great tone, and as much charm as the day is long. Yet you can blow your polished image with any of these tricky little errors.
Applying the ideas in this chapter will help ensure that your communication prospers:
Make Sure Your Subjects and Verbs Agree
This concept, one of the first we learn in elementary school, can be one that we feel so confident about that we miss agreement errors without realizing it. Most of us won’t write The cat are on the ledge, but we may write millions of barrels of oil was highjacked and not blink an eye. What happens here is that we see the noun closest to the verb, make the verb agree with it, and move on.
Yet the noun closest to the verb is often not the subject. Look at the sentence above; it contains two prepositional phrases, of barrels and of oil. The subject is actually millions. So do you write millions was highjacked? You wouldn’t if those prepositional phrases weren’t in the way. But here you need them, and without a careful eye, you can overlook the error. Be aware of those prep phrases, especially the ones that start with of. Your subject will never be in a prep phrase; the noun in those is called the object of the preposition—which is probably more than you want to know about grammar. To check yourself, just go to the tool bar in your document, click on “find,” and then type in “of.” Then look carefully; is the “of” phrase in the way of your agreement?
Keep Your Related Parts of the Sentence Together
Another way to ensure that your subjects and verbs agree is to keep the parts of the idea together. Look at the sentence below:
Rodriguez, in a tied game at the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and a chance of a winning run on third, struck out.
Here you have so much junk between the subject and the verb that by the time you get to the verb, you’ve forgotten who you’re talking about. Simply moving the subject next to the verb clears up the sentence:
In a tied game at the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded and a chance of a winning run on third, Rodriguez struck out.
Did you notice, by the way, that the issue in this sentence was clouded by the same issue in the millions of barrels of oil sentence? Those pesky prep phrases are at work again, which leads to the next rule.
Don’t Let Your Modifiers Dangle
Quick: What’s wrong with this sentence?
When thinking about online harassment, cyber-bullying of children is often a topic of conversation.
Who’s doing the thinking? The writer apparently meant we or I, but the way this sentence is structured implies that the cyber-bullying is doing the thinking. Any modifier—word, phrase, or clause that describes—that starts a sentence must refer to the subject of the sentence. And here cyber-bullying is the subject.
These dangling modifiers usually occur when the writer is trying to remove himself from the document, or at least remove the first person reference. Yet by doing so he creates another gaffe—one that many others will notice immediately.
The usual fix to a dangling modifier is to ask who is doing the action that describes. So fixing While singing to my new baby, the dog began to howl is easy—While I sang to my new baby the dog began to howl. However, removing the first-person reference in the cyber-bullying sentence requires a little more work. You can fix this sentence in a number of ways. You can say
Thoughts of online harassment lead to the topic of cyber-bullying of children.
Or you can say
Cyber-bullying of children is an especially recognizable form of online harassment.
The key is to slow down and ask yourself what you really mean. Doing so usually creates a much better sentence.
Fix Redundancies
Redundancies come about when we are thinking one thing and communicating another. As a result, we wind up saying the same thing twice—or more. The message repetitions send isn’t that we are being careful; it’s that we aren’t paying attention to our own thoughts.
Some common redundancies and how to fix them
Avoid Poor Constructions
Faulty constructions occur when we aren’t sure what we are saying, so we put around a bit before getting to business. They can undermine the most effective statements, simply because they send the message that we’re unsure of our own thoughts and have begun to communicate before we are sure what we want the receiver to understand. Take a look:
Some faulty constructions and how to fix them
Wipe Out the Down and Dirty Errors
Seemingly small oversights in your writing can cause significant negative impressions among your readers. Watch out for the following writing foibles.
Sentence fragments
Fragments are snatches of ideas, caused by the writer’s not checking to see if she has both a subject and a fully functioning verb in the sentence. Often writers are tricked into thinking they have both of these necessary parts; being aware of a few of the main tricksters is helpful.
Starting a sentence with an adverb. Remember the old saw about putting the cart before the horse? That’s what often happens when you start a sentence with an adverb; your thoughts get ahead of themselves and create confusion. If you take any complete sentence and add an adverb in front of it, you demote the sentence to be a partial thought. Look at the sentences below.
How a manager can improve his team’s performance without demoralizing punishment.
Here the writer intends to tell how. But he’s so focused about telling us how that he’s hidden the what. A revised version would look something like this:
A manager can improve his team’s performance without demoralizing punishment.
Here’s how.
Check your adverbs. Use the handy “find” feature in your tool bar and plug in standard adverbs such as how, when, and where. Check your sentences. If you find yourself in the adverb-first muddle, clean it up.
Starting a sentence with a subordinator. Closely aligned with the adverb-first error, this one also demotes a full idea. In this error, the writer’s thoughts lag behind him; he’s thinking about how the ideas connect to previous ideas, but not clearly indicating that connection to the reader.
Because the manager used Kotter’s principles of change.
What happened because the manager used these change principles? The writer doesn’t tell us. He’s set up a cause-and-effect situation, but neglected to tell us the effect. A revision would look something like the following:
Because the manager used Kotter’s principles of change, the team was able to transition to the new expectations with very few resignations or firings.
Starting a sentence with an infinitive. This error also usually occurs because the writer isn’t thinking in the moment. She loses focus of what the sentence is supposed to be saying, as shown in the following example:
To think that the strategy will make a difference for the employee’s understanding of the organization.
What she’s done here is lose her way; she’s thinking about the strategy’s effect, or at least thinking that someone else should be thinking about it, but wandering away from the idea’s direct path. A revision may look like the following:
The strategy will make a difference for the employee’s understanding of the organization.
or
The manager’s approach to the strategy will make a difference for the employee’s understanding of the organization.
Starting a sentence with a participle. Sometimes writers think that a word that ends in ing is a full verb. It isn’t. It is a participle, or part of the verb. Therefore, it needs a helping verb to be a full verb. But being unaware of that need creates fragments, as in the following:
The employees getting the work done in a timely manner.
With just the participle here, what the writer intends to be the verb becomes a descriptor, or a phrase that describes the subject. What about these employees? If the answer is just that they are getting the work done, add the helping verb:
The employees are getting the work done in a timely manner.
But if the results are something else, then add that full verb to your sentence:
The employees getting the work done in a timely manner has helped our bottom line.
Verbs matter. Find the verb in each sentence, make sure it truly is a verb, and then make sure it has a subject that it pairs with.
Mistaking a verb in a phrase as your main verb. Consider the following:
The value of what the worker has done thus far.
Note here that the writer sees has done and thinks he has a verb. Well, she does, but the verb is part of the phrase that begins with of what. The of demotes the phrase away from being either a main subject or verb, so the main subject, the value, is left with no action. It is therefore a fragment and tells the reader nothing. To fix these errors, keep a list of common prepositional phrases handy and again employ the “find” feature in your tool bar. Then ask yourself what you want to say about the part of the sentence you do have. A revised version of this sentence would ask, “What about the value?” The answer would then yield a sentence that may look like the following:
The manager has to value the efforts that the worker has made thus far.
Writing with too many prepositional phrases. This error often occurs because the writer hasn’t totally formulated his thought. Preposition phrases are parts of ideas, not full ideas. Yet often writers feel that stringing a bunch of them together creates a full thought. Observe:
The ability to grow and to overcome issues with the current employees by use of creative leadership.
If we slow down and separate out all the different prepositional phrases, we have the following:
• to grow
• to overcome issues
• with the current employees
• by use
• of creative leadership
And what are we left with? The ability and a random and. Not a full sentence. To fix the error, ask yourself what you want to say about the words that are left, as here you would ask “what about the ability?” The answer will give you the revised and corrected sentence:
The ability to grow and to overcome issues with the current employees by use of creative leadership will save the company money by reducing turnover.
Prepositions are legitimate parts of speech. Prep phrases, which begin with a preposition and end with a noun, are also legitimate; they can add details that clarify a sentence. But while they are valid, they are like perfume: a little is nice while too much stinks. Check to see what you really intend those prep phrases to do; are you asking them to describe, as in The man with the red hair argued with the receptionist? Here you are asking that phrase to describe, which is an adjective’s job. So use the adjective: The red-haired man argued with the receptionist.
You’re not going to be able to cut all prep phrases; checking to see which ones you can, however, can lead to stronger sentences.
Word misuse. Words that sound alike or are spelled nearly alike can cause confusion for writers. Be careful to use the following words correctly.
Commonly confused word pairs and how distinguish them
Punctuation misuse. Many writers have problems with the following types of punctuation errors.
• Apostrophe misuses—as in the following:
The managers to-do item was to meet with the other manager’s.
This one really has no excuse—except that perhaps so few people have explicitly been chastised for misusing an apostrophe. But don’t let that lack of overt criticism fool you; those who know the difference in usage will see an apostrophe mistake and automatically, if not consciously, mark you as someone not quite ready for prime time in their corporation.
First, you use an apostrophe and then an s to make a singular noun possessive. So if the bone belongs to a dog, you now write the dog’s bone. You never use an apostrophe to make a noun plural. If you have more than one dog and they share the bone, you have the dogs’ bone; when the dog has more than one bone, you now have the dog’s bones.
About 10 percent of English words make their plurals with internal changes; you just have to be aware of those. So more than one mouse becomes mice. But some words have unusual changes for the plural: one moose, for instance, remains moose if he is joined by a friend. If the noun ends in the letter s, usually you use es to make it plural, as in class becoming classes.
But you never use an apostrophe to make a plural. For a while in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a great to-do and confusion erupted when some grammarians began to argue that if a word ended in s, you didn’t need to use the s after the apostrophe. This gave rise to awkward constructions such as Prince Charles’ grandchildren. Why are these awkward? Try saying them. You can’t say the extra s as you would in Prince William’s children. So by the end of the 1960s most grammarians followed the lead of E.B. White, who wrote
Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice (p.18).
Yet many people were taught during that confusing deviation era, or were taught by those who were taught during that time, and they have difficulty moving back to mainstream. So if using the ‘s bothers you when you have a possessive noun that ends in s, you have an option. You can use a prepositional phrase, as in the grandchildren of Prince Charles. Your passage will be readable, you ease your own discomfort, and you are grammatically correct.
Now what about if you are talking about a family whose last name ends in s? Well, if you have Ted and Sue Williams, their last name is a noun that ends in s. So to make it plural, as occurs when you are talking about the two of them, you write the Williamses. You still follow the rule of making a noun that ends in s plural by adding es. You can also write their name as an adjective, as in the Williams family. But if you are talking about their dog, and it belongs to all of them, you first have to make the noun plural and then you add the apostrophe. So you now have the Williamses’ dog.
You can also use an apostrophe to indicate that you have left out letters to form a contraction, or a shortened form of the word construction. Therefore, cannot becomes can’t and wouldn’t becomes won’t. Note that nothing is wrong with using contractions in business communication; in fact, not using them makes your communication come across as stiff or too formal. Save these full-out versions for the very rare times you want strong emphasis, as in I simply cannot allow this unethical behavior to continue.
• Its/it’s confusion. Closely related to the apostrophe mistake is the using of its when you mean it’s. It’s always means it is, because the writer has contracted the two words. Its, however, indicates possession, as in something belonging to it. The easiest way to remember the difference is to understand we are talking about possessive pronouns here. And no possessive pronoun ever has an apostrophe. You don’t write m’y dog or hi’s job, do you? So don’t write it’s when you mean possessive.
• Comma errors. People seem to be confused more about commas than they are about almost anything else in writing. Some never use commas. Some throw them in any old place they think it looks nice. Yet these well-intended efforts always look gauche. The misused comma always glares and stands out—and not nicely, either. Knowing how to use a comma correctly gives you a professionalism and panache. Readers won’t stop and say, “hey, she used the comma correctly!” But they will notice your message, not the misplaced comma.
Many people misguidedly believe that a comma needs to be inserted “whenever you pause.” No. Let’s get this rule straight: you use a comma whenever the idea pauses. You could be one of those who talk forever and never take a breath—and hence have no commas. (Just so you know if you are one of these folks: your speech is most likely as exhausting to listen to as your no-comma prose is to read.) Or you could have the tendency to meander and take many side trips or pauses, most of which are unnecessary. You’ll have far too many commas. And your writing will be difficult to follow. See how that “where you pause” mistake detracts from your message?
The easiest way to learn how robust a comma can be that is correctly used is to learn where an idea doesn’t pause. An idea has to have a subject and verb—both of them, not just one. An idea never pauses between a subject and verb, between two complete ideas not joined by a conjunction, or between parts of a word grouping. You don’t even need to know grammar to scan to see if you have violated that rule. Take a look at this sentence:
The supervisor of our department, argued that we needed stronger safety policies.
Does the idea pause where that comma is placed? No. Is “supervisor of our department” a complete idea? Nope. Is “argued that we needed stronger safety policies” a complete idea? No again. Therefore the comma is misplaced. This sentence needs no comma. If I add a second complete idea, would this use of a comma be correct?
The supervisor of our department argued that we needed stronger safety policies, he has a background with OSHA inspections.
No. Why? Because we have two separate ideas. A comma pauses an idea. But if you have two ideas, you don’t have an idea. You have two. And a comma never goes between two complete ideas. These need stronger punctuation or possibly a conjunction to keep those ideas separate. Note that a complete idea never starts with a subordinator. Those are words such as if, because, when, since, and while. Adding those words to any complete idea subordinates them, or makes them less than complete.
How about the comma use in this one?
The supervisor, of our department argued that we needed stronger safety policies.
No again. The word group includes the prepositional phrase “of our department.” You need that phrase to know which supervisor. And you never put a comma in the middle of a word grouping. See? These three “never use” guidelines will work every time.
To add to your arsenal is a should-use rule: if one idea interrupts another and interjects itself before the first idea has finished, set the interrupter off by putting a comma immediately before the interrupter and immediately after it. Doing so indicates that the first idea hasn’t finished. So if we change up the sentence in the following manner, do we need the commas?
The supervisor of our department, who used to work for OSHA, argued that we needed stronger safety policies.
We do. The “who used to work for OSHA,” while important, interrupts the main idea. So you set it off in commas. Think of the commas as indicating where you can put your hands to lift that interrupter out. (Note that in the first sentence of this paragraph we used this exact technique.)
If you are using a state’s name after a city’s name in a sentence, the state interrupts. So it goes in commas. If you are using a year in addition to a month and day in a sentence, the year interrupts. So it goes in commas.
We moved to Boise, Idaho, when I was three.
Hurricane Hugo hit Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 21, 1989, early that morning.
One more rule and you’re golden: if a subordinated idea comes before a complete idea, put a comma after the end of the subordinated idea. That way you indicate where the lesser gets out of the way of the complete idea—not quite interrupts but does get in the way:
Because he had worked for OSHA, the supervisor of our department argued that we needed stronger safety policies.
If the subordinating idea comes after the complete idea, no comma. It didn’t get in the way.
The supervisor of our department argued that we needed stronger safety policies because he had worked for OSHA.
Get your commas right and let the elegance of your punctuation add gloss to your image.
• Colon and semicolon misuses
Quick: see that mark in the middle of a sentence that looks like two dots? And that one that looks like a comma with a dot over it? What are they, and why are they there? You may recognize them as a colon or semicolon, but what exactly do they mean to the message?
In Zen everything has a purpose. Semicolons and colons are no different. Like all marks of punctuation, semicolons and colons exist not to make your life miserable but to indicate to the reader how to interpret your message. Learning to use semicolons and colons correctly adds subtle but definite power to your communication.
First, know what they are not. A colon, for instance, does not mean you can forget creating a full idea because you want to add a list. And a semicolon isn’t a fancier comma.
A colon, that erstwhile two dot symbol, means something more is coming. Think of a colon as a neon sign: it indicates that you are going to clarify or add to the complete idea you just conveyed. You can do so with a list, an explanation, or a quotation. But here’s the catch: you can use the colon only after you have a complete idea. That means you have to have a complete sentence before you use the colon. For example, look at this sentence:
To fill in your W9 form you will need: your name, Social Security number, and other personal information.
Here we have an incorrect use of a colon. Why? Take a look at what comes before that colon. Do we have a complete idea? No. Therefore we can’t use the colon. We can use the list of three items, but we don’t need the colon. We can just write us a regular sentence with the three items. But if you write the sentence this way:
To fill in your W9 form, you will need the following information: your name, your birthdate, your Social Security number, and other personal information
The colon is right. Why? Because we have a complete idea before that colon. Take a look at these other examples:
Despite all that he did for American foreign policy, most people remember Richard Nixon for only two things: Watergate and his “I am not a crook” speech.
The colon works here because the words that come before it create a complete sentence. You could, however, write that sentence without the colon:
Despite all that he did for American foreign-policy, most people remember Richard Nixon only for Watergate and his “I am not a crook” speech.
In the latter, the two items complete the full sentence so you don’t need the colon. To understand how a colon works with a direct quote, look at the difference here:
Lord Rothschild gave this financial advice: “when there is blood in the streets, buy!”
Lord Rothschild gave this financial advice when he said, “when there is blood in the streets, buy!”
And last but not least, remember that a business letter requires a colon after the greeting, not a comma.
A semicolon—the one with the comma on bottom and dot on the top—also separates two independent clauses. It’s used between two closely related ideas. But here’s the catch: the relationship has to be broader than that implied by a conjunction. A conjunction limits the relationship. So an and means the two clauses just get added together to make one idea, while a but means they contradict each other. If the first clause is the result of the second, use the conjunction for; if the second is a result of the first, use so.
Often, however, the two clauses relate to make one idea, but the relationship isn’t as clearly cut as it is with the conjunction. That’s when you use the semicolon. For example, look at this sentence:
Sam wanted to be Darth Vader for Halloween; his sister saw him more as Yoda.
Implied here is not direct conflict. Instead, the writer implies that many other factors existed as to why the sister had the opinion she did. You can also use a semicolon between items in a series if one of more of those items has internal punctuation. Look at this example:
The best meal I ever had included an appetizer, which was composed of heirloom tomatoes and handmade mozzarella with dried figs; spinach pasta with a smoked salmon sauce and capers, topped with lobster; and a chocolate torte, made with six different layers of cake and fruit-infused chocolate ganache.
Imagine reading that sentence without the semicolons. The semicolons help keep your reader on track.
• Hyphens and dashes
Those horizontal lines some people use in their writing are either a hyphen or a dash. They look similar, but are used in very different ways. Knowing how to use them correctly can set you apart as someone who understands the finer details of life. The short one, the one that looks like a subtraction sign, is a hyphen. You use those to join two words to make one term. Examples include co-chairman or self-esteem. Make sure that when you hyphenate words, you are creating one term. So if you talk about your six-year-old niece, the six-year-old is one term; you need all three words to make that one term to tell us how old your niece is. But if you write my niece is six years old, you’re not making one term. You are first telling me she is old, which is the main adjective here. Then you are refining it by saying she’s a certain number of years old. Therefore, you don’t have one term but three. No hyphen.
Note here that the words that you joined must be the same part of speech. In the examples above, the words are all nouns. You would not write, for instance, please follow-up on these details. Why? Because follow is a verb and up is an adverb (it adds to the verb). They are not the same parts of speech. Yet if you took those two words and turn them into a noun, you would. You would have something like this: follow-up will occur on December 30. Here you took the verb and adverb, turned them into one term that now is not an action but a thing, and made those two words into one noun. So you use a hyphen between them to tell your reader that’s what you did.
Many terms in the English language that started out as hyphenated have now become so common that they are just bunched together without the hyphen. These include policeman (but not police officer, which is a sad comment on where our society still is).
Before your eyes cross with you decide never to use a hyphen ever again, take a deep breath and remember one thing. All you have to do is pay close attention to how you are using the term. A hyphen joins. The question is whether the things you were joining are alike enough to get along. That’s it.
A dash (the long one), however, separates. You are pushing one idea aside for the other. In fact, thinking about pushing the previous word or words aside can help you decide when to use a dash. Imagine that the idea is going forward in one direction. Suddenly that forward motion is halted because something off to the side is commanding attention. You have to change course to deal with that something off to the side. That’s what happens with a dash: your idea has been separated from its original intent by something that changes its direction. Observe:
The graph on the screen illustrates—no, wait; those are last quarter’s figures.
Think of using a dash when you need to comment on something you just said, or to set it apart from your original idea.
Another helpful image: In theater, a theatrical aside occurs when an actor breaks character and talks to the audience. He is commenting on what he just said or did. That’s a dash. To type a dash, type two hyphens, or type two subtraction marks (--), one after the other. Word processing programs will often convert the two hyphens into one longer symbol. And no, you may not use a dash in place of other punctuation. Doing so does not give you style but rather indicates to your reader that you didn’t learn how to punctuate or didn’t take the time to do it correctly—that you were a little slapdash. (Pun intended.) Not what you want to convey, is it?
In Summary
Correctness in punctuation, grammar, and word usage is polish, just like a gloss on all your other strong attributes. Keeping a watchful eye on the details as you are writing helps keep the devil at bay.