By Mary Morel | June 2016 We all find some emails difficult to write. For instance: I hate following up overdue invoices. I sometimes find it hard to say ‘no’. I wish I never did anything I had to apologise for! … Read More
By Mary Morel | June 2016 When we’re writing business emails in a hurry, we often forget to check the tone. Sometimes it helps to put the email aside if you’re having difficulty with the tone. Another test is to read … Read More
By Mary Morel | June 2016 Your emails have a better chance of being opened and read if you write specific subject lines that catch people’s attention. Keep your subject line short and specific Use phrases rather than single words … Read More
By Mary Morel | May 2016 A basic catchcry of business-writing articles and training is ‘write for your audience’. Yet what does this mean in practice? I don’t think this is as straightforward as it sounds and I am going … Read More
By Mary Morel | 18 April 2016 We all insert extra information in sentences at times with dashes, parentheses (also known as brackets) or commas. Sometimes it’s just irresistible to include that additional information that we hope will make our … Read More
By Mary Morel | March 2016 There is a difference between an initialism and an acronym. Both are abbreviations, but an acronym forms a new word (Qantas) and an initialism doesn’t (FAQ). Sometimes the acronym becomes better known that the original term. For instance, … Read More
By Mary Morel | September 2015 Hyphens glue words together so the reader knows they are linked. Some of the rules for using hyphens are straightforward, but there are several exceptions and often you have to decide whether a hyphen … Read More
By Mary Morel | August 2015 A colleague consulted me about hanging hyphens (also called suspended or floating hyphens). For example: short- and long-term plans I don’t like hanging hyphens, so I would write ‘short and long-term plans’. I think … Read More
By Mary Morel | July 2015 The use of the singular ‘they’ to avoid using the generic ‘he’ or alternative usages such as ‘he and she’ or ‘h/she’ is not new and is now widely accepted. (The singular they includes … Read More
By Mary Morel | July 2015 Several business writers have told me they were taught never to put a comma before ‘and’. Now, I could understand if they’d been told not to put one after ‘and’, but before? So I … Read More