Answering your grammar questions Punctuation with brackets Question: A colleague often uses a full stop after a bracket that has an exclamation mark at the end: (So it looks like this!). Is it correct to have a full stop after an exclamation mark in a bracket? I’m sure it’s wrong but not sure why! Answer: […]
Writing has become more personal over the last 10 years I recently ordered Everybody Writes by Ann Handley (Wiley, 2014) because a colleague recommended it. The day it arrived, I settled down in a comfy armchair with a cup of tea looking forward to having my writing ideas stretched and challenged. I soon realised that it […]
Answering grammar questions What pronoun should you use after ‘than’? Question: Here is a question I’ve been wondering about for years. Here is the basic sentence – and I’m going to focus on race car drivers – hope you don’t mind: Nico Rosberg was faster than Lewis Hamilton in the last race. That’s pretty straightforward. One could switch […]
Tips for formatting your Word documents First impressions count and we base our initial judgement of how easy a business document will be to read based on the way it looks. Strict length requirements sometimes encourage writers to do crazy things to the layout such as reduce the font size and change the margins. I […]
Data or datum? Microsoft Word accepts data as correct spelling when used in the singular and the Macquarie Dictionary says: ‘The connection between data the plural and datum the singular has been almost completely broken, so that while datum survives in such compounds as datum point, it does not have the frequency of use that data […]
Use consistent list punctuation There are several different styles for punctuating a bulleted or numbered list, and the main thing is to be consistent. If your organisation has a preferred style, use that. If you can choose your own style, please don’t use semicolons – they really are very old-fashioned! Punctuation with full-sentence lists Lists that […]
I find the hardest part about writing blogs is deciding what to write about. But first a confession: I am not a regular blogger because I would rather not blog than write something for the sake of it, and sometimes other things, such as paid work, take priority. How do you decide what to blog […]
What emails do you find hard to write? 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! I am not always tactful when I give feedback to people on their writing (I […]
Tone is important in emails – the wrong tone can get you into trouble 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 your email aloud and see how it […]
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 because a one-word subject line is seldom informative enough. On the other hand, long subject lines take too long to read […]