Apr 22, 2020 | Communication, Effective Writing, Managing, Uncategorized
People sometimes try to justify they way they write by saying, “that’s my style,” but in business communication, clarity and economy of language take precedence. Style refers to how writers present themselves on the page: the words they choose, the...
Nov 21, 2019 | Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
Conjunctions, such as and, but, or, and so, can make a difference in the meaning of your sentence. Be sure to choose the right one. Conjunctions are connecting words that express a relationship between two elements (words, clauses, or phrases). You tend to pay little...
Oct 29, 2019 | Communication, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
Language traditionalists bristle when people use nouns as verbs and vice versa, but such conversions have a long history in English. Just be careful about using new forms that readers might interpret as sloppiness. Many people are convinced that words are one part of...
Oct 24, 2019 | Communication, Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
Helping verbs (is, are, was, were, will be, etc.) often are necessary to express a point in time (verb tense), but you can strengthen your sentence by stripping them when they are unnecessary. Write with strong verbs, a valuable piece of wisdom for centuries,...
Oct 21, 2019 | Communication, Editing, Effective Writing
Corporate intranets contain many articles but fewer stories. Adding narrative elements can elevate a ho-hum article to an engaging story. The word story is loosely applied to almost any article, and for the sake of discussion we can use the term broadly, because...
Oct 20, 2019 | Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
To make your writing a little tighter and more snappy, become friends with the semicolon. The semicolon is a misunderstood punctuation mark. Some people have a strange notion that a semicolon is for academic writing or that it is used by people trying to look...