Punctuation

I stopped by a "vision center" today to get my eyeglasses fixed. While waiting, I noticed the signs above the eyeglass frame displays. They said "Mens" and "Womens." Maybe the apostrophes just wouldn't fit on the signs, which should have said "Men's" and "Women's." Or… continue reading

Today I received a sales message by email that included this sentence in the opening paragraph: I am contacting you today to see if you might have an interest in marketing your product in China? That is a statement. Why does it end with a… continue reading

Maecey, a director of corporate communications, wrote to me with a question. She wanted to know when the comma rule for direct address had become proper usage. She was referring to the commas in these sentences, which address the reader directly: Brandy, will you attend… continue reading

Lately I have been seeing unnecessary quotation marks "everywhere." The quotation marks I just used in the previous sentence are unnecessary, as are the ones in the title of this post. Quotation marks are perfect when you want to help your readers recognize you are using a word… continue reading

Last week in a Better Business Writing class, Bryan asked where to use parentheses. He worried he was using them too often. I explained that parentheses are perfect when you need to enclose extra information that would otherwise break the flow of the sentence.  But he… continue reading

Six meter readers attended my Keys to Error-Free Writing class. Given their job of traipsing around outside reading electric meters, they don’t write much. But all of them were interested in learning more about business writing. If you write a lot, using some punctuation marks is second… continue reading

The other night while I was flying from Orlando, Florida, to Seattle, I was reminded of the valuable role the comma plays. The flight attendant was taking drink orders. When I asked for water, she asked, “No ice?” I responded, “No, ice will be fine.”… continue reading

My daughter just showed me the cute card she made for her dad to give to him tomorrow. She draws well, and the smiling penguin she created on the front of the card made me smile too. But being a word person, I had to correct… continue reading