Tips

Lately I've been thinking about courteous business writing. That topic always reminds me of a message I got from my friend and longtime colleague Cindy Clay, for whom I used to do a lot of writing. I had emailed a book review to Cindy, and she really didn't like...

Never accept a grammar- and spell-check as foolproof. Last week I was once again reminded of the limits of proofreading software. In a business writing class, participants were sharing the documents they had just written, when we discovered these grammar- and spell-check misses:      "between you and I"  (change...

While others comment about U.S. independence from British rule on this American holiday, I'm thinking about another rule: the rule of numbers in dates. These numbers are rendered correctly:     July 4 is a U.S. holiday.     The Fourth of July is a U.S. holiday.     The 4th of...

When I started yesterday’s post, I dithered around for a while, typing in a few pompous sentences about the importance of ground rules. After a couple of minutes, I found my subject and got comfortably into it. Once there, I cut those first dull comments. Some people aptly call...