The North American trend for capitalizing words is now “modified down.” What this means is that if you can’t decide whether to capitalize a word or not, you should probably leave it in lower case. A good guideline is if you are using the official name of the organization, use capital letters. If you are […]
BizWritingTip wants to make a conscious effort this year to clean up the grammar on the signs we see around us. Help us out. Whenever you see an error on a sign or in an article or newspaper advertisement, send us a photo of it. We would also like to know where you saw the problem. […]
Location: GoodLife Fitness Club in Mississauga Error: Pluralization of an upper case abbreviation Tip: There is no apostrophe after an upper case abbreviated word. Corrected Version: Plasma TVs just installed for your enjoyment.
A BizWritingTip reader asked, “Can you explain the difference between might and may?” Yes, I can. Both might and may imply permission or possibility. And might is the past tense of may. Examples The figures may be accurate. (possibility) You may include the cleaning bill in your expense account. (permission) I might have been able […]
In today’s workplace, it is a wonderful skill to be able to write a business case. In fact, many business schools spend weeks training their students how to write a comprehensive proposal that covers all angles: Situational Assessment, Problem Statement, Project Description and Objectives, Solution Description, Cost and Benefit Analysis, Financial Assessment, Implementation Timetable, Critical […]
People often want to know about the punctuation they refer to as dot, dot, dot. It is actually called an ellipsis. It is formed by using three spaced periods and indicates there are missing words. As one of my workshop participants said, “It is really saying yada, yada, yada.” Correct – As usual, the weekly […]
A BizWritingTip reader asked me to explain the difference between talked to and spoke to. Both words are the past tenses of words with similar meanings. Spoke to means “held a conversation with.” Talked to means “communicated ideas, information, or feelings in spoken words.” However, talked to is deemed a little more forceful as it […]
Whenever I conduct a grammar workshop, a participant will invariably ask, “How many spaces should you leave after a period?” The answer is one — for a computer. (You use two spaces after a period when working on a typewriter.) It is amazing how concerned some people are about this issue. Frankly, I don’t seriously […]
Aarani’s question: “I always find myself wondering whether to use ‘I’ or ‘we.’ I was writing an email just a few minutes ago and wrote ‘I appreciate your help.’ This was directed to an external contact. Would it be better to use ‘I’ or ‘we’ — as in my collective team/company?” BizWritingTip response: “I” means […]
When people take a writing course, they expect to hear a lot about the importance of clarity and conciseness. However, in my mind they are out of date on their emphasis. Fifteen years ago, everyone was concerned about plain language and getting a message completely on one page. And often times to do this, they […]