Category: Uncategorized

E-mail Memos Deserve Good Grammar too

Posted on by admin

Don’t you love the freedom e-mail memos give you? You just tap away and press send, with no worries about good grammar. After all, who uses correct English in memos? It doesn’t really matter.

Or does it?

It is precisely because so few professionals follow rules of proper grammar in office memos that doing so will give you an advantage when bosses are ready to hand out raises, promotions and projects. Correct grammar will leave the impression that you are intelligent and careful. Your bosses will pick up on this and reward you.

But what if grammar isn’t your strong suit? Don’t worry. You don’t have to become Strunk or White overnight. Improving your writing requires only a little extra effort and time.

The first step requires you to dig up three or four old memos. Read through them and note up to three glaring grammar mistakes that you tend to made, such as ignoring punctuation, writing everything in small-case letters and spelling “tho” instead of “though”. Work on eliminating these mistakes from your memos. Don’t worry if you don’t know all the rules yet. Just do the best you can.

Once you have practiced avoiding the grammar mistakes from step 1, it’s time for step 2. Elicit the help from an online grammar check or the grammar check in your word processor. Check every online memo using these tools.

Finally, in step 3, review the corrected memos. If there are mistakes you do not understand, consult a grammar website or book and learn the rules. Pretty soon, you’ll write polished memos that will help you shine for your superiors.

Just how important IS good grammar anyway?

Posted on by admin

You’d be surprised. Text Speak has taken over grammar as well as spelling. And it’s not as difficult as it seems to many. Nobody will mind if you can’t remember whether to say “Joey and I” rather than “Joey and me” in casual conversation. But in written communications, grammar is a first impression that lasts.

Your best bet – along with learning to use the language correctly – is to get a good online grammar checker. There are several available, but often people run a quick spell check and call it good. Don’t get us wrong; spelling is important too. But it does not compensate for grammar or punctuation either… because it’s too easy to pick the wrong homonym – for instance “your” in place of “you’re”. This is where grammar correcting software comes in. It knows all the strange little rules in the somewhat irregular language we call English.

There are plenty of them. In addition to homonyms and other spelling concerns, there are punctuation and capitalization issues, and simply good use of the language. Think about it. How many people know proper use of a semi-colon, or where to use that “Joey and I” example? Does one capitalize after an interjection? How about after that semi-colon… assuming the writer has used it correctly in the first place?

That’s why a grammar checker is a good idea… not so much for the big rules like common word order, but for all those little rules that most people cannot keep in their heads.

Grammar Checking Rules

Posted on by admin

The rules of grammar are many and we will go over some tips as well as tricky rules. Grammar begins at the sentence level. Good sentence structure depends on the words you use. Grammar checkers allow you to check aspects of your grammar. Grammar correction can be easier to put together. While making a diagram of sentences is no longer used as often as a means of teaching grammatical structure, to an extent this can help you learn better. When you diagram a sentence, you begin with an understanding that all sentences have a subject and a predicate. The structure of a sentence determines the way a piece will be put together. One rule of good writing is that the flow of the writing should not be interrupted by sentence structure mistakes such as veering off-topic. Sentences are divided into two types, the simple sentence and the complex sentence. A complex sentence is longer than a simple sentence. Complex sentences also have a subject and a predicate. The subject is made up of the nouns and adjectives while the predicate is made up of verbs, adverbs, or adjectives. A direct object is not a verb but an object such as “Jerry needs a pencil.” When a compound sentence requires a comma, this is called an apposition. The apposition will separate the action described in the sentence. Direct address is another sentence pattern that does not have any direct relation to any part of the sentence. There is always a comma. Grammar in the English language is complex but worth knowing to enhance your writing quality.