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.