professional business and website writing services by a professional writer business writing, website writing, press release writing, or any other writing service.

In business, readability is more important than anything.

Proper English

By Dan Furman

Every now and again, I'll get a smarmy e-mail from someone pointing out that something on my site isn't in proper English. Like perhaps my using a fragment instead of a sentence. Or maybe using dashes - like so - in place of a colon or semicolon. Or maybe I use too many parentheses (yea, like that happens).

Or perhaps they don't like it when I use one sentence paragraphs.

Regardless, they seem to derive great pleasure in "correcting a writer." One even pointed out that "gee, had I known you didn't have to learn to write to be a writer, I'd have done it"

I e-mailed him back and asked what he did for a living. Turns out, he was "between jobs". I left it at that - I mean, c'mon.... that's way too easy.

Anyway, besides gross misspellings, I have one thing to tell all wannabe English Teachers:

I meant to do that.

Really, I did. I do not follow every rule that constitutes "proper English". If I did, my writing would be far less effective. No professional writer follows each and every rule of English.

Just because I (and my peers) write for a living does not make us English Majors. In fact, I will bet that a huge percentage of professional writers have no more formal English training than the few classes one takes during the first two years of college.

As long as you follow the basic rules of English and spell correctly, you will get your message across. The type of writing I do concerns itself with getting read, understood, and acted upon. Not pleasing English Professors.

In fact, when I was in college, I used to drive my English professor nuts. She told me she loved my writing, but I used so many fragments and other odd things that she couldn't give it a good grade - so we struck a deal: As long as I pointed out when I was doing something bad (like putting "frag" after a fragment), she would be satisfied I "knew" what I was doing.

So I did that, and ended up with an A for the class. She remains a fan of my writing to this day (this past Spring, I was asked back to the school to speak about writing professionally).

So my advice to anyone reading this - do not concern yourself with proper English. Instead, worry about getting your point across.

Back

Professional writing services for all of your important business writing needs.