Give your company a voice
No, the topic of this week’s post isn’t Morse code but the punctuation mark properly known as ‘the three-dot ellipsis’ but more commonly known as “dot dot dot”. This simple, but oh-so-useful, device is used to denote missing words or thoughts. Sometimes this may be a single swear word as in “Get the … out of here!” Often, it is used to indicate an unfinished thought – “Melanie wondered whether this blog would be helpful or…” It can also be used to signify a time lapse.
The average adult wastes 1.75 million words over a lifetime while struggling to make a point, according to a new study. It found we litter our sentences with around 60 meaningless words every day, with most waffle reserved for when we are at work. This bad habit is not confined to speech but is also reflected in the majority of written communications. Many businesses use dry, jargon-filled corporate-speak rather than make the effort to get their message across quickly and clearly.
Clients often ask WORDS to “work our magic” on a piece of copy that has been written in-house. All the necessary information is there but for some reason it doesn’t get the message across. Usually, the problem is that it has been buried under so much verbiage that the key points are lost in long, rambling paragraphs. Often, sentences are so tortuously twisted that they have to be read several times before you can understand what they mean.
The playwright George Bernard Shaw famously said that the England and America are two countries divided by a common language – and how true that is. Increasingly, perhaps fueled by the import of popular US TV shows and films (or “movies” as my teenagers call them), English is slowly but surely being ‘Americanised’.
Language is a living thing and, quite rightly, constantly evolves. Personally, I have no problem with use of the word ‘cookbook’ instead of ‘cookery book’,
A BBC internal email announcing the appointment of an HR Lead for its HR Systems Transformation Project reads, “In order to develop an HR system roadmap that delivers agile self service solutions, integrated performance management and easy to access management analytics we will soon be embarking on an HR systems transformation project that is one of the most exciting and demanding priorities for BBC people over the next 2-3 years.
“Jude brings to the project her in-depth knowledge of a range of BBC divisions and a passion for simplicity and clarity that will be essential to the project’s success.”
In what must surely be one of the more high profile examples of shocking spelling, official signs displayed all along the Thames over the Diamond Jubilee holiday read: “NO STOPPING. NO PERSON MAY STOP ON THIS SECTION OF ROAD DURING THE TIMES ABOVE. REASON: JUBILEE RIVER PADGENT.”
People like me who care about good English are often accused of being pedantic but a court case earlier this year showed that a missing decimal point can have costly implications. A UBS commodities trader was tempted to leave his job to take up a new position at JP Morgan by an annual salary equivalent to £2m. But it transpired that JP Morgan had made a disastrous typo in the trader’s contract and, in fact,
Punctuation – what’s the point? When it comes to grammar I’m no pedant but these days it seems anything goes. Yet without good grammar and correct punctuation misunderstandings would be rife. As a professional writer howling errors jump off the page at me but by far my most common bugbear is misuse of the humble apostrophe.
We’ve all smiled at signs such as “Tomatoe’s” and “Crisp’s”. The problem seems to lie in people’s inability to recognise that there are only two possible uses for apostrophes –
The Village Hotel Elstree unwittingly demonstrates the importance of employing a professional copywriter for marketing collateral.
Commas are generally used to indicate a natural breathing space. More subtle than the full stop, which brings a sentence to a juddering halt, the comma is a subtle pause and, when properly used, greatly enhances readability and understanding. Compare these two sentences:
Melanie Silver has I believe nearly 20 years’ professional copywriting experience
Melanie Silver has, I believe, nearly 20 years’ professional copywriting experience
Most people would put commas before and after the words “I believe”
