A sign on a bin in Kensington Gardens proclaims, “Any person not placing dog litter in this receptacle will be liable to a fine of £100.”
Does this mean those of us walking in the park without a dog (or walking a dog that has not produced the required doggy doo) must now search for some to put in the bin and avoid the fine? While, personally, I find such mistakes amusing, others could find them confusing and annoying. Either way, this kind of muddled sentence will fail to do the job it’s intended to do: communicate the park rules clearly and unambiguously.
Another common cause of confusion is mixing ordinary numbers with percentages in the same paragraph. That’s because readers have to stop and work out how the two sets of statistics – say, ‘one in five’ and ‘20%’ – compare.
Even if you’re not guilty of this, simply cramming too many statistics into a single sentence can make your writing hard-going and cause readers’ eyes to glaze over.
The misuse of ‘may’ and ‘might’ is can also make your meaning unclear. If gut feel doesn’t automatically tell you which is right to use, the simple rule is to use ‘may’ when writing in the present or future tense and ‘might’ in the past. For example, “I may treat myself to an ice-cream if this hot weather continues” and “I might have lost weight if I hadn’t eaten so much chocolate last week.”
But use Melanie Silver as an extension of your marketing department and you don’t have to worry about pesky things like spelling and grammar! If you need help producing professional, grammatically correct communications for your business, give Words etc a call on 01923 212048 or email.
