Aug 03, 2016

I'm one of those annoying people who really cares about punctuation and the length of sentences that confront me when I read some emails what I have found is either a minimal use of punctuation or punctuation that is incorrectly used and as you can see if you have read this far which I doubt it all becomes ridiculously confusing senseless and unprofessional.

Punctuation has a very important function in our everyday correspondence, be it in emails, documents or other text. It helps us to come across as professional, and most importantly, it helps the reader understand accurately what the writer meant.

There, wasn’t that a lot easier to read and understand with the correct punctuation?

So, in fact, “The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.” Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Where does one pause, what words go with which part of the sentence, and what is the correct interpretation of the writer’s intention?

Clearly, it is the writer’s job to guide the reader to interpret their message accurately. For example:

“HUNTERS: Please use caution when hunting pedestrians using walking trails.”

I don’t think they were hunting pedestrians, do you? A simple full stop or semi-colon after “hunting” would have made all the difference to the meaning and made it so much easier to understand.

It seems therefore that “...punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.” Lynne Truss. Three of the biggest culprits I’ve seen in business writing are: misuse of the full stop, the comma and the apostrophe.

The Full Stop

Keeping business sentences shorter will help with punctuation. An average of 12 words is easy to manage and minimises the need for much additional punctuation.

The job of the “Full Stop” is to signal the end of a sentence. For example:

“Thank you! Your donation just helped someone. Get a job.”

I am sure that the writer didn’t intend to cause offence but by putting the full stop after “someone”, the entire meaning has been changed.

The Comma

Within a sentence, the job of the comma is to shepherd certain words together, and to keep other words apart, so that the sentence makes sense. Informally, and without covering the myriad rules which exist relating to the use of the comma, its job is to signal the smallest pause and to separate the next group of words. Errors of use occur either by omission or overuse. I find that reading the sentence out aloud, and listening to where I pause naturally, is often a good place to position the comma.

“Most of the time, travelers worry about their luggage.”

Now delete the comma after the fourth word to totally change the meaning of this sentence:

“Most of the time travelers worry about their luggage” i.e. time travelers!

And another:

“Let’s eat grandpa.” versus: “Let’s eat, grandpa.” The first sentence could put grandpa’s life in jeopardy.

The Apostrophe

DO NOT use the apostrophe for plurals. It’s not correct to talk about “daddy’s” when you mean “daddies”, or “box’s” when you mean “boxes”.

DO use it to show possession such as: “The Dog’s bone…”, or “The boss’s desk…”

DON’T CONFUSE “Its” and “it’s”. “Its” is a pronoun and if we refer to the previous example, we might refer to the “dog’s bone” as “ITS bone”, showing possession. “IT’S” with the apostrophe, signals that a letter has been left out and in this case, is a contraction of “it is”.

On a final note from Lynn Truss:

“… all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places. Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking.”

For more information, take a look at our Business Communication series of courses.