Business Writing Blog

February 20

For those of you who write for business purposes, and for those who like to make every effort to refine your writing, I’d like to direct you to Lynn Gaetner-Johnston‘s Business Writing Blog. (I’m only going to discuss her blog, but she has an e-zine, books and classes, if you’re interested.)

This blog is useful because it comes in small bites. Once a week, with 10-minutes-worth of effort, you can improve an aspect of your writing. Since the beginning of the year, Gaetner-Johnston has blogged about wordiness, jargon and humour in business writing. Her latest blog warns of the dangers of not checking with your dictionary.

Anyone who is interested in the etiquette and social niceties of business writing would also enjoy this blog. Who Should Save Face talks about going the extra mile for your reader, even if your reader is a complete airhead who hasn’t read the e-mail.

On the right-hand side of the blog, below “Recent Posts”, you’ll find “Categories”. If you’re too busy to check out the blog on a regular basis, filtering the posts will help you improve an area of your writing which you know to be a little rough.

Don’t forget to check out the comments for each blog, as that’s where the in-depth discussion happens!

business writing, Lynn Gaetner-Johnston, Syntax Training, writing blogs

Comments

J February 23, 2012 11:05 pm Shave Face or Save Face? Reply »

Don February 24, 2012 05:45 pm You mean “10 minutes’ worth.” Apostrophe. No hyphens. The convention in American English is always to place commas and periods INSIDE quotations marks, not outside. This practice is well established, and it’s followed consistently throughout the publishing industry and in academia. Reply »

sheila February 27, 2012 06:11 pm Hi Don, Thanks for your comment. We do appreciate readers picking up on typos. Usage of an apostrophe is the formal — and, admittedly, most commonly seen — punctuation with “worth”; however, informal writing (such as on blogs) allows the connecting of words with hyphens. While this blog is not entirely about formal writing, I agree that I should have used formal punctuation, if only to set a good example. As for the punctuation inside the quotation marks, there’s a blog post about it here. Reply »

JJD March 3, 2012 03:55 am No, sorry. That should have been written in genitive case. That’s the grammatical rule. The worth belongs to the 10 minutes, thus the possessive apostrophe is needed. Grammarly is about proper punctuation, not “informal blog writing.” I’d like to see a grammar-manual citation about the use of hyphens to replace apostrophes in blogs, to boot. Reply »

Don March 11, 2012 10:16 pm Sheila, you write, “informal writing (such as on blogs) allows the connecting of words with hyphens.” That’s nonsense. There is no such construction that would apply in such a context. As JJD says, where is the citation that might validate such a silly claim? Reply »

sinan February 25, 2012 09:55 pm can you tel me what doif iwont to learn real english Reply »

About Author

I'm Sheila van den Heuvel-Collins. Currently, I am the primary blog writer. Please feel free to contribute writing tips and ideas by commenting on the blog entries.

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