Parallel Structure: 1, 2, 3 not 1, A, Blue

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Is the grammar in your lists and bullets correct? Whenever you create a series, whether horizontal (sentences) or vertical (bullets) the items in those lists need to match!

Parallel structure not only maintains consistency in your lists (sentences and bullets) but it establishes clarity and credibility for your audience. How can you make sure that your sentences and bulleted lists are parallel? When thinking about parallel structure think 1, 2, 3, not 1, A, Blue.

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Make Every Word Count Because Nobody Wants to Read Anything

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Our professional writing has to be concise because, unfortunately, no one wants to read anything. Most of the people who are reading your messages or are writing to you are doing so because they need to get things done, or we need them to get things done. They need to have information. Rather than reading to enjoy your emails, like they would a good book, they are reading the message trying to figure out: Why are you writing to me? And, what am I supposed to do with this?

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Mimicry: One Tool to Build Trust

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Recently, a few videos on “psychological tricks” have been popping up in my social media feed. One of the tricks that gets a fair amount of attention is that of mirroring. The idea is that if you mirror people’s body language, they are more likely to trust you. For example, if a person reaches for their drink, and then you reach for your drink, the similarity of the action subconsciously suggests that you are alike, which can build trust. So, if the person leans forward, you lean forward; if the person crosses their legs, you cross your legs.

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Comma Splices: How to Identify Them in Your Writing and Fix Run-On Sentences

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You might be thinking, do commas or run-on sentences really matter that much? Or, I learned about commas back in grade school, but I don’t remember any of the rules. Don’t I just a throw a comma in before “and” or anytime I pause to take a breath?

The short answers: comma splices and run-on sentences do matter. Not only are they correctness issues, but they help with clarity, so you can clearly articulate what you want to say to your audiences. And, both correctness and clarity establish credibility with your audience.

And, there are pretty straightforward rules for when you should use commas in your sentences (not just when you see “and” or take a breath). Basically, the reason that commas exist is to help us sort the pieces of a sentence.

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Grammar "Rules"

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Recently I got into a little text message exchange with my aunt. She wrote to me about sitting next to someone on the plane who had terrible grammar. They were talking and the other person kept saying things like “Me and my friend” instead of “My friend and I.” Which made my aunt a bit crazy. She texted me because, since I’m an English person, she thought I would understand her frustration.

And I do understand. But I don’t think speech has the same grammar rules as writing. And I definitely don’t think it’s appropriate to correct a stranger’s grammar on an airplane.

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Writing Personalities

Just like the way we talk, move, interact with our families and friends, and move through our day, our writing reveals a slice of who we are. But writing, like all communication, involves two sides: a sender and a receiver. As the writer, we know what we want to say. And most of our education has taught us how to get our thoughts onto the page or screen in front of us.

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Oxford Commas

What is the Oxford comma, and how would I use such a thing?

Our March newsletter on apostrophes was quite popular—thank you! And, it yielded a request for a blog post on Oxford commas. Thank you, dear reader, for your request! We hope this month’s blog post and newsletter will be illuminating.

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Standardized Spelling

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Spelling in English is hard. There are languages where the idea of a spelling bee is ridiculous because everything is spelled just the way it sounds (looking at you, Spanish). Not English. That’s why we are so lucky the computer programmers have invented tools like spellcheck! For centuries, spelling was the most common error in writing. Enter spellcheck! Now the most common error isn’t misspelling; it’s using the wrong word—a word that sounds the same but is spelled differently. (your/you’re there/their/they’re, anyone?)

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Are you reading this? Or have you already skipped to the next line?

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Professionals use writing to communicate. That means, when I write a message, I want the person on the other end to read it and then take some action like write me back. And when I read, I’m skimming the person’s writing trying to figure out what the writer wants me to do.
How does this affect you, as the author? How can you adjust your writing with this knowledge?

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Helping Your Reader Read: 3 Ways To Make Your Writing Easier To Read

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Research shows that people are more likely to read things that are written in easy or familiar fonts. As professionals who write, we are most concerned with efficiently communicating information in order to generate new business, maintain business relationships, or just get work done. Most of us focus on what we need to say in order to accomplish those goals. But communication is a process that requires a message to be created and received. When we focus on creating the message, sometimes we forget to consider how that same message will be read by the person on the other end.

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Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes: Theory of Mind and Writing

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You know the saying “Take a walk in someone else’s shoes”? What is that saying about? It’s asking you to consider what it’s like to be a different person, to see something from their perspective rather than your own. That ability is called theory of mind, the ability to imagine what another person is thinking or feeling.

Most humans develop this ability as toddlers, around age 3.

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Made you look! The art of using color to get people to read.

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We all know that food motivates people. Whether it’s training a toddler to use the potty, or a 57-year-old telling herself that she can have a snack as soon as she finishes prepping tomorrow’s presentation, food operates on our brain as a reward.

At the same time, we know that most people do not want to read everything we write for work. Professionals skip over words, sentences, whole paragraphs, skimming our messages to read as little as possible and still be able to carry out whatever task the message assigns. We don’t want to read messages at work; we have to read messages at work. What this means is that most of us need external rewards in order to read.

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Your Eyes are Lying to You

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We’ve all done it. Written an email, looked it over, sent it out, and at the very moment it disappears from our screen into the ether, we realize…TYPO! We’ve misspelled the person’s name or put the wrong date or made some other obvious and totally unnecessary error.

So, why does this happen? Because, as Stanislaus Dehaene writes in his book Reading in the Brain, “What we see depends on what we think we’re seeing.”

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Using The Singular "they" to Promote Inclusivity in Your Writing

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You may have been taught in school that using the singular “they” to refer to one person is grammatically incorrect. While the singular “they” has been employed for centuries by famous authors, professional writers, and as part of everyday language, your teacher was right, was being the keyword.

In this blog post, we want to address two things: 1) Using the singular “they” is something you’ve probably already been doing, unconsciously when you speak, and possibly even when you write. And, 2) The singular “they” can be an adjustment when referring to a non-gender binary individual, but it also reflects the nature of the English language.

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Writing is one of your most essential on-the-job tools

Most of us didn’t grow up wanting to be writers. Ok, I did and I am, but most of you didn’t want to be writers when you grew up. You wanted to do other things like work with people and support their development in human resources, or buy and sell stock, or manage real estate. You wanted to do things, not write about them. But think about your day. How much time of the time you spend working is dedicated to writing? 30%? 50%? 80%? You are taking notes, writing emails, sending text messages, maybe create social media content, crafting reports. Turns out, you grew up to be a writer.

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Face-to-face training goes virtual

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These are strange times to be living in! A few short weeks ago, I was riding my bike to school to teach undergraduates on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and driving down I-25 on Tuesdays and Thursdays to train professionals at companies along the Front Range. Now, I’m teaching from a whiteboard I hung on a wall in my house. The commute is shorter, but I miss the classroom interactions…

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Communication as a Top Skill in the Business World

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We learn to write in middle school; how to get our own ideas out of our heads and onto the page. In college, we learn to add adjectives and extra words as “fluff” to fill space on the page. By the time we get to our careers, most people are still using the skills that they acquired as younger, less qualified versions of the people they are now.

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