Expert Commentary

Grammar at a Glance

November 2002

How would you rate the punctuation and grammar skills of the employees at your company? Gary Blake provides a short mini-assessment to help you evaluate these skills.

by Gary Blake
The Communication Workshop

How would you rate the punctuation and grammar skills of the employees at your company? Don’t make these three deadly assumptions.

  • "They should have mastered that stuff before we hired them."
  • "What’s the big deal if they make occasional writing errors?"
  • "We have grammar software, so our writing is fine."

A lot of people in the workforce don’t even know what a comma is, much less how to use one. (In my on-site writing seminars, I rarely find a writing sample with fewer than eight errors.) Still, effective writing is vital to corporate success: customers, clients, and prospects expect clear, concise, well-organized prose; proposals need to be persuasive; systems documents need to be precise and readable. Alas, even the latest grammar and spelling software can’t help you discern a dangling modifier, organize a sentence, or parse a uniquely worded thought.

Mini-Assessment of Grammar Skills

The following six sentences contain errors in punctuation and grammar. Some may have other problems, which, at this moment, will remain unnamed. Correct these sentences, and then we’ll let you know how you fared. Circulate this test within your department—or throughout your company—and you’ll have done a mini-needs assessment of your colleagues’ skills in the basics of punctuation and grammar.


MINI-ASSESSMENT OF PUNCTUATION AND GRAMMAR SKILLS
  1. We sat through a dull repetitive meeting on a crisp, October day; later, each supervisor promised to complete their personnel review by Friday.

  2. Having found Charles’ coat, the search was ended by the secretary. She as well as her manager believe in action not words.
  3. A series of articles on up to date memos have been printed in the newspaper, see fig. 1. Tom sent them to John and I and I forwarded them to Mary and yourself.

  4. We all admire her ability with words, however, her prowess with vocabulary shows itself when she writes words like supercede, judgement, and acknowledgment.

  5. Therefore I thank you for sending me the checks ... numbers 23–25 ... after the May 15, 1997 meeting we attended.

  6. Being completely untamed, George warned us that the lions were dangerous. He said that as pets they were as good, or better than, those kittens in the kitchen.
Answers
  1. We sat through a dull, repetitive meeting on a crisp October day; later, each supervisor promised to complete his or her personnel review by Friday.

    While you need a comma after "dull," you don’t need one after "crisp." "His or her" is correct with the single noun "supervisor."

  2. Having found Charles’s coat, the secretary ended the search. She, as well as her manager, believes in action, not words.

    One-syllable single nouns ending in "s" take an apostrophe followed by an "s." The dangling modifier, having found Charles’s coat, the search ..., is corrected by putting "the secretary" after the comma. The parenthetical phrase "as well as her manager" needs to be set off in commas. "Believes" agrees with the singular subject "she." There should be a comma after "action" to set off the contrasting thought.

  3. A series of articles on up-to-date memos has been printed in the newspaper (see Fig. 1). Tom sent them to John and me, and I forwarded them to you and Mary.

    "Series" is singular and takes "has." "See Fig. 1" belongs in parentheses. The pronouns should be "me" and "you."

  4. We all admire her ability with words; however, her prowess with vocabulary shows itself when she writes words like "supersede," "judgment," and "acknowledgment."

    Break up the run-on sentence with a semicolon. By the way, the words "supersede" and "judgment" were misspelled.

  5. Therefore, I thank you for sending me the checks (numbers 23–25) after the May 19, 1997, meeting we attended.

    The introductory word "therefore" is followed by a comma. The ellipsis (...) is misused; parentheses around "numbers 23–25" would be better. Also, a comma is needed after the year.

  6. George warned us that the lions, being completely untamed, were dangerous. He said that, as pets, they were as good as, or better than, those kittens in the kitchen.

    The misplaced modifier is solved by putting the phrase "being completely untamed" next to "lions," the word it modifies. Also, you need to add the word "as" to keep the next part of the sentence parallel.

Mini-Assessment Results

How did you do? There were a total of 20 errors that required correcting, including the misspelled words.

  • If you caught 17–20 of these mistakes, you go to the head of the class!
  • If you corrected 14–16, your skills are in reasonably good shape.
  • If you found and corrected only 11–13 of the problems, you may need to look into some type of punctuation and grammar refresher.
  • If you were able to find only 1–10 of the problems in these sentences, you need help NOW!

Conclusion

Remember that even if an average employee writes a total of only 10 e-mails, letters, memos, and other documents in a week, that’s 500 in a year! If each contains only two errors, that’s 1,000 errors in a year! Multiply that times the number of business writers in your organization (say, 100?) and you realize that, between productivity lost in correcting 100,000 mistakes and the customers lost by being offended by the errors, bad punctuation is bad business.

Opinions expressed in Expert Commentary articles are those of the author and are not necessarily held by the author’s employer or IRMI. This article does not purport to provide legal, accounting, or other professional advice or opinion. If such advice is needed, consult with your attorney, accountant, or other qualified adviser.