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.
- We sat through a dull repetitive meeting on a crisp, October
day; later, each supervisor promised to complete their personnel
review by Friday.
- Having found Charles’ coat, the search was ended by the secretary.
She as well as her manager believe in action not words.
- 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.
- We all admire her ability with words, however, her prowess with
vocabulary shows itself when she writes words like supercede, judgement,
and acknowledgment.
- Therefore I thank you for sending me the checks ... numbers
23-25 ... after the May 15, 1997 meeting we attended.
- 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.
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- 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."
- 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.
- 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."
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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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.
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