Almost everyone writes emails for work and many companies encourage employees to use social media as part of promotions.

But are you and your staff members doing a good job?

A badly-written email or other business correspondence can be the deciding factor that turns away a potential customer.

Research shows that when average sentence length is 14 words, readers understand more than 90% of what they’re reading. At 43 words that understanding falls to less than 10%.

Use of simple, plain English cuts reading times significantly. What better way of communicating with customers in a time-hungry world?

Righting writing wrongs

You don’t need to be a great wordsmith to write a decent work email or letter.

All you need is to write in a straight-forward style and to be aware of the common grammatical errors that cause so much harm to business reputations.

Mistakes are easy to avoid if you know what to look for. In no particular order, here’s a list of the most common:

Incorrect use Of capital Letters

In the corporate world incorrect use of capital letters is everywhere.

This is often because of people’s insecurities. When unsure, they hit the Caps Lock key.

Workplace politics also mean many words end up in capitals when they shouldn’t be.

I was once told to capitalise a list of industries in a press release. I argued this would make our organisation look silly.

I was informed it may ‘upset stakeholders’ were they to see their specific industry in lower case. This meant sentences could sometimes appear like this:

• The economic downturn has affected the Retail Sector badly.
• Training courses for staff in Manufacturing are expensive.

Which is wrong.

Use of capital letters with job titles

Most people write job titles in upper and lower case (capitals and non-capitals).

This is also unnecessary unless the title comes immediately before someone’s name. If the title comes after the name, it should be in lower case.

• The Chief Executive Michael Davis suffers acute narcissistic personality disorder.
• Michael Davis, the chief executive, suffers acute narcissistic personality disorder.

Again, pesky workplace politics play a big part in whether job titles start with capital letters when they appear in the middle of sentences. They shouldn’t but so often do.

With grammar, do sweat the small stuff

Tiny things like apostrophes, commas and colons can significantly change the meaning of a sentence.

Consider this: An English teacher wrote, ‘A woman without her man is nothing’ on the whiteboard and asked students to punctuate it correctly.

All the males in the class wrote: ‘A woman, without her man, is nothing.’

All the females wrote: ‘A woman: without her, man is nothing.’

Incorrect use of apostrophes

This little mark must be the most misunderstood and misused piece of punctuation in the English language.

Apostrophes with plurals: A common error is where an apostrophe is inserted before the letter s in plural words or in signs like that shown in the picture.

For example

• The house’s along that row are old
• They all have big garden’s
• The boy’s love swimming.

In normal plurals that end in the letter s, an apostrophe is not needed. Let plurals be plurals.

This mistake is so common there’s a phrase for it: ‘the greengrocer’s apostrophe’.

Whoever could have known apostrophe misuse could tarnish a whole profession in such a way?

With plurals, apostrophes are only used with when indicating possession.

Apostrophes indicating possession: Apostrophes are most usually used to indicate ‘possession’ – that is someone or something is owned (possessed) by someone or something else.

Eg, This is Sandy’s house (the house is owned/possessed by Sandy).

Singular possession: When only one person possesses it the apostrophe comes before the letter s.

Eg, The clown’s nose was red (the clown possesses the nose).

Plural possession: When two or more people possess something, the apostrophe comes after the letter s.

Eg, The clowns’ noses were red (the clowns – a group of them – possess the noses).

To complicate matters further (this is the English language after all) if the plural version of a word doesn’t end with the letter s as in the word children you should treat it as if it’s a singular word.

Eg, This is the children’s room (the room belongs to the children).

Apostrophes are also used when two words are shortened (contracted).

In this case, the apostrophe goes between the two words and makes them shorter by omitting letters.

• do not = don’t
• could not = couldn’t
• I will = I’ll
• I am = I’m

In formal business correspondence it’s better not to use contractions. It’s grammatically correct to stick to the more formal use of two words.

But they can be used in less formal communications like this blog and in some publicity material.

It’s and its: incorrect use of apostrophes with ‘it’s’ and ‘its’ is widespread. Here’s the rule:

It’s (with apostrophe) = is short for ‘it is’ or ‘it has’.

Eg, ‘It’s Anna’s house’ or ‘it’s been snowing’.

Its (with no apostrophe) is a possessive word. It means something belongs to something that’s neutral (not a person with a gender).

Eg, Anna’s house (possessed by Anna) has its roof covered by scaffolding (the roof is possessed by the house).

And remember, if you’re unsure, ask or check your organisation’s house style guide.