Archive for the ‘Grammar tips’ category
Grammar tips: while or whilst?
A couple of weeks ago, I was with a client who was putting the finishing touches to an annual report. Several people had written parts of it – me, investor relations, the finance team and company secretarial – and we were ironing out the inevitable stylistic differences. That’s when somebody raised this question: Is it [...]
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Grammar tips: don’t be actively annoying
Ever notice how many companies are busy being active? If they’re not actively reviewing their strategy, they’re actively looking for acquisitions or actively considering quitting the UK for tax reasons. What they’re also doing is actively using redundant words. None of these things can be inactive. Of course, this use of actively is all about [...]
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Grammar tips: three grammar ‘rules’ you should ignore
Grammar is essential. By following its rules, we can string words together in ways everyone understands. Some rules, though, don’t help us communicate. They persist only because we’re told they are rules. They make writing seem awkward, formal or contrived, and they force us to rewrite, to avoid their clumsy constructions. These are rules you [...]
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Grammar tips: don’t hate the hyphen
Which punctuation mark causes most arguments? In my experience, it’s the humble hyphen. I’ve had clients remove every hyphen in a document, even after we’d sent the final version for typesetting. More often, they adopt the sniper approach, picking off the occasional hyphen which somehow ‘looks wrong’ to them. One reason for this is obvious: [...]
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