Some word pairs flummox even the most literate writers. We use a word to say one thing, but its opposite form seems not to exist. Or does it? In some pairs, apparent opposites have the same meaning. English is a mongrel language with a motley history, which means that our words don’t always make sense. …
“If you don’t think punctuation matters, try forgetting the comma in, I’m sorry, I love you.” A colleague recently bemoaned the tendency among some business writers to send emails without punctuating them. She had received an email that said, “order misdelivered sent to wrong branch but we fixed it” How hard would it have been, …
Someone recently wrote to me, “Your welcome to join us at the dinner reception.” While I appreciated the dinner invitation, the writer undermined herself by making the basic mistake of writing your instead of you’re. She meant to say, “You are welcome to join us,” but that’s not what she wrote.
Am I being a curmudgeon to mention this? Perhaps. But if I’m a grouch, I’m not alone. For millions of readers, these mistakes matter. When you are building your personal and business brand, can you afford to assume that your readers don’t care about precision in language?
These five word pairs often trip up business writers. Learn to distinguish between their/they’re/there, accept/except, affect/effect and others.
The active voice makes the difference between “A Merry Christmas is wished to you by us” and “We wish you a merry Christmas.” Harness the power of the active voice in your writing.
