• Rewrite the sentence
• Choose a different word
• Rephrase sentence
• Choose a synonym

Would Grammarly’s ideas have yielded a tighter, more concise document? Probably. Would that document still be remembered 150 years later? Probably not. Because the things that Grammarly edited out would have been the very elements that made Lincoln’s speech timeless.

 And that’s the problem with grammar checkers. As Wordsworth wrote, “They murder to dissect.” Grammar checkers’ suggestions might tighten your document yet steal the flavor of your message.

 What Grammar Checkers Do Well

Nevertheless, grammar checkers are a boon to writers who seek to write correctly. The programs are powerful spotters of punctuation problems, wordiness, awkward sentence structure, and the passive voice. They correct preposition usage, fix spelling blunders, and remedy a host of other mistakes that, if left uncorrected, would rob you of credibility and correctness.

Grammarly is widely considered to be the best grammar and spelling checker. The program tightens and corrects text admirably. It works for documents, emails, and Google docs, working as the angel on your shoulder that keeps you from making dumb mistakes.

Confession: I use Grammarly daily. I pay for their premium service and consider it a worthwhile investment. This Writamin has gone through Grammarly and benefited from it. I have looked at other grammar checkers, and I believe that Grammarly is the most seamless among them.

 What Grammar Checkers Don’t Do Well

As valuable as they are, grammar checkers fail at judging culture and context.

 For example, in a recent webinar for a utility, we had a spirited discussion about the benefits of using passive voice. Every grammar checker considers using the passive voice to be a no-no. The staff at this utility felt, however, that the passive voice was often their best choice. What these people love about the passive voice is what grammar checkers hate about it: It is indirect and avoids focusing on individuals. They preferred “Your application has been received and is being taken up for consideration.” to “We have received your application and are considering it.”

 And you know what? I’m not prepared to say that the utility employees were wrong. In my decades as a writing trainer, I have observed that indirect language is the norm in institutional cultures such as governments, school districts, and utilities. Using the active voice might set hearts aflutter in a government setting.

 Grammar checkers lack the cultural awareness to differentiate between the indirectness of institutional writing and the swift minimalism of writing at a tech startup. The weakness is that everyone who uses the software gets the same messages.

 Use Your Own Judgment

Moreover, a grammar checker cannot intuit the flow and style of your whole document and determine if the stylistic problems it sees are essential to the message you are trying to convey.

Imagine a sales rep named Emily, who works for a national executive search firm. Sometimes she writes to New York executives with high-status MBAs and sometimes she writes to rural Human Resources managers who don’t have the same background. Would she write the same message to both of them? Not likely.

For the global executive, she might write, As a global leader in your field, you know that having the right talent for the job makes the difference between profit and loss.

For the rural manager, she might write, You might wonder how an executive-search firm could help your company. The fact is that XYZ Company’s need for leadership is just as great as that of a larger firm.

Grammarly does not want Emily to write larger firm. It recommends more prominent firm. But Emily does not want to seem disrespectful of the manager of the smaller business. She wants to say “larger”. If she slavishly follows Grammarly, she may inadvertently insult her reader.

 Let the Language Sing

Going back to the Gettysburg Address, Grammarly choked on many of Lincoln’s passages, repeatedly asking the writer to rewrite the sentence. But how? We could remove words, shorten sentences, and eliminate the few uses of the passive voice, but we would no longer have a document that brings tears to our eyes.

 So yes, use Grammarly or its cousins. They will save you from many mortifying errors. But never forget that you are the author of your words, not a software program. You are responsible for all errors, and you get credit for the power of your language to move your reader, whether you are writing an email, a report, or a speech that will be remembered for a hundred years.

  _______________________________________________

Resources

Ten Grammar Checkers and Editing Tools that Will Make Your Writing Super Clean

The Best Grammar Check Software of 2021

Best Grammar Checkers for Bloggers

 Bonus: The Gettysburg Address

In case you missed it, here is the text of the Gettysburg Address (not edited by Grammarly!)

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that their nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

 ©2021 Elizabeth Danziger All rights reserved

Take me to your leader! Communication woes drain the lifeblood from an organization. Connect me with your decision-makers and see how Worktalk can transform communication in your world. Contact me at lizd@worktalk.com or 310.396.8303. You can also book through www.calendly.com/worktalk.

The post If Lincoln Had Used Grammarly appeared first on Worktalk.

Why should I expect typos? I expect people to avoid them, especially in business correspondence.

Cell phones breed typos. Granted, when one is typing with thumbs on a tiny screen, errors are more likely to creep in. But this does not mean that we should simply give up without a murmur and say, “Oh, well, my writing will be full of typos and my readers will just have to deal with it.”

Cell phones have had many effects on our communication, including these: They have blurred the boundary between business and personal communications and they have made us less sensitive to typographical errors.
In personal, informal cell phone dialogues, readers usually overlook  errors, as long as the meaning is comprehensible. The question is, however, whether any important messages or emails should be sent from a phone when you are too rushed to correct mistakes.

If you’re tooling down the highway and you want to tell your friend you’ll be ten minutes late, your phone might change your message to “Ill be ten menudos cake.” and your friend will probably understand.

But if you are writing deal points, or clarifying a negotiation position, or making a promise or request, the telephone on the run is the wrong tool for the job. Simply send, “Got your message. Will respond soon,” and then wait until you can sit down and give your full attention to your phone or other mobile device. Remember, the email you send from your car is just as discover able as the one you carefully compose at your desk.

Why should we make the effort to avoid these errors? Because people judge us based on our writing.

In my business writing workshops, I ask people, “When you receive an email or document that contains typos, misused words, and errors in grammar and punctuation, how does it affect your opinion of the sender?” There is always a charitable soul who says, “I just figure the person was busy.”  The majority is less forgiving. People use words like “careless” “rushed” “inattentive to detail” “incompetent” “uneducated” and of course, “stupid” to describe the writer who sends out documents full of errors. The reader might not know or care that the email originated from a phone.

True, your spelling gaffes might reach the person who is willing to forgive and overlook. But whenever you send out a business email containing errors, you are taking a chance that your reader might not be the forgiving type. Your client, boss, or colleague might believe that people who write carelessly also think and work carelessly. They might think less of you and consider you less professional because you did not take the time to reread and see what favors Auto correct has done for you. Even if they realize that your message came from a phone, the lingering impression is that you are willing to sacrifice quality for expedience.  Is it worth taking that chance?

If you want to avoid typos, here’s what to do:
·Reread EVERY email and document at least once before sending it. I know you feel you don’t have time; do it anyway. The downside of not proofreading is too big.
·Read your message aloud before sending it.
·Read from the end to the beginning.

For low priority, informal phone messages, most people are willing to forgive typos. But if you want people to hold a high opinion of you — and especially if a business relationship depends on your message — take the time to correct your spelling. I urge you: Fight the good fight. Even on your phone, don’t expect typos.

The post Perils of Tiny Typing appeared first on Worktalk.

Here are a few tips:

• If you add a few words to your message after you’ve finished your main proofreading, read it again before you send the letter or email. How often have you seen typos or omitted words in the last-minute additions spoil the effect of the whole document?
• If you use direct mail or bulk email, don’t rush to get the mailing out without taking care of the fine points. If you are sending paper, are the sheets folded straight? For paper or email, check the gender and title of every addressee and make sure you are addressing each person properly – as Mr., Ms., Dr., Judge, or whatever other title a person has earned. People take it personally when they are addressed incorrectly.
• “Why is there not enough time to do something right the first time, but plenty of time to do it over?” In the long run, as another proverb goes, haste makes waste.

Share your tales of woe: Do you have painful business-writing stories? A misaddressed envelope, a confidential email made public, or an embarrassing typo? Please share your stories by writing an email to Elizabeth.

The post When writing a business letter or email, don’t rush appeared first on Worktalk.

Just ask James A. Brown, ex-Merrill Lynch executive who wrote in an email that Enron had “promised” that Merrill would get their money back in a suspicious Enron deal involving barges off the coast of Nigeria. According to the Wall Street Journal (10/23/10) “a possible turning point came when investigators discovered a March 2001 email written by Mr. Brown. He wrote that Mr. Fastow [of Enron] had made a ‘promise to pay us back no matter what.’” Speaking from prison, Mr. Brown says he wrote the email hastily and never meant to suggest an illegal guarantee. Merrill Lynch and Enron are not alone in suffering from email errors. Goldman Sachs, Toyota, and many others have been blindsided by the reality that every email can be subpoenaed and published on the front page.

In my book, Get to the Point! Painless Advice for Writing Letters, Emails and Memos Clients Will Understand, 2nd edition (Mesa 2010) I point out that emails written quickly in the presumed privacy of one’s office can cause terrible repercussions in business writing. As the proverb goes, “Act in haste; repent at leisure.” People often forget that emails last forever. Email land mine number one is: writing in haste. Never rush to respond to an email. The world will not burn if you wait an hour to reply. Get all the information. Think through your response. Proofread carefully.

For more tips on writing email successfully, sign up for our Ten Principles of Successful Email at WorkTalk. You will gain the tools to use email effectively while avoiding the potential land mines associated with what are now the four most dangerous letters in the English language: S-E-N-D.

Contact me at lizd@worktalk.com or (310) 396-8303 to learn about sponsoring a seminar in your business.

The post Emailing “Promise” Lands Enron Executive in Prison appeared first on Worktalk.

Compared To vs. Compared With

When making an analogy to something of an entirely different class, use compare to.

He compared leading a company through recessionary times to steering an ocean liner through a storm.

Compared to moving to a new neighborhood, pulling up an old oak tree was easy.

When comparing things that belong to the same class, use compare with.

When compared with tsunamis, the waves the surfers were riding seemed puny.

Compared with the great flu epidemic of 1918, the swine-flu outbreak seemed insignificant.

Different From vs. Different Than

Use different from and you will not make a mistake. It is a rare instance when different than is the right choice.

This year’s program is different from last year’s in that this year we had a belly dancer.

His approach to the problem is different from mine.

Note: In keeping with the general idea of increasing the number of verbs in our sentences, you can usually use the verb differs in place of different from.

This year’s program differs from last year’s.

His approach differs from mine.

Note that these have the benefit of being shorter, although they still rely on from for their structure.

More Important vs. More Importantly

The key thing to remember here is that important is an adjective and importantly is an adverb. That means important describes a thing or situation and importantly describes an action or state of being. Thus it would be incorrect to write at the beginning of a sentence, more importantly, if you are describing a situation.

He always gets to work 15 minutes late. More important, all of his projects are being turned in late.

More important, they had stopped living at that address before the taxes were assessed.

The previous example could be rendered more clear, even if a bit longer, by writing

More important is the fact that they had stopped living at that address before the taxes were assessed.

The adverbial phrase more importantly refers to something that occurs in a more important manner.

He viewed his position in the organization more importantly than other people did.

Their report considered sun storms more importantly than fossil-fuel emissions in analyzing the causes of global warming.

What other words and phrases do you wonder about? Write to me at lizd@worktalk.com.

The post Commonly Misused Phrases in Business Writing: Compared To, Different Than and More Important appeared first on Worktalk.