by Sharon Ernst | Nov 25, 2024 | Business Writing Skills
Why are we so short on business writing skills anyway? Mark Twain supposedly said, “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” Obviously, he was being sarcastic because there’s a lot more to writing than crossing out the wrong words, right? But what? What are we missing? What do we not know? Well, it turns out there’s a lot we don’t know about writing…especially business writing. One study found 26.2% of employers think college graduates have deficient business writing skills—not weak but deficient. As for...
by Sharon Ernst | Nov 19, 2024 | Business Email Writing
Get business email writing tips and spend less time on email. We all want to spend less time on email, right? Whether you’re a typical office worker logging in the 40 hours (plus) per week, or a freelancer hustling to make money, you are working a lot. And much of that time is time spent on email. It’s not anecdotal. It’s real. You’ve probably seen the numbers, like that we spend one-third of our work hours on email. Bleh! But what if there was a better way? What if you could spend less time on email? What could you...
by Sharon Ernst | Nov 12, 2024 | Proofreading and Editing
Although my oldest (who is in his 30s) disagrees with me about the importance of this because–he says–rules are changing, I am sticking with my principles and training for now. And I want to make sure we all know how to capitalize correctly. So let’s take a quick dive into the rules you need to know… How to capitalize correctly Although it might not happen too often, there might be times when you will write headlines, titles, headings, subheadings and the like as part of your writing at work–or you might be...
by Sharon Ernst | Nov 4, 2024 | Business Writing Skills
Let’s get to the point: Poor business writing skills are costing businesses billions of dollars. Businesses are paying this high price due to time wasted on many back-and-forth emails, brands damaged by careless content, poor communications that bog down projects, and more. Employees aren’t doing this on purpose! Employees want to be more effective and productive, but if they lack the skills, how can they? It’s in your best interests to help employees improve business writing skills. When you improve business writing skills The...
by Sharon Ernst | Oct 29, 2024 | Proofreading and Editing
OK, I admit it. I couldn’t have described a comma splice a month ago. I knew there was a mistake that needed fixing when I saw one, but I didn’t know what it was called. Now I do because I refreshed myself on my copyediting. You could too with a proofreading class. Let’s save you from that same embarrassment, shall we? A comma splice happens when you have two sentences running together as one. In grammar speak, it’s when you have to independent clauses together as one sentence. But I think it’s easier to understand if I say it’s two...
