Don't Let Language Rules Hamstring Your Business Writing and Business Communications by Dave Griffiths

"From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put."
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

I love that thought from the old statesman/historian/blowhard because it illustrates a collective affliction in the way we use our native tongue. Not only do we fall unthinkingly into copying each other when it comes to the latest trite phrase; we also adhere rigidly to grammar shibboleths such as "proper" sentence closure.

In the business writing classes that I teach for federal agencies, nonprofits and private firms, otherwise intelligent men and women admit to hang-ups that have bedeviled them all the way back to that blue-haired high school English teacher diagramming sentences on the dusty blackboard.

Don't get me wrong. I've got nothing against rules - if they make sense. Take capitalization and spelling. If you casual email communicators can't exert the effort to capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence, I assume you're just as indolent in the "thinking" that goes into the message itself. By the same token, if you rely solely on "spell-check" and blissfully ignore the distinction between "their," "they're" and "there," or fail to edit your writing for proper name spelling, I have a perfect right to ask: "What else is wrong with this email (or white paper, memo, proposal, etc.)?" Or worse: "I thought this guy was a professional."

No, the "rules" that trouble me are the imagined ones, such as not ending a sentence with a preposition, or avoiding "And" to start a sentence, or placing commas. My advice: Lighten up and be yourself. Back in my Washington journalism days, when I was struggling with the transition from covering civil and military aviation for a trade publication to covering the Pentagon for a lay readership at Business Week magazine, I got some great advice from an editor: "Write as if you're having a conversation with an intelligent friend."

Try it. When you talk to your boss, a colleague, a vendor, etc., I guarantee you already end your sentences on a preposition and start the next sentence with "And." And when you actually write, try saying the words out loud. Reach a natural pause, and it's comma time. Try it. The key here is to keep process from hamstringing product, to avoid focusing on form so much that content suffers.

Please visit my website at http://www.davegriffithscommunications.com/, where you'll find that I've worked with a variety of government, nonprofit and private-sector clients on business communication skills -- from effective writing to presentation skills to media training. I travel widely to do writing skills training and media and presentation skills training for federal agencies and businesses that need help with technical writing and written sales proposals.