Common English Blunders

“… recognize your Employee’s and Peers!!”

Apostrophes, Capitalization, Common English Blunders, Foreign Languages, Nouns, Outsider's Perspective

I saw this in a message from a corporation to its employees yesterday.

Problems:
1. Two exclamation marks appear where only one should appear.
2. Common nouns are capitalized even though they should not be.
3. An apostrophe appears where it does not belong.

Explanation:
The corporate message encouraged readers to nominate others for recognition.

The full sentence was “Please be sure to recognize your Employee’s and Peers!!”

One problem with this sentence is the second exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, as if the first exclamation mark were insufficient.

Can you imagine putting two periods at the end of a sentence? That would be nonsensical, right? Putting two exclamation marks at the end of a sentence is just as nonsensical.

Unfortunately, this seems to be an increasingly common blunder in American English.

Another problem is the capitalization of the two common nouns. There is nothing special about an “employee” or a “peer” that requires capitalization in this sentence.

Unfortunately, this also seems to be an increasingly common blunder in American English, as if a huge contingency of Germans had moved to the U.S. and started to misapply the German approach to capitalization to all nouns in English.

The third problem is the most glaring. An apostrophe was inserted with the pluralization of “employee”, which is incorrect.

Solution:
“… recognize your employees and peers!”

“If you can’t find the answer your looking for …”

Common English Blunders, Contractions, Mispronunciations, Misspellings

I saw this the other day at the Gizmo5 website.

Problem:
A pronoun appeared where a contraction should have appeared.

Explanation:
The full sentence on one of the pages at Gizmo5.com was “If you can’t find the answer your looking for here please contact us and we’ll be glad to fill in the details.”

Beyond the comma that was missing after the word “here”, the bigger problem was that the author of this sentence used the pronoun “your” where the word “you’re” — a contraction for “you are” — should have appeared.

As I have written in at least one other blog post, many speakers of American English tend to make the common English blunder of pronouncing “your” and “you’re” in the same way, even though these two words have different pronunciations.

I believe that these mispronunciations drive what some would call misspellings — writing “your” where “you’re” is required, and vice-versa.

Solution:
“If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for …”

How to keep working in a worsening economy

Apostrophes, Commas, Common English Blunders, Hyphens, Misspellings, Prepositions, Versus

As I write this, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average has dropped from a record high one year ago to a five-year low.

Insanity is often defined as expecting your personal situation to improve while you continue to do what you always have done.

Protecting your working life from a worsening economy requires standing out — in a good way — from the crowd.

I believe that communicating better makes this possible.

Here are ten tips to keep working in a worsening economy, all with a focus on communicating better — doing something different, so that you’ll get different results.

Tip 1. Watch your spelling.

Here are some of the misspellings that I have documented in this blog:

  • misspelling “extraordinary” as E-X-T-R-A-HYPHEN-O-R-D-I-N-A-R-Y
  • misspelling “pronunciation” as P-R-O-N-O-U-N-C-I-A-T-I-O-N
  • misspelling “likelihood” as L-I-K-E-L-Y-SPACE-H-O-O-D
  • misspelling “accessible” as A-C-C-E-S-S-A-B-L-E
  • misspelling “supersede” as S-U-P-E-R-C-E-D-E

You can throw off half your audience and embarrass yourself by misspelling a word in the title of one of your PowerPoint slides, in an important email message to your boss or customer, or on the front page of a white paper that you have written.

If you know that you are not a good speller, then take action, starting today, to change this.

Tip 2. Watch your punctuation.

Here are some of the punctuation problems that I have discussed in my blog:

You can improve your punctuation skills. Start today by buying a good book or two about punctuation.

Tip 3. Watch your words.

Picking the wrong word is another way to look bad in front of your fellow employees, your boss, or your customer or prospect.

Here are some pairs of words that give people trouble:

Some might argue that many Americans do not know the difference in each of the above word pairs, so you should not worry about knowing the differences.

I disagree. Knowing the differences in these and other commonly confused word pairs can set you apart from the crowd with someone who cares — someone who can give you a raise, someone who can recommend you for a promotion, or someone who can give you new or more business.

Tip 4. Watch your grammar.

While text messaging and instant messaging have encouraged people to write in sentence fragments, not knowing how to write complete, grammatically correct sentences in other written forms — email messages, white papers, etc. — can hurt your reputation with the people who have the most influence over your finances.

Here are some common mistakes with grammar:

I could list many other types of mistakes with grammar, but you get the point.

If you have a basic discomfort with your grammar skills, then read some books about English grammar.

If you are generally confident about these skills but wonder on occasion whether something is correct, then research your question — here or elsewhere online. That nagging feeling is usually there for a good reason; pay attention to it!

Tip 5. Watch your slang.

Although slang can be fun to use, and although the origins of various slang expressions can be fascinating, using slang in your work life can hobble your career.

Here are some types of slang:

  • regional slang, as in “y’all” or “you guys” in place of “you”;
  • ethnic slang, as in “Where you at?” or “Git ‘er done.”;
  • corporate slang, as in “open architecture” or “on the bubble”.

Now, you might know what all of the above examples mean, but this does not guarantee that your boss, your fellow employees, or your customers do, too.

A problem with regional slang is that people will use it against you by taking a “You are not from around here.” attitude.

A problem with ethnic slang is that people will use it against you by taking a “You are not one of us.” attitude.

And a problem with corporate slang is that it can seem intelligent when first read or heard but will later cause the reader or listener to wonder what you meant.

Tips 6-10.

I must postpone these for my next post.

Please think about these first five tips, take a break, and then return tomorrow for the remaining tips!