Business Writing

Variety is the spice of life. This proverb may seem clichéd, but as with all clichés there is an element of truth in it, particularly when we talk about sentence length. If you want your writing to be boring and to send people to sleep, use the same sentence length and structure for each sentence.

Sometimes I find tips for better writing in unexpected places.

In the past few posts we’ve looked at some common sentence problems. We’ve also looked at what makes a sentence and types of sentences. Now we’ll look at writing better sentences. This is a tip about style.

In a previous tip I talked about sentence fragments. Today I want to talk about another sentence problem—run-on sentences.

Have you ever run a spell and grammar check on MSWord and seen the message Fragment (consider revising)? Have you wondered what this actually means?

Before I talk about comma splices, we need to think about independent clauses. What is an independent clause? It is a group of words that can stand on its own. In effect it is a sentence. It doesn’t need anything more; it can stand alone.

My last post looked at subjects and predicates. This tip introduces you to the four different types of sentences.

Sentences are one of the main units of writing. We have words and we have paragraphs and, in between, we have sentences.

I often see confusion about the differences between ‘can’ and ‘be able to’. Sometimes we can replace one with the other, and sometimes we can’t. Both are used to talk about ability. I thought I’d try to clear up when and how we use these for you.

Now to the final step of the writing process.
If you have followed stages 1 to 4 you have a fairly solid draft. It has all the information in it that you need, and all the information is in the right place in the structure. But, if you’ve followed my instructions, you may have typos and grammar errors. Now is the stage to fix these.