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08 October 2012

Grammar and the job market

In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Kyle Wiens explains why he won't hire people who use poor grammar. The article begins:
If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.
Read on to find his reasons.

2 comments:

  1. Great article Judy - I'm wondering what he would think if one of his applicants used these punctuation marks:

    http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/144712

    Perhaps we could choose the best of these punctuation marks and try to make them popular :)

    kathryn

    ReplyDelete
  2. I once selected an applicant for a job interview based on her use of a semicolon. She got the job, too.

    Mind you, it was a job as an editor.

    ReplyDelete