When less is more

"Punctuation matters," I claimed last week.

Grammar matters, too.

If you are writing to persuade, make sure you don't annoy the purists like me.

Last week, I opened a letter from one of my local electoral candidates. Like all the others that have dropped into my box in the run up to the election, it was asking me to select him as my candidate, and to give his party my party vote.

And his primary reason, repeated several times? His party believed in less Members of Parliament.

As readers of this blog know, the term 'less' is used for volume and other measures that can't be counted. When talking about a reduced number, the term you need to use is 'fewer'.

I spent a pleasant ten minutes, while I cleaned up the dishes, thinking about what non-countable measure I could apply to Members of Parliament. Less weighty MPs? They'd probably agree. Less voluble MPs? Less serious MPs? Less frivolous MPs? Less well-paid MPs? I could go on.

Dear electoral candidate. You lost any chance of my vote when you sent me an ungrammatical letter.

But you offered me a perfect example of when less is more.

Who cares about spelling?

One of our friends sent us that email about the incredible brain. You know the one. It shows how we can read text even if the middle letters in the words are jumbled; even if they’re replaced by other symbols.

The email concluded that spelling doesn’t matter. I disagree with that conclusion for a couple of reasons. The most important point is that a careless writer assumes they can ignore people who can’t unjumble their letters to get their meaning (those who are not skilled readers). That’s not the point I want to make today, though.

My point has to do with the impression you make when you ignore spelling – or, for that matter, grammar or punctuation.

Think about it by analogy. You may think that wearing your underpants outside your trousers shows that you’re a superhero. You can do that. There is no law that stops you. You will still achieve the fundamental purpose of clothes; you’ll not offend public modesty, and you’ll stay warm. But people will make up their own mind about the message you send.

Similarly, you may think that ignoring the established patterns of English shows that you’re future-focused and free thinking. There is no law to stop you. Your readers may even understand what you’ve written. But people will make up their own minds about the message your carelessness sends.

Write's top five blogs for 2013

Which of our blog posts did you click most last year? We blog about all kinds of topics. The value of clear writing — financially and philosophically. Grammar — everyone wants to know about the debates and the options. Financial literacy. Language usability. Books from our shelves. Our own pet peeves.

Here’s the 2013 hit parade — the top five posts from our blog Write Clearly.

1. Think like a Tui ad!
Yeah, right. No, really! Tui ads are short, succinct, and perfectly pitched to their audience, says Lynda Harris. But what’s special about the one that she posted on Tui’s DIY billboard at their factory?
Read how to think like a Tui ad 

2. Do you take your lists with or without semicolons?
Anne-Marie Chisnall describes the science behind readability and visual clutter.
Read more about more readability and visual clutter

3. A conversation about health literacy
In our 'Conversations' blog series, Rosie Knight talks to health providers about the techniques they use to make sure that communication with their patients works well both ways. She also delves into why health literacy improves patient outcomes, and saves health dollars. In this conversation Rosie talks to Lorna Bingham, Diabetes Nurse Specialist.
Read Rosie's conversation with Lorna Bingham

4. Poor writing is not sustainable
Too many New Zealand businesses don't realise the huge impact that unsustainable business practices are having on their bottom line. Diana Burns quotes sustainability consultant Annette Lusk. And Diana writes that sustainable writing has a huge impact on profits.
Read more about making business writing sustainable

5. Taking issue with issues (and other such euphemisms)
Diana Burns finds a kindred spirit in columnist Joe Bennett, with his attack on the word ‘provider’ (as in internet provider, education provider, and health provider). She reveals a trick we use at Write for generating ‘noun strings’, and why they are terrible things.
Read more about taking issue with issues
Click to tweet: Write’s top five blogs for 2013

Decried, defended, and debated

H/T to Johnson, who celebrated National Grammar Day with a link to this nifty infographic.

Courtesy of: Online Schools

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.

Trespassing — grammar with a legal implication

Our Margaret Austin noted a crime against language on the front page our newspaper the other day. Its story ‘Dirty Tactics in Grocery War’ contains the following misuse of the verb to trespass:

‘He trespassed two people yesterday’. 

The grammar stuff

‘Trespass’ is an intransitive verb meaning ‘to commit a trespass’— and an intransitive verb cannot have an object.

You cannot trespass someone from your supermarket. You can issue a trespass notice against them entering your supermarket — and if they set foot inside it, you’d say they were trespassing your property. But if you want them to stay outside, you cannot ‘trespass them’.

Legal implications

A similar crime was committed by journalists who said that Stuart Wilson had been trespassed from the Whanganui’s public spaces. You can’t trespass anyone from anything either.

Margaret notes that, if Wilson’s lawyer decided to take a grammatical stand in the debate about where his client is and is not allowed in Whanganui, Wilson could win freedom of movement in the city’s parks and domains.

Comma corruption starts early

There’s an outrage in my son's reading book.

'I am going to get some nuts, today,' said Mother Bear. (Beverley Randell. Baby Bear Climbs a Tree: Story Books Level 9, p4.)

That comma after 'nuts' is completely unnecessary. It's not a serial comma. It's not a comma between clauses. It's just plain wrong.

They're already filling my son’s head with dangerous nonsense, poor mite, and he's only in Year 1. We were doing our reading at home last night, and when he got to 'nuts' he gravely told me, 'I've got to take a breath now.'

Passed between generations
This travesty is being passed from one generation to another. I remember as if it were yesterday. I was in Primer 1, and kind Mrs Purdey was teaching us about punctuation. 'Put a comma wherever you want to take a breath,' she said.

Some of us breathe more often than others, and Beverley Randell must have been for a jog before she wrote about Mother Bear. Commas are there to separate clauses, to separate introductory phrases, and to separate items in a list. And that's it.

A nail in the coffin
Put commas elsewhere, and there you have it - the rot sets in: another nail in the coffin of correct punctuation in the 21st century. The correctly used comma will go the way of the apostrophe.

And he’s only age five! It's a tragedy.

(PS: Aside from the comma, this is one of the nicest books my son has brought home. Grammar isn’t everything! We just don’t want it to get in the way of a good story.)