Professional Copywriting

Posts Tagged ‘writing communication grammar’

Who are you writing for when you write? Whether it’s a note to your kid’s teacher or business correspondence, most people are still writing for their high school English teacher. They worry about impressing with vocabulary and grammar they’d never use in a real conversation, but they never stop to think about the message they’re sending to their intended readers. How many of you noticed that I ended my title with a preposition. Your high school English teacher would’ve deducted points for that, even thought the rule itself is non-sense. (See my earlier post, “A rule up with which I will not put!) Now if I’d titled this post “For Whom Are You Writing?”, you would’ve automatically gone into grammar Nazi mode and started nitpicking the rest of the post. Have you noticed how many contractions I’ve (there’s another one) used in this post. That’s because it’s how I talk. If I had spelled all those words out, it would’ve given the post a formal feel which is not what I wanted to do.

The purpose of good writing is communicating. Anything that gets in the way, whether its poor grammar, unnaturally correct grammar or just an attitude that turns your readers off should be ruthlessly eliminated. So the next time you have to write something, take a moment to consider who writing for and what you want to communicate. (And forget about your high school English teacher.)