ON GRAMMAR & PUNCTUATION

video transcript

Hi, my name is Catherine Goodman, and I’m excited to be your instructor for this MBA Online Writing Workshop.

I’ve been teaching at the University of Utah for several years now; I teach Business Writing, Academic Writing, and Scientific Writing. I have my Master’s Degree in English from the University of Utah. I am also a business consultant in the Salt Lake Valley and across the country; I help businesses improve their strategic communication processes, as well as their branding and marketing efforts. I spent many years working for financial services firms in a marketing communications capacity, and I look forward to sharing with you my years of experience, learning and understanding how to communicate better through writing.

These short videos will focus on common issues in writing, both in the academic and business worlds. Considerations that are common to all writing will be covered – such as organization, focus, research support, and, of course, proofreading.

Commas

Commas can change meaning, sometimes dramatically. So this example from Writing.com is a good one: “I like cooking my family and my pets” (laughter). I don’t think the meaning is that this person enjoys cooking their family and their pets. But without commas, it can feel like that’s the meaning. So how do we fix that? I like cooking, my family, and my pets. If we add the comma there, and we add the comma there, we’ve created three things that this person likes. I like cooking, I like my family, and I like my pets. So as Writing.com says, “don’t be a psycho, use commas.”

Grammar

You can tell there’s something a little bit wrong, but you’re not quite sure what it is. When it’s correct,  you don’t notice, and that’s ideal. The company needs to accelerate its sales, increasing its growth, hired more support staff. We can tell that’s wrong, but not all of us are quite clear on how to fix that. What’s happening is that the form of this word is different in each case.

Emails

So “bigger win” is fine; that’s not such an idiom that people in most cultures wouldn’t understand it. Win…a win is a win. But saying “kill it” could be offensive to some people and also that’s the meaning here, but let’s find a way that’s more professional and will be understood by more cultures by saying “let’s make Q2 an even bigger win.”

WE DO IT ALL

We do it all — sometimes alone and sometimes with partners — but always with style. We like to deliver.