By dGrammarQueen Stella NNODI
Has it ever occurred to you that by reading your write-up and the way you write, your personality and professional maturity can be deduced by your reader?
In this era of social media and how we are all wont to write in short-hand or what I call social media lingo, business writing is suffering.
I am on Facebook; I am on Twitter; I Skype; Instagram is my office, I tell you. LinkedIn is my favourite ‘social media’ platform (Somehow, I do not consider it social media in the true sense of it because, come on, it may be like Facebook but it isn’t Facebook. So I refer to it as professional social media).
I used to write on social media in customised shorthand and I thought I was doing well until I wrote an application for a high profile job sometime in 2005 and instead of ‘You’, I wrote ‘U’ and instead of ‘Like’, ‘Lyk’; my colleague whom I asked to proofread it picked it out. I was sufficiently disappointed in myself.
That was the last time I wrote in what I choose to call SMS-H (Social Media Short-Hand). Whether I am sending a text message or writing on Facebook, Twitter or Skype, I write everything in full! It is better to be referred to as stiff and staid, than to be said to be unserious and unprofessional, especially in corporatedom and business circles.
The thing about business writing is this:
A. KYA – KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE IS KEY. You need to know your audience. And write appropriately to suit them. This is ultra-important and very strategic. SMS-H is a complete no-no in business writing, be it email, letter, text messages, Facebook; as long as it is business or has to do with work, forget SMS-H. Run on the long-hand lane, ladies and gentlemen. Leave SMS-H for when you are jogging on the track of Facebooking or Skyping with your buddies.
B. A manager I reported to once, issued a written query to a colleague of mine back in 2010. By all standards, this query was unjust and unjustified. It reeked of favouritism against this colleague of mine whom I will call Meshida; and boy, did Mesh (as we called her) detest favouritism, especially when it was not in her favour. In a very liquid livid state, she penned down the worst response to a query corporatedom had ever seen! What particularly threw all of us in the office, especially me, was that she did not only send in a three-page response but managed to end every paragraph of that response with, ‘…and you call yourself a pastor’. Reading her memo, you’d come away with the opinion that the writer was either an executive on the brink of hysteria or a stark market woman who found her way into corporatedom and was just doing her thing. She was totally unprofessional in that response.
I want to believe that that phrase tipped the scales against her, because she earned herself a month suspension without pay. She resumed from her suspension, worked for only a month and resigned. That was how bitter she was. She didn’t leave, however, without a lecture, from me, on how tone, vocabulary and diction in business correspondence can either make or mar your reputation in the workplace.
VERDICT: TONE IS IMPORTANT. Your tone in an official missive is a determinant on what the reaction will be. You cannot go wrong on the side of being formal, I always say. Again, I repeat, I’d rather be considered stiff and stilted than be referred to ‘that clown in Sales’.
Do not be overly familiar with colleagues (subordinates, peers, superiors); aside saying ‘Dear sir/madam’, don’t go saying ‘Hello dear’. Some may find it offensive. Remember, on the side of formality, you cannot go wrong. On the organisation’s intramail, do not go around using smileys and/or emoticons inappropriately. My advice: Do not use it at all. Say whatever you have to say in plain English and deal with emoticons on Yahoo Messenger, WhatsApp and all other related platforms.
C. The other day, on LinkedIn, someone was advertising her domestic staff services business and wrote, ‘Are you in dear need of maids, drivers…’ I stopped reading at that point; I didn’t continue.
If you are reading this and you do not know that it shouldn’t be ‘dear’ but ‘dire’, then, thou art in need of a writing class with me, dGrammarQueen. On Twitter sometime ago, someone was talking about the ‘adopted (sic) Chibok girls’. I thought they were ‘abducted?’ When did they become adopted? And by whom? Someone might say it was a typo, but please, whatever happened to proofreading your write-up before hitting the ‘enter’ button?
GRAMMAR…ah…GRAMMAR.
The way I see it, bad grammar points your reader (or listener) in one direction: your lack of corporate class.
Honestly, let’s look at it dispassionately: imagine being in a gathering where you are murdering English language. People get uncomfortable and may be too polite to correct you, so they sidle away from you. You suddenly realise you are alone.
Okay, imagine writing the way you speak. Again, people will stop reading out of exasperation or read through to the end just out of politeness embedded in their DNA, or out of want of some comic relief or distraction from a hard day’s job, probably.
Bad grammar is bad business.
Believe it or not, you can lose business deals because the grammar in your proposals and briefs is … just bad. Note: archaic grammar is different from bad grammar. Archaic grammar is just … archaic. But, refer to KYA: some of your recipients may be gleefully overjoyed and favourably disposed to your request just because you sound like Shakespeare. So…KYA!
Poor punctuation is as bad as bad grammar. Between bad grammar, poor punctuation and inappropriate tone, which is the forgivable sin? Be the judge yourself!
From my point of view: none!
Sadly, as adults, we are already set in our ways; therefore demanding that an adult, who has been conditioned through the years, perfects his grammar (in adulthood), is a difficult, no, a herculean task. But we can start somewhere: begin to read. Copiously; voraciously; pantingly; rabidly.
Grammar is improved remarkably when we read. Novels. History books, motivational books, academic books, newspapers, name it. New words and expressions, hitherto unknown, are encountered. The right way to spell words are also discerned. With constant practice, streaks of lightening colour the dark clouds of grammar. In the interim, however, before publishing a write-up or clicking ‘enter’ to send, be sure to sheathe the sword of classlessness by requesting that a seasoned second or third or fourth party proofreads, several times.
Talking about spellings, decide which you want to stick to: American or British English. Try not to mix them. If you use ‘organisation’ (BrE) in one message, then do not use ‘organization’ (AmE) in the same memo or proposal etc. Show that you know the difference by choosing one and sticking to it. (Not that it is a big deal, anyway, but then, you never know how particularly finicky the recipient of what you are sending out is).
What about Nigerian English? Let’s talk about that later.
Ciao
@dGrammarQueen Stella NNODI
Abuja-FCT
+234(0)8163171944
