Putting to Rest the Serial Comma Debate

In nearly all my writing classes, I hear the question, "Should you put a comma before and in a series?" The answer is this: It's a matter of preference. Let's see how the issue is handled by two highly respected writer's references, The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual and The Business Writer's Handbook.

The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual (sixth trade edition), edited by Norm Goldstein, gives the serial comma a NO vote. Here is what it says:

Use commas to separate elements in a series, but do not put a comma before the final conjunction in a simple series: The flag is red, white and blue. He would nominate Tom, Dick or Harry.

Put a comma before the concluding conjunction in a series, however, if an integral element of the series requires a conjunction: I had orange juice, toast, and ham and eggs for breakfast.

The Business Writer's Handbook (seventh edition), by Gerald J. Alred, Charles T. Brusaw, and Walter E. Oliu, votes YES for the serial comma. Let's see what it says:

Although the comma before the last item in a series is sometimes omitted, it is generally clearer to include it. The ambiguity that may result from omitting the comma is illustrated in the following sentence.

AMBIGUOUS: Random House, Bantam, Doubleday and Dell were individual publishing companies. [Does "Doubleday and Dell" refer to one company or two?]


CLEAR: Random House, Bantam, Doubleday, and Dell were individual publishing companies.

What's my take on the serial comma? I use it, but most of my clients do not. The choice is yours—especially if you pay the invoice!

The Art of Apology in ETC.

The twenty-fifth article of Philip Vassallo's WORDS ON THE LINE column appears in the current issue of ETC: A Review of General Semantics (62.3, July 2005). The article, "The Art of Apology," offers a rationale and strategy for writing a sincere and thorough apology.

WORDS ON THE LINE, Vassallo's widely referenced and praised column on effective writing at work, has been published in ETC. by the Institute of General Semantics (www.general-semantics.org) since 1992. The Institute was founded in 1943 by world-renowned author, lecturer, and politician Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa. The column focuses on a broad range of writing themes, including purposefulness, completeness, organization, style, tone, and e-mail etiquette. It has covered special-purpose messages, such as admissions essays, customer correspondence, evaluation reviews, executive summaries, meeting minutes, proposals, and technical reports. Selected articles from WORDS ON THE LINE have been reprinted in course software, business periodicals, and books by major business and academic publishers. Besides writing the column, Vassallo has also published social commentary, book reviews, poetry, and drama in the periodical. A bibliography of WORDS ON THE LINE appears below.

WORDS ON THE LINE Articles by Philip Vassallo
1. Know the P.R.I.C.E. of Your Writing (49.4) Winter 1992-93
2. Writing from the Heart (50.1) Spring 1993
3. The You Understood (50.2) Summer 1993
4. Fog Lifting and Ice-Breaking in Your Writing (50.4) Winter 1993-94
5. How Clearly Do Your Words Communicate? (53.1) Spring 1996
6. U-Mail, I-Mail — More Effective E-Mail (55.2) Summer 1998
7. Using the 4S Plan to Know Your Writing Strengths and Needs (55.4) Winter 1998-99
8. From Me to Us: Crossing the Bridge from Academic to Business Writing, with Barrett J. Mandel (56.3) Fall 1999
9. Beware the Seven Deadly Sins of Tone (57.1) Spring 2000
10. Protect Your R.E.P.: Revise, Edit, Proofread (58.1) Spring 2001
11. Meeting of the Minutes: Writing Meeting Minutes (58.2) Fall 2001
12. Persuading Powerfully: Tips for Persuasive Writing (59.1) Spring 2002
13. Using the Rule of Six to Convey Complex Content (59.2) Summer 2002
14. Reporting for Results: Creating a Checklist (59.3) Fall 2002
15. Egad! Another E-mail: Using E-Mail Sensibly (59.4) Winter 2002
16. Where Less Really Is More: Executive Summaries (60.1) Spring 2003
17. Writing Correctly Is Not Necessarily Writing Well (60.2) Summer 2003
18. Admissions Essays with a Focus on Getting In (60.3) Fall 2003
19. Using the Customer Service Triad for Client Correspondence (60.4) Winter 2003-04
20. Turning Emotional Energy into Purposeful Writing (61.1) April 2004
21. Getting Started with Evaluation Reports: Answering the Questions (61.2) July 2004
22. Getting Started with Evaluation Reports: Creating the Structure (61.3) October 2004 23. The Two Levels of Writing to the Point (62.1) January 2005
24. The Power of And … Blah, Blah, Blah (62.2) April 2005
25. The Art of Apology (62.3) July 2005

National Study Cites Gap in Writing Skills

A report published this month by the College Board's National Commission on Writing offers key insights into the writing skills of state employees and the value that their employers places on those skills.


The study, Writing: A Powerful Message from State Government, surveyed 49 of the 50 state human resources divisions on behalf on the National Governors Association. It published the following findings:

• Writing skills are critical for professional state employees. All 49 respondents reported that two-thirds or more of professional employees have some responsibility for writing.
• Writing is a basic consideration for state hiring and promotion. More than 75 percent of respondents report that they take writing into consideration in hiring and promoting professional employees. Almost 50 percent make the same claim about clerical and support staff.
• State agencies frequently require writing samples from job applicants. More than 90 percent of respondents in states that "almost always" take writing into account also require a writing sample from prospective professional employees.
• Poorly written applications are likely to doom candidates’ chances of employment. About 80 percent of respondents agree that poorly written materials would count against professional job applicants either "frequently" or "almost always." Six of ten say the same thing about applicants for clerical and support positions.
• Writing is a more significant promotion consideration in state government than in the private sector. In placing a high value on employees' writing skills, state government responded at a rate of 10 percent higher than did private sector human resources officials.
• Memos, letters, and e-mail are universal requirements in state agencies. More than half also report that policy alerts, legislative analyses, and formal and technical reports are "frequently" or "almost always" required. The volume of e-mail causes many state personnel directors to express concerns about the ease with which informal e-mail messages create serious communications problems.
• Some 30 percent of professionals are below standard in writing, and most states provide remedial writing training or instruction. The percentage is far hhigher for administrative support and clerical staff.
• Providing writing training costs state government about a quarter of a billion dollars annually. This training is designed as preventive action to ensure that state agencies' correspondence is purposeful and clear.

Once again, the written word takes center stage in a national study. The link to the study is www.writingcommission.org/prod_downloads/writingcom/powerful-message-from-state.pdf
More information about the improving employee writing skills is available by contacting Philip Vassallo at Phil@PhilVassallo.com.

WORDS ON THE LINE Referenced Again

Once again, we've spotted evidence that people around the globe are checking into WORDS ON THE LINE. The April 12 entry, "The Pluses and Minuses of Distance Learning," was referenced in "Wired Temples," a blog created by Robert Micallef, and economics professor who resides in Belgium and the Czech Republic. His blog is on Maltese culture, news, society, people, history, and blogs.


Keep reading WORDS ON THE LINE for useful tips and terrific resources on effective writing. Meanwhile, if you find a print or electronic point of interest and value, feel free to write Phil Vassallo at Phil@PhilVassallo.com.

Do I Appreciate You, or What You Do?

A common grammatical mistake that we have all seen is in the following sentence:

I appreciate you working on the project.

Since the word working functions not as a verb but as a noun (a gerund), we need a pronoun in the possessive case (your), not the subjective case (you). We appreciate people, places, or things (nouns), not action words (verbs). Examples include “I appreciate Helen,” “You appreciate Chicago,” or “We appreciate mangos”; however, we do not say, “I appreciate do,” "You appreciate go," or "We appreciate eat.”

The correct way to write the faulty sentence is as follows:

I appreciate your working on the project.

OK, but some of us find this sentence too impersonal. After all, we may want to say that we appreciate the person and not the thing the person did. So here’s another option:

I appreciate you for working on the project.

The choice is yours: Appreciate the person for doing something, or the thing the person does. As for me, I have two closing statements, both grammatically correct:

I appreciate you for reading this message.
I appreciate your reading this message.

What’s the Point of Having a Point?

If you have read previous postings on WORDS ON THE LINE, you would know how big I am on placing an explicit purpose statement in business messages. Sentences such as “I propose that we purchase PDAs for the six staff researchers in our Cincinnati office” or “This root-cause analysis reports on the equipment failure in our Tacoma facility on June 3” keep the writer focused while composing the message. They also immediately ground the reader in the writer’s reason for transmitting the message; in effect, they instantly put the reader to work. Therefore, we should be sure to place a purpose statement early in our documents. My book The Art of On-the Job Writing discusses in detail the power of a purpose statement, so I stand behind this principle whenever I lead a corporate writing class.

Sometimes, however, a clearly established relationship with another reader may preclude the need for writing a purpose statement in an informal e-mail. This point was cleverly illustrated by Jong Chan, a Supervising Specialist for the New York State Insurance Department and a participant in one of my recent courses. I assigned to the participants a writing situation in which a trade show produced disappointing results for their company. I assumed that they would write to Larry, the trade show representative, a message in which they either notify him of their intention of no longer participating in his future trade fairs, or asking him for concessions and improvements to guarantee their future attendance.

Mr. Chan, an experienced manager who supervises high-level employees in his organization, chose a different approach, one he called “neutral.” Here it is:

Larry,

The Chicago Trade Show raised concerns about the cost-benefit results for our company. We believe that it was too expensive and that your advertising underrepresented us.

Jong

Notice that he did not write a purpose statement, such as, “We will not attend future trade shows for the following reasons” or “We request a plan of action from you to ensure better results for our next appearance at your trade show.” Nevertheless, I know that I would have responded to the e-mail if I were Larry. After Mr. Chan read his message to the other participants, an audience of 20 professionals representing a broad range of business responsibilities and industries, I asked what they would do if they were Larry and they had received this message. Nearly all agreed that they would call Mr. Chan to see what they could do to keep him as a customer—precisely the result that Mr. Chan expected.

I congratulated Mr. Chan for achieving this interesting trick: being purposeful without writing a purpose. He proved that sometimes we do not need to write a purpose—as long as our readers can read our minds! But even Mr. Chan would agree that for most readers, we should play it safely and assert our purpose.

Watch Those Modifiers!

Someone who felt that men were treated unfairly in his department complained to me about his dilemma, but I could not help laughing when I read what he had written:

Where I work more men lift cartons than women.

What a strange place to work. I wonder if deciding which men get to lift the women is based on seniority. Surely, the complainant meant to write:

Where I work more men than women lift cartons.

Just by changing the position of the phrase than women, he would have achieved clarity. This error, known as a misplaced modifier, is easy to make--especially when writing quickly and not taking the time to edit.

Here is an example of a dangling modifier, a word or phrase attached to a sentence without connecting logically to it:

After raining for five minutes, I decided to leave the park.

This sounds like he had a drippy bladder. He could get arrested for doing that in public! Solution:

After it rained for five minutes, I decided to leave the park.

Editing takes time--but it's time well spent. Keep words and phrases as close as possible to the words they describe. We all want our readers to focus on our meaning, not to chuckle at our blunders.