An agent told me recently she had lost a client because of a punctuation error. She was responding to an e-mail inquiry and wrote back in her reply: “We would be more than happy to show you several homes on that street, however, a few of them are still under construction.”

Ouch!

The unidentified Internet customer simply wrote back, “If you’re going to make those kinds of errors in an e-mail, how can I trust that you won’t make errors in a handwritten offer, errors that might cost me money?”

The rule is: when you join two complete thoughts together (we call these “independent clauses”) with a word like “however” (they’re called “coordinating adverbs”), you need a semicolon preceding “however” and a comma afterward, so it looks like this: “We would be more than happy to show you several homes on that street; however, a few of them are still under construction.”

Sound easy? In my opinion, it is the #2 most common error in business writing today and one that drives many people nuts. Only coordinating conjunctions can join two sentences together with a comma. And there are only seven of these. An easy way to remember them is with the word, BOYSFAN: “but,” “or”, “yet,” “so”, “for”, “and”, and “nor.” Coordinating adverbs like “however,” “ nevertheless,” “consequently,” and “therefore,” --- are not conjunctions and have to be punctuated differently.

Let’s try it one more time.

The pool, however, needs work. That’s fine because we are not combining two independent clauses.

The pool is full of algae; however, the owner says she’ll have that cleared up by Friday. Here we are combining independent clauses. The semicolon is necessary. (You could also put a period after “algae” and start a new sentence with “however”.)

The #1 error seen more frequently in the writing of business professionals is a simple one. The word “its” is possessive. The dog has its bone. The staff has its problems. “It’s” means it is. It’s going to be a great day.

You’d think this is obvious, but here is a word that spell check won’t catch. And our brains often miss it because we see the letters “i” “t” and “s” -----and overlook the apostrophe. (And of course, there is no such word as its’).

You can proofread for errors like these by reading your writing out loud, reading it backwards, reading line by line, or forcing yourself to read every contraction as two separate words. That way you can avoid confusing they’re/their/there and were/we’re, etc. These are all very common mistakes.

So this agent told me that she thought it was ridiculous for some snooty, arrogant, English teacher to turn her down just because of a simple, innocent mistake.

Perhaps. But if your clients are detail-oriented, analytical, and systematic (as most Internet consumers are), expect them to look at every stain on the carpeting in the house and every flaw in your writing.

The making of grammar and spelling errors may not seem like a big deal for many of us, but for some, it is an indication of who we are. Are we detail-oriented, meticulous, and analytical? Or, are we so driven and fast-paced, so overwhelmed with things to do, that we miss something in the fine print or some small detail that could make or break a deal?

Never before in the history of the world have we been more vulnerable to “the grammar error.” We pour over contracts so quickly, and we press that e-mail “send” button with such speed that we don’t have a chance to review our mistakes or proofread our work. It’s perhaps time to change all that and become familiar with some easy techniques and strategies that can save us all from making embarrassing errors.

By the way, there’s a spelling error in the above paragraph. You caught it if you pored over this article carefully.

Published: November 30, 2001

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