The panda eats shoots and leaves

Fun fact about the legendary 1963 hit She Loves You by The Beatles: when Paul McCartney played the newly finished track to his father, his dad suggested changing the Americanised "yeah, yeah, yeah" to a more proper "yes, yes, yes”.

It’s a good job we don’t always take advice from our parents.

However, I get where Papa McCartney was coming from. Standards are important.

And lots of other people care about these things too: Just look at the efforts of residents of St Mary’s Terrace, in Twyford, Hampshire, who recently won their battle to have the sign’s apostrophe restored.

It had been given a new sign, minus the proper punctuation, after Winchester Council announced it was removing apostrophes from signage to make names clearer for emergency services, and to prevent computer glitches.

However, in light of these strong feelings, it restored the old sign a year later.

Grammar nerds get a bad wrap

But they play an important role – increasingly so as we adopt a more ‘conversational’ tone of voice in our business writing.

I’m all for informal writing (in case you haven’t noticed). It’s a highly effective way to help an audience to feel at ease, engaged, and clear about what we’re saying.

Compare the stuffy: “We regret to inform you that the delivery will be delayed due to adverse weather conditions.”

With the more natural: “Sorry, but the delivery will be late because of the weather.”

The only problem is that sometimes people think that conversational means casual, or “anything goes” and that punctuation and grammar aren’t important. This can make good conversational writing seem accidental and sloppy rather than deliberate and professional.

So let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater

Say yes to:

• ‘And’ at the start of a sentence

• ‘We’ll’ instead of ‘we will’

• Using capital letters sparingly

This not only sounds more chatty, but also helps the flow of the sentence, which helps people to get the information quicker.

But let’s say no to:

• Multiple exclamation marks (can sound over excited!)

• Overuse of ellipses (seems like you can’t be bothered…)

• Missing or incorrect apostrophes

These are distracting.

Ideally, we want the language we use to be informal enough to engage and resonate, while also making people feel confident in our expertise and reliability.

Getting this balance right is key to good marketing.

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