Time to take down the tree and clean up the kitchen. While you’re at it, clean up your grammar!
Lou Ann Frala
Grand Marnier liqueur and hollandaise sauce are interesting additions to any dish. Take a moment and spell them right. Or you might just get a visit from the Grand Mariner. Shiver me timbers!
How many “Floridas” do you need? Certainly not two. In fact, in this case, you don’t need any. Everyone who reads this ad knows Riviera Beach and knows it’s in Florida. And as we said in our January 2021 segment on redundancies, unless you plan to write the liquor store a postcard, do you really need a ZIP code? Also: If you are using the postal abbreviation “FL,” you do not need a period. But if you are abbreviating “Boulevard” to “Blvd.,” you do.
Lou Ann Frala
What a tough brake.
Forget the grinch. Here comes the comma splice again. You need a period after “closed.” And in the interest of tight writing, you can lose the :00 and just say the place opens at 9, right? Plus, why do you need quotation marks?
Add an apostrophe. It’s so easy, even a child could do it. And make up your Mind about which words you Capitalize and where you Put punctuation.,:?
This is something we’ll address in depth in a future segment. It’s a double qualifier. Democrats either know for a fact these things may harm them, or they fear these things will harm them. Extra qualifiers are a form of redundancy — and a form of cowardly writing.
And we go to the video archives for Segment 8: Clichés. https://youtu.be/ABoi9z0N_aY
Readers: "Something Went Horribly Wrong," features samples of bad writing we see nearly every day. You can participate! Be our duly deputized “grammar police:” Your motto: “To protect and correct.” Send in your photos of store signs, street signs, newspaper headlines, tweets, and so on. It doesn’t have to be a grammatical error. It can be just what we call “cowardly writing.” Include your name and home town so we properly can credit you. You're free to add a comment, although we reserve the right to edit or omit. Now get out there! Send to Eliot@eliotkleinberg.com
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NOTE: Eliot and Lou Ann are available for speaking engagements, and can travel. Reach us through the comments section. Just think of all of your employees getting back to work on a Monday, their heads filled with all the ways we’ve shown them to be better communicators!