Business Writing With Buzz

It’s a rainy Tuesday and your deadline for an important tender is fast approaching. You’re doing the final proofread and everything is looking good… When, suddenly, it glares up from the page. A word that can trip up the most experienced writer: ‘affect’. The doubts creep in. Is it right? Are you sure it shouldn’t be ‘effect’?

You are not alone if you are sometimes stuck by doubts as to when and how to use some of the following words. Even the experts get caught out and need to check the rules. But don’t worry. We have got some simple ways to remember your ‘affect’ from your ‘effect’ and your ‘which’ from your ’that’.

Which/that
Which and that are commonly used interchangeably, but they actually do different jobs. "That" defines something, while "which" gives extra information about it, usually in a clause enclosed by commas:

This is the cake that Mary made.
This cake, which Mary made, is delicious.

You can delete ‘that’ from a sentence and it will still be grammatical (this is the cake Mary made) and this can be a good way to edit your writing. But a sentence using ‘which’ won’t make sense without it.

Affect/effect
It’s one of the most difficult to get right, but you’ll be OK if you remember ‘effect’ is usually a noun and ‘affect’ is always a verb.

She was greatly affected (verb) by the latest news. Smoking will affect (verb) your health.

Take care of your personal effects (noun). The effect (noun) it had was amazing.

The only exception is when we write in a formal style. Then we sometimes use ‘effect’ as a verb meaning ‘to carry out’ or ‘to cause to happen’:

The lawyer effected (verb) a great result. We hope to effect (verb) a change soon.

It’s/its
When do you use an apostrophe for ‘it’ plus ‘s’? It is intuitive to think it is when you use ‘it’ possessively as you do for ‘Mary’s cake’ or ‘Martin’s cheese’. But you’d be wrong. The possessive form of it does not include an apostrophe:

The cat is eating its fish.

The only time you use an apostrophe is when you want to shorten ‘it is’ or ‘it has’:

It’s a fat cat. It’s been a while since we met.

Advice/advise, practice/practise
Advice is a noun, and advise is a verb, just as practice is a noun and practise is a verb.

Take her advice (noun). She runs a large legal practice (noun).
I advise (verb) you to keep quiet. I will practise (verb) every day.

If you’ve got any others, let me know.

In her book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss explains why we need commas:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

'Why?' asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

'Well, I'm a panda,' he says, at the door. 'Look it up.'

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'

The sad truth is that we can't do without commas. And, to make it worse, while there are some set rules about how to use commas, writers and editors do not always agree about some of their other uses. This ambiguity means that people tend to abuse and misuse their commas.

Here’s what I mean:

All the children who love pizza will be there on Friday.

This means that only those children who love pizza will be there on Friday. Compare this to:

All the children, who love pizza, will be there on Friday.
 
All the children will be there on Friday and, by the way, they love to eat pizza.


How to use commas - lists

At school, the first use we learn for commas is to separate items in a list. For example:
 
When I go shopping I buy shoes, dresses, coats and gifts.

Sometimes, particularly in the US, we include a comma before "and" as in “dresses, coats, and gifts”. This is called an Oxford comma, or serial comma, because it was used by editors, proofreaders and printers at Oxford University Press.

In Australia and the UK it’s unusual to use an Oxford comma, but feel free if you think it adds clarity, particularly if the last two items in your list are not separate words.

For example, if we write, "I love margarita, meatlovers and ham and pineapple pizzas”, it is not clear if the last pizza is a single ‘ham and pineapple’ pizza or two pizzas: a ham pizza and a pineapple pizza. In this case, we could add the Oxford comma to say, “I love margarita, meatlovers, and ham and pineapple pizzas”.


How to use commas with adjectives

Commas in a list of adjectives are not always needed. As a guide, if you can change the order of the adjectives, use a comma. If not, there’s no need for a comma. Here’s what I mean:

The report was long, boring and too detailed.

You could shift the order of the adjectives:
The report was boring, long and too detailed.

My daughter has beautiful blonde hair and clear blue eyes.
As we can’t change the order of these adjectives, we don’t need commas.

How to use commas – to add extra information

Sometimes we add extra information to our sentences to make them more interesting. For instance:

Our business, the world’s largest producer of eggs, is opening a plant in Rio.

We could easily remove the information about ‘world’s largest producer of eggs’ without changing the meaning of the sentence.

How to use commas to join two clauses together

Use a comma to join two clauses together. These are two separate parts to a sentence joined by conjunctions such as and, but, so, or, yet, but could be separated by a full stop. For example:

I love eating pizza, but I don’t like anchovies.

This could also be written as:

I love eating pizza. But I don’t like anchovies.

There is a move away from using these commas, so if you feel the meaning is clear without a comma, go for it.

How to use commas after introductory statements

There is also a trend towards not using commas after introductory statements, which is fine if the meaning is clear. Whichever option you choose, be consistent. One of the biggest errors I see when proofreading is inconsistency – one sentence has an introductory statement with a comma and the next does not.

Here are some examples:

At Proof Communications, we help our clients to win more business.

On 5 September 2011, we will be holding a party with hundreds of guests.

You could write either of these sentences with no comma.

How to use commas around ‘interrupters’

Sometimes, to add emphasis, we use an interrupter in our sentences. These always need commas before and after:

She was, however, feeling sad about missing out on the pizza.

I asked her, reluctantly, if she would get take-away.

How to use commas: the last piece of advice

Commas give us a pause in our writing. They give us room to breathe. If you’re not sure when to use a comma, read your writing aloud. You’ll hear the need for a pause.
If you suffer from comma confusion, let us know now.