English has more than its fair share of all three of these things. Let’s have a look at some of the most troublesome examples of tricky words and punctuation in English, and look at ways to avoid making those mistakes in the future.

Apostrophe plus ‘s’, or no apostrophe plus ‘s’?

This is an age-old concern, when do I use the apostrophe plus an ‘s’, and when do I not use the apostrophe?

Think carefully about what apostrophes do. Most of the time they replace a missing letter, or they express possession.

About the only exception to that rule that you need to know is when you are using ‘its’ for possessions. As you will see here, there is no apostrophe.

Why?

Because if you did, it would be confused with the abbreviation of ‘it is’, when the apostrophe represents the missing ‘i’. Hence. ‘it’s’.

What is its name?

It’s really nice.

It’s true, then, that you would use an apostrophe plus ‘s’ in all other cases where there is a missing letter or a case of possessive. For example:

Mum’s coming over later.

That is mum’s car.

Now, of course, in context there is no way that you could confuse the meaning of the first ‘mum’s’ = ‘mum is’, and the second = the car belongs to mum.

Who or whom?

This one can cause a few issues, but it all boils down to whether you what to use a subject pronoun or object pronoun.

In short, if the word is replacing a subject pronoun (I, you, he, she, it, we, they), then the correct word is ‘who’. If the word is replacing the object pronoun (me, you, him, her, it, us, them) then the word you are looking for is ‘whom’. Here are some examples:

He is the man who lives next door. (Who is he?)

He is chatting to a girl whom he knows from work. (He is chatting to her)

But in reality, whom is nearly always replaced with ‘who’, and this is accepted practice, so the second sentence above could be:

He is chatting to a girl who he knows from work.

Affect or effect?

This is a really easy one to solve. ‘Affect’ is the verb, and ‘effect’ is the noun. That’s it! Here are some examples:

How does working there affect your health? (verb)

Working there has had many negative effects on my health. (noun)

Can I start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’?

Yes, of course, you can. Even in formal writing. It’s interesting that this seems to have become a rule, because it has never, in fact, been a rule. Don’t start every other sentence with these words, but every now and again it’s fine. It’s also quite literary too, so outlawing it would basically deny nearly every great writer there has ever been in the English language.

‘And what are you reading, Miss –?’ ‘Oh! It is only a novel!’ replies the young lady: while she lays down her book with affected indifference or momentary shame.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

‘But the Emperor has nothing on at all!’ cried a little child.

Hans Christian Anderson, The Emperor’s New Clothes

Should I use an ‘Oxford comma’?

An ‘Oxford comma’, so-called because it is a rule of the Oxford University Press, is when you use a comma before the final ‘and’ in a list. Here is a simple example:

I like to eat pizza, pasta, fish, and chips.

Here the Oxford comma is seen after the word ‘fish’. The other commas in the list are known as serial commas and are always correct.

The problem with omitting the Oxford comma is that it can change the meaning of what you are trying to say.

I like to eat pizza, pasta, fish and chips.

So, is that three different types of food (pizza, pasta, fish and chips), or four different types of food (pizza, pasta, fish [on its own] and chips [on their own])?

The point is that, by omitting the Oxford comma, you can make a sentence ambiguous. So it is always much better to use it because it leaves no doubt that those items are separate. And it is far from only the Oxford University Press that prescribes this comma. The vast majority of style guides do that.

So, should you use an Oxford comma? Yes!

When do I use a hyphen?

A hyphen should be used to connect two words that are acting together as one word.

That is nearly always true in adjectives that are comprised of two words. For example:

Easy-going person, self-respecting professional, old-fashioned shirt etc.

However, do not use the hyphen when the first word is an adverb:

Highly prized award, rarely seen animal.

However, when it comes to nouns, there are just no rules. The tradition is that these words tend to start out as two words, slowly evolve to include a hyphen over time, and eventually become one word. Who makes this decision? That’s a complicated question: too complicated to answer here.

The best advice with nouns? Check a dictionary. But even then you may find some differences of opinion

But here are some more examples of when you should use a hyphen:

He is a 23-year-old. (to express ages)

Twenty-one, fifty-seven (numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine)

Anti-inflammatory, self-absorbed, ex-girlfriend (with some prefixes, including always with self and ex)

My uncle had a concealed-weapons permit. (to avoid ambiguity. Removing the hyphen here could change the meaning)

The post Confusing English Words and Punctuation Rules appeared first on Linguix Blog.

Don’t word count

A good writer treats the article as a whole and tries to tell a story. Having to keep in mind a required volume can kill creativity. If a company uses outsourced writers, linking their pay with the number of words is the worst thing to do. It prompts the writer to include empty information in the article to get more money.

Offline media has to consider the physical size of a newspaper. In terms of online media, blog posts and articles can be of any size, as there is nothing to limit it. Don’t worry that an article is too short, that doesn’t matter.  

Quite often, short articles consisting of a few paragraphs are read by thousands of people, while long reads that took weeks to prepare go completely under the radar.

“This-Has-Already-Been-Covered” policy leads to failure

It’s always tempting to be the first one to cover something. But most topics a company could elaborate on have been already covered by somebody else. This isn’t an excuse to sit and wait for huge breaking news that will explode on all blog platforms and attract the attention of the best media outlets.

Regular postings are an important component of successful content promotion. You can’t write something unique every time unless your company is a giant like Google or Facebook. This means that you’ll have to learn how to find something newsworthy in unexpected places, look at existing topics from a new angle and compile different opinions and postings in order to channel a debate in the right direction.

Nobody wants your boring corporate news

With a few rare exceptions, corporate news doesn’t interest anyone except for founders, team members and relatives. So don’t publish press statements about a couple of new functions or changing the color of your menu buttons.

However, an article about how your company collected and analyzed data on audience preferences in order to introduce these features, or how changing the color of a button improved conversion and sales, could be appealing.

Earn the right to advertise

This is the single most important point. Former Apple staff and marketing guru Guy Kawasaki says companies should earn the right to advertise their products. If you start a conversation with your audience using press releases about your success, ignoring the interests of the readers, their numbers will not increase.

And vice versa, if your business wins an audience with compelling content, and then offers information about its goods and services to loyal readers, it will score really good results.

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