I’d like to meet my colleagues, Kristen, and James.

You may ask whether the last comma in the example above is necessary. In this case, the Oxford comma clarifies to the reader that colleagues, Kristen, and James are separate entities. It implies that Kristen and James are not the writer’s colleagues. If they are, however, the Oxford comma should be removed:

I’d like to meet my colleagues, Kristen and James.

The Oxford comma is also called the serial (or series) comma and is used to clear up ambiguity like in the sentence above. However, it’s redundant in most lists:

Our pets love bananas, apples and watermelons.

As you can see, the Oxford comma in this example is unnecessary. Should we use it when it’s clearly superfluous? Let’s figure it out.

Do We Always Need the Oxford Comma?

To illustrate why the Oxford comma is important in some cases, let’s consider the following example:

We’re happy to see your friends, Taylor Swift and Jared Leto.

The obvious questions arise: are they seeing the friends and Taylor Swift and Jared Leto as separate entities? Or are Taylor Swift and Jared Leto the friends? It’s ambiguous and there is no clear answer unless the Oxford comma is present:

We’re happy to see your friends, Taylor Swift, and Jared Leto.

The Oxford comma here fully clarifies that they’re happy to see not only Taylor and Jared but also their friends.

However, as mentioned before the Oxford comma isn’t always necessary:

Yesterday I bought a dress, a skirt, and an amazing ring.

There is no ambiguity, so the Oxford comma is redundant. Nevertheless, supporters of the comma insist on its usage even if it’s unnecessary. In fact, it’s a matter of style. 

Use of the Oxford comma Comes Down to Style

Most publications have their own writing guidelines. There are two well-known style guides – the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style. The AP Stylebook doesn’t require the use of the Oxford comma. In turn, the Chicago Manual of Style uses it. These guides are created not to demonstrate the only way for grammatically correct writing, but to maintain consistency. 

In general, whether to use the Oxford comma or not is up to you if the ambiguity isn’t in place. 

Bottom Line

The use of the Oxford comma is grammatically correct and sometimes can be unnecessary. Therefore, it’s open to interpretation and there is no clear answer.

When it comes to academic writing, make sure you’ve chosen appropriate style guides. Otherwise, follow your gut and keep in mind that being consistent is what matters most.

The post What is the Oxford Comma and When You Need It appeared first on Linguix Blog.

Now, of course, this is an impossible thing to guarantee, and so, is a hollow promise, but in marketing terms, it is what is called a Call to Action (CTA). CTAs are everywhere, particularly online, because nearly everyone wants you to buy something, like something, share something, sign up for something, and so on. CTAs are what achieve this.

What is a Call to Action (CTA)?

Quite simply, CTAs are the part of a marketer’s message that asks, or rather, persuade, you to do something. Usually, there is a trade: do this and you will get this! This is clear from the example at the top of the page. What do you have to do? Read the article. What will be the result? Happiness.

What is the value of Calls to Action (CTAs)?

In marketing circles, CTAs are integral to the sales approach, because CTAs are part of the process that turns leads into customers. In short, effective CTAs boost that all-important conversion rate, which can be defined as the number of leads who actually buy from you.

But CTAs are not all about selling. Or at least, they are not all geared at selling first up. The marketing route can be a little longer, so first, the marketer wants you to become part of the community (sign-up to our free newsletter) or begin a relationship with someone in the company (contact one of our team today). The sale might be the end reward, but CTAs can be seen regularly on this journey from initial interest to the sale.

Examples of Calls to Action (CTAs)

Here are some examples of classic CTAs, some of which have already been seen here:

·  Read this article to learn more

·  Sign up to our free newsletter to get the latest news and offers

·  Enter your email address to enter our free prize draw to win a great prize

·  Contact one of our dedicated team to learn more and see how you can benefit

In these four CTAs, you can see examples of the classic ‘exchange’ between the marketer and the potential customer (you). Each time there is a request for you to do something, and a reward is promised. It’s a simple premise, and unsurprisingly, it can be highly effective.

How can you produce great Calls to Action (CTAs)?

There are a few simple tricks which can be utilized to produce effective CTAs:

What does your audience want/need?

As always in sales, it relates back to what is a fundamental point for any marketer: what does your target customer want or need?

If you sell cars, then the simple answer to this question would be ‘a car’? But, of course, you need to have much more information than this. What kind of car, and what is the problem that the customer needs solving? Enough space to transport the family? Something economical that won’t break the bank? Something energy efficient? Once you understand in great detail who your audience is and what they really want, then you can write CTAs that really entice.

Keep the CTA simple

No one wants a complicated and ambiguous CTA. If the potential customer has to pause for one second to think, ‘what is in this for me?’, then you have failed. Make it clear what the ‘reward’ is.

Be persuasive, and original where possible

The average person will be bombarded with literally thousands of CTAs in a relatively short period of time, so why will they take notice of (and complete) yours when there are so many choices and noise? Originality works beautifully – stand out from the crowd. And be persuasive, which means using the right language (not being too pushy) and connecting to the very first point, which is understanding deeply what that potential customer wants or needs (and then making it clear how you can solve that want or need)!

Make the CTA simple

This is an obvious point, but another example of where CTAs regularly fall down. If you want someone to sign up for a newsletter, or similar, why give them a form with 20 fields to fill? The vast majority of people will take one look and think ‘no chance, I’m too busy for this’. So instead, ask for only three. If you need more, then don’t lay everything out in one go, but instead have steps to the activity which mask cleverly how much there actually is. This is a typical trick that savvy marketers employ.

And there it is – simple ways to turn your CTAs into effective conversion tools!

The post Writing Great CTAs (Calls to Action) appeared first on Linguix Blog.

This is why you as an author should work on your writing style, and here are five simple tips that will help in lifting it fast.

1. Do not fall into a habit of using coordinating conjunctions at the beginning of sentences

There is a lot of controversy about whether one can start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction or it is a bad writing style.

Words like ‘And’ or ‘But’ are coordinating conjunctions as they connect two or more word structures. Remarkable fact: it has never been wrong to use such words at the beginning of a sentence, it is not a grammatical mistake.

However, as it is very easy to start your sentence with ‘And’ or ‘But’ many people fall into a habit of doing that. Overuse of coordinating conjunctions makes your writing less readable.

This is why you should develop a sense of language to be flexible enough to use such words to control the tone and add more variety to your writing.

Here is an example of proper use of coordinating conjunctions at the beginning of a sentence:

Mary prepared her essay on time. But she forgot to copy the file, and someone deleted it by accident.

If you combine two sentences into one, there will be no pause and less drama:

Mary prepared her essay on time, but she forgot to copy the file, and someone deleted it by accident.

Try to use words like ‘And’ or ‘But’ to add more emotions to your text, not to litter it.

2. Study subject pronouns

A subject pronoun is a pronoun that can serve as a subject of a sentence – the role that a noun usually takes. A subject, as we remember, is a person or an object that performs action which a verb describes.

While it seems like a not that complicated thing to understand, there are a bunch of mistakes people make when dealing with subject pronouns.

One of the most popular is using an object form where it would be correct to stick to a subject form.

Example:

She is wiser than me!

Subject forms are the words I, he, she, we, and they. They usually used as the subject for a verb. In this case, it would be correct to use I.

3. Avoid starting sentences with a figure

Starting your sentence with a number denoted by a figure looks bad. So it is better to reword it to expand the number with a word.

Examples:

Bad: 12 people were injured.

Good: Twelve people were injured.

The second version looks much better, though it is not _officially_ wrong to use figures at the beginning of a sentence. It is just a bad style.

However, every even most flexible rule or recommendation might have an exception. If a number contains a decimal point, rewording it will make things worse.

Examples:

Good: 51.45% of marketing professionals said they plan to increase their digital advertising budgets in the upcoming year.

Bad: Fifty-one point forty-five percent of marketing professionals said they plan to increase their digital advertising budgets in the upcoming year.

The second version is just terrible, so it is better to leave the initial sentence as it is.

4. Watch for words at the beginning of successive sentences

This advice is more about proofreading than writing itself. Very often when you’ve managed to catch your muse, the text is written fast. It is essential not to underestimate the value of proofreading.

Read your piece once again, and you will find lots of typos, mistakes, and things to fix to make the text cleaner. Here is an example of a sample blog post, which would be much better if run through proofreading before publishing.

5. Fight redundancy

Redundant expressions make your text cluttered, hard to read, and sometimes create an impression, that the author does not fully understand the topic.

There are several types of redundancies:

• Adjectives with the same meaning as the word they describe.
• Adverbs repeating the meaning of a verb.
• A group of words with identical meaning.

Basically, though, you can spot a redundancy by analyzing your sentence and asking your self, whether it contains two or more words with similar meaning. If there are such words, and you feel that it is possible to omit some of them keeping only one – you’ve spotted a redundancy!

Example:

Bad: Employees were delivering their best results approximately about 12 working days per month.

Here “approximately” and “about” have similar meaning, so we can safely keep only one word.

Good: Employees were delivering their best results approximately 12 working days per month.

The post Five Simple Tips That Will Skyrocket Your Writing Style appeared first on Linguix Blog.

Here is how redundancy looks like:

The former alumnus of Harvard was elected as a mayor of his hometown.

He head money sufficient enough to buy a new car.

I was going to send an email to you.

Expressions highlighted by bold are redundant. You in the first sentence you can keep only “alumnus” as it denotes former student of a school, “sufficient” in the second one is the same as “enough” , and writing “email you” instead of “send an email” will let anyone understand what you were going to say here.   

To keep your writing clean you’d better avoid such repetitions, as they make your text look crowded and hard to read. Moreover, sometimes redundancies give the impression that you do not fully understand what you are writing about.

Types of redundant expressions

There are three main types of redundant expressions.

Type #1. Adjectives with the same meaning as the word they describe

I was invited to their annual anniversary party.

If you put the word “anniversary” to the dictionary, you’ll see that it means ‘the date on which an event took place in a previous year’ which clearly denotes its annual nature. So you can keep only a noun in this phrase with no harm to its meaning.

Type #2. Adverbs repeating the meaning of a verb

This often happens when you use verbs with prefixes like re- denoting repetition. For example:

After figuring out that the new ad campaign does not work out, it was reverted back to the previous one.

Here it would be much better to say that the ad campaign was reverted to the previous one.

Type #3. A group of words with identical meaning

Sometimes people put in the sentence a group of words each of which has identical meaning. The result is always confusing:

He has acrophobia but nevertheless continued climbing this high wall.

“But” is the same as “nevertheless,” so using both of them is excessive here.

How to spot and get rid of redundancies in your writing

It is a tricky question. The only solution for fighting redundancies by your own is to develop your knowledge of English words meanings. Train yourself with a dictionary; a lot of practice is critical here. However, it will take you a long time until you will be able to spot most of the redundancies in your sentences.

Other way is to use software tools that will be able to do the job for you. For example, to cover your back and be sure your writing is always clean and effective, use Linguix Premium. Our algorithm perfectly spots redundancies and generates suggestions for fixing issues in your writing.

In a matter of seconds, you will be able to fight redundancies, fix your grammar, and get other recommendations crucial for a good writing style. All with our Chrome or Firefox extension.

Good luck with your writing!

The post How to Avoid Redundant Expressions appeared first on Linguix Blog.