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    English to the Rescue: A Primer for Workplace Writing
    English to the Rescue: A Primer for Workplace Writing
    English to the Rescue: A Primer for Workplace Writing
    Ebook192 pages2 hours

    English to the Rescue: A Primer for Workplace Writing

    By John Stonehouse

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    About this ebook

    This book is a guide to concise, correct English. It is both a refresher and a ready reference (A-Z) to punctuation, clarity, structure and vocabulary. Examples of common documents as well as exercises are appended. People who can benefit from this primer are students, supervisors, work-at-homes, and anyone who has to write on the job.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Stonehouse
    Release dateSep 4, 2012
    ISBN9780988142404
    English to the Rescue: A Primer for Workplace Writing
    Author

    John Stonehouse

    John was born in (West) Hartlepool, U.K., and emigrated to Canada in his twenties. He taught and administered in three community colleges in Manitoba and British Columbia. For over fifty years, he has served extensively on boards and committees as an electee, a volunteer, and an appointee. His work experience also includes military intelligence and chemical research. He is married and lives in Victoria, B.C.

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      Book preview

      English to the Rescue - John Stonehouse

      ENGLISH TO THE RESCUE

      A Primer for Workplace Writing

      JOHN STONEHOUSE

      Victoria, B.C., Canada

      2012

      FOREWORD

      This book tries to answer an apparent need for concise, correct English in a world of decreasing standards and increasing electronic mayhem. Deliberately, I have not attempted to write a bestseller along the lines of Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynn Truss or an eye-catcher like Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s The Well-Tempered Sentence or The Transitive Vampire. Nor is this a book like the excellent Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Neither can it compete with the voluminous and comprehensive Fowler’s Modern English Usage.

      I chose the title English to the Rescue because my experience suggests that many literate persons when asked to write a document need just that – RESCUE. It might be rescue from old and incorrect habits, or rescue from the inertia of wondering how and where to start, or rescue from the struggle to improve things during revision.

      In a nutshell, this is a refresher for the rusty and an easy-to-use reference for those who (for one reason or another) may not have encountered some of the essentials of good and effective written English. The A, B, C approach is used in the main body, A Writer’s Lexicon. This is simply to organize alphabetically the main items of punctuation, sentence structure, clarity, vocabulary, and document organization – more for easy reference than for a simple-to-difficult sequence. This is followed by five appendices providing examples of common documents – a letter, a memorandum, the minutes of a meeting, a progress report, and a proposal. The Workouts (or exercises) have been placed at the end deliberately. If you fully understand the section you are referencing, then there’s probably no need to do the Workout. In any case, the Workouts placed beside the related topics would likely get in the way.

      This workplace primer is based on my experience in industry, local government, and college teaching and administration. I got off to an early start in my mid-teens when having to write countless lab reports in a research department: a variety of supervisors kept me on my toes. Later I taught both technical and business writing, augmented by the delivery of self-created seminars to professional and government groups. As well as examples from my own documents and course materials, there are random examples from a variety of sources (as listed at the end).

      So whether you are a supervisor, a work-at-home entrepreneur, a student, a person seeking promotion or self-improvement, or a user of English as a second language, I am confident you will find this book useful, informative and straightforward. Further, I hope it will boost your confidence to be correct.

      John Stonehouse, Victoria, B.C.

      Copyright 2012, John Stonehouse; published at Smashwords.com

      ISBN 978-0-9881424-0-4

      This e-book is licensed for only your personal use and enjoyment. It may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share it with others, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords.com to purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting this author’s work.

      Cover design by Simon Connor: e-mail to connor_simon@hotmail.com

      Cover photo attributed to http://www.everystockphoto.com/photographer.php Photographer ADL999 (which does not imply endorsement of this e-book)

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Foreword

      A Writer’s Lexicon A-Z

      Abbreviations – Abstract – Acronyms – Agenda – Ampersand – Antonyms – Apostrophes – Appendix – Back-Formation – Blends – Boldface – Brackets – Bullets – Capital Letters – Clichés – Colons – Commas – Conciseness – Dangling Modifier – Dashes – Dictionaries – Documenting – Ellipsis – E-mail English – Emoticons – Emphasis – Eponyms – Exclamation Marks – Fog Index – Foreign Borrowings – Fragments – Full-Stop or Period – Gobbledygook – Headings – Headlines – Homo – Homographs – Homonyms – Homophones – Hyphens – Instructions – Italics – Jargon – Latin – Layout – Letter, Simplified – Lists – Meetings – Memorandum – Minutes – Mood – Motion – Neologisms – Notations – Numbers – Numbering Systems – Numerals, Arabic – Numerals, Roman – Organization – Paragraphing – Parallelism – Parentheses – Planning for Writing – Playful Formations – Playscript Technique – Précis – Procedure – Progress Report – Proofreading – Proposal Writing – Punctuation – Question Marks – Quotation Marks – Quotations – Redundancies – Revising – Semi-Colons – Sentence Faults – Sentence Length – Shifts – Short Words – Silent Letters – Slashes – Style Guides – Summary – Synonyms – Synopsis – Text Messages – Thesaurus – Tone – Topic Sentences – Toponyms – Trade Marks – Transitions – Underlining – Units (S.I.) – W5 (Who? Why? When? Where? What? & How?) – X is for Getting It Wrong – Yes or No Answers

      Appendix A An Example of a Letter in the Simplified Style

      Appendix B An Example of a Memorandum

      Appendix C An Example of Minutes of a Meeting

      Appendix D An Example of a Progress Report

      Appendix E An Example of an Internal Proposal

      Sources

      References

      Workouts for Practice in Punctuation and Grammar

      Answers to Workouts

      Afterword

      About the Author

      A WRITER’S LEXICON A – Z

      A

      ABBREVIATIONS

      Some abbreviations are appropriate in both formal and informal writing.

      USE ABBREVIATIONS IN TITLES BEFORE PROPER NOUNS.

      He will see Dr. Swan tomorrow.

      (Inappropriate: He will see the Dr. tomorrow.)

      St. Theresa’s is the oldest church in town.

      Hon. John Diefenbaker was a champion of individual rights.

      USE ABBREVIATIONS IN TITLES AFTER PROPER NAMES AND ACADEMIC DEGREES BY THEMSELVES.

      Keith Smith is now studying for his Ph.D.

      Jane Field, COO, will become CEO in January. [Note that periods after abbreviations are disappearing too.]

      USE ABBREVIATIONS FOR COMMON LATIN EXPRESSIONS.

      In most writing, Latin abbreviations such as i.e. and e.g. are common. See the section LATIN. Note, however, the abuse of etc. when the extension of ideas it implies is unclear:

      We swam, fished, etc., when we visited Banff. [What exactly does etc. mean here?]

      USE ABBREVIATIONS WITH CERTAIN DATES AND NUMERALS.

      These are B.C., A.D., a.m., p.m., no., but more frequently most are found without periods.

      Appropriate: Take the no. 20 bus to Lee Hill.

      Inappropriate: I asked him the bus no. to Lee Hill.

      Appropriate: Sophocles lived 495-406 B.C. in Greece.

      Inappropriate: He lived in Greece B.C.

      IN FORMAL WRITING SPELL OUT IN FULL PERSONAL NAMES, NAMES OF COUNTRIES, PROVINCES, STATES, COUNTIES, MONTHS, DAYS OF THE WEEK, AND SUCH WORDS AS COMPANY, STREET, AVENUE, AND SO ON.

      The Melco Company now has an office in Kitchener, Ontario, on the corner of Mason Avenue and Browning Street. George Perry is the regional manager.

      Consult a handbook for a list of other abbreviations which may be acceptable. The list will include such widely different entries as AM, FM, GNP, GMT, PST, PS, RR and so on, with or without periods.

      Some abbreviations are also known as clipped words, and are discussed under NEOLOGISMS. Abbreviations are incorrectly referred to as ACRONYMS; only some abbreviations are acronyms.

      Workout 1 (near the end of this document) gives practice in abbreviations.

      ABSTRACT

      An abstract is a summary, usually of an academic paper such as a thesis. It usually provides the gist of what the paper is about without necessarily revealing the key findings. In that sense, it resembles a film review: you get an idea of the story, but the ending is not revealed.

      Routinely, abstracts will be found in the programmes of conferences, at the start of papers presented at such conferences, and in the issues of professional or academic journals.

      An abstract differs considerably from a SUMMARY and a SYNOPSIS.

      ACRONYMS

      Acronyms are words created from the abbreviation of titles, phrases, and so on, and are pronounced as words. Thus laser (Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation, erstwhile L.A.S.E.R.) is pronounced as ‘layser’ and not as ‘ell ay ess ee ar’. Other examples are DOS and UNESCO (or Unesco), but neither BBC nor CBC is an acronym.

      Recently a local TV newscaster created his own acronym by calling St. Michael’s University School ‘Smoos’ instead of the more usual ‘Ess Em Yu’. This is a dubious practice.

      For a more detailed discussion see NEOLOGISMS or new words.

      AGENDA

      The word agenda is plural and means items to do and/or agree upon. The singular agendum is most likely extinct (except in books like this); you will not hear anyone say I have an agendum to add.

      Agenda has become a political buzz word, as in the phrase a hidden agenda. In this book, however, the word will be used exclusively in the context of MEETINGS, in which section there is a sample notice of meeting with agenda.

      AMPERSAND

      Nowadays, an ampersand is the sign &, meaning ‘and’. (It originated as ‘and per se and’.) It’s essentially a space-saving device, but it mainly survives in handwriting, e-mails, and in the names of companies like Marks & Spencer.

      ANTONYMS

      An antonym is a word of opposite meaning to another; thus strong is an antonym of weak, and bold of meek. In the same vein, an antonym is the mirror image of a SYNONYM, which is a word of similar meaning to another.

      APOSTROPHES

      Near the turn of the last century, a newspaper article Requiem for a Jumped-up Comma forecast the imminent demise of this minor mark of punctuation. The suggestion seems premature, as you will see.

      USE AN APOSTROPHE TO SHOW THE POSSESSIVE CASE OF NOUNS.

      If a word (either singular or plural) does not end in s, add an apostrophe and s to form the possessive.

      the child’s book; the children’s books; someone’s book; people’s books; the company’s stock; the report’s summary; the game’s result; the men’s pay

      If the singular of a word ends in s, add an apostrophe and s unless the second s makes pronunciation difficult. In these cases, add only the apostrophe.

      James’s evaluation; Iris’s job But Sophocles’ dramas; Moses’ example

      If the plural of a word ends in s, add only the apostrophe.

      the boys’ leader; the employees’ social; the Joneses’ cottage (there are at least two persons named Jones)

      Jones’ computer or Jones’s computer (there is only one person named Jones)

      For compound words, make only the last word possessive.

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