1) Televerde will be a Titanium Sponsor at this years summit.
It’s this year’s, not years.
2) Our customized onsite business writing course is based on this simple principle: give staff the tools they need to write user-friendly and readable documents more efficiently and with less hassle.
“Staff” is a collective noun, which means it is treated as a singular noun, which means you can’t use a plural pronoun. The sentence should read “give your staff the tools it needs.”
Since this is a very basic principle, the “customized onsite business writing course” must be a bunch of crap.
Also, watch what I call the “and equivalency,” which happens when you use two basically identical concepts—in this case “more efficiently” and “with less hassle”—and join them with “and.” Pick the best word or phrase and use it: don’t lard up your writing with redundancies.
3) Lead management is is all about creating “one funnel” for marketing and sales and aligning the teams around a shared process.
Gee, watch those stutters. Like I said, this sort of mistake can be found by rinsing your text through Word.
4) For the entire first year of your life, Cody, I kept wondering when the wonderment of being your mother would wear off.
“Wonderment” is such a horrible word that it makes me want to gag. Coupled with “wondering” and it’s a real eye-roller. Poor Cody.
5) Please pay by Feb-25-15, so the seller can ship the item to you, otherwise, the seller can cancel this order.
Oh, eBay, thank you for this splendid example of a comma splice! A comma splice happens when you smash two complete sentences together without the benefit of proper punctuation. In this case, eBay had two viable options:
A) Put a semicolon instead of a comma after “you.”
B) Put a period after “you” and start a new sentence.
6) We have also experienced many of the challenges most CEO’s and business owners face with their outbound marketing, client relationship management and retention, and prospect follow up processes along with systems development and the solutions needed to achieve scale.
Using “and” four times in a sentence is ridiculous. Plus, the plural of CEOs is CEOs—no apostrophe.
7) If you’re running a successful and productive company it’s highly likely you don’t have time to manage your facebook and twitter accounts, that’s where I come in.
Wow, what a hot mess!
Rule: When you start a sentence with “if,” it’s highly likely that you’ve got a dependent clause plus an independent clause, which means you need a comma after the dependent clause, which means there should have been a comma after “company.”
Rule: Proper nouns (like Facebook and Twitter) are capitalized.
Rule: Two complete sentences joined by a comma is what’s known as a “comma splice.” In this whatever it is, the second sentence starts with “that’s.” The writer had three options: use a semicolon instead of the comma, use a period instead of the comma, or use the comma plus a conjunction.
8) A Floridian, she hails from a small town in north east Florida.
“Northeast” is one word.
9) “Closing the Gap” to help small businesses have ‘large budget’ impacts with minimal spending.
First off, this isn’t a complete sentence. Secondly, it’s incorrect to use single quotes around “large impact.” Thirdly, why is the “g” in “gap” capitalized? Really, why are there quotes in this sentence at all?
10) Click the ‘Schedule a Meeting’ button below to view my schedule availability.
In American English, always start out with double quotes. Unless you have a quote within the quote (in which case you’d use single quotes), you should stick with double quotes throughout.
11) People want to see the person they are connecting with, they want to make sure you are the right connection they are searching for, why not make it easy for them.
Yet another comma splice. I would have suggested adding the conjunction “so” with the comma and making the sentence a question, to read:
People want to see the person they are connecting with, they want to make sure you are the right connection they are searching for, so why not make it easy for them?
12) If you met someone at a networking function, remind them how nice it was to meet them at that event and you’d like to be connected on LinkedIn. The worst thing you can do when reaching out to someone new is to send a connection request stating “Since you’re a person I trust, I’d like to add you as a connection on LinkedIn”.
This is some horrible writing, no doubt. “Someone” is singular, so you cannot use a plural pronoun: the correct way to say this would have been to use “remind that person” or “remind him or her,” but you can’t say what this writer said. And, please! Let’s all pinky swear never to use “reach out” and “reaching out” ever again. And, finally, there are no circumstances in American English when quotation marks go inside a period or comma. Hear my voice in your head.
13) If you have a target market, speak to them.
A “market” is singular, and so cannot take a plural pronoun. A market is an “it.”
14) No, this is not endorsing. Which is the most overrated thing someone can do on LinkedIn. Its too easy to endorse someone. I’m referring to giving someone a recommendation. You should reach out and recommend at least 10 professionals you’ve done business with or can vouch for before you ask for a recommendation. Be specific in your recommendation as well. Don’t just use words like ‘awesome’, ‘hard-worker’, etc.
When I see writing like this, I just can’t imagine anyone trusting the writer in any sort of professional capacity. The whole thing needs a thorough rewrite, but, just to point out what’s absolutely wrong:
1) The “Which” clause is not a complete sentence.
2) “Its” is incorrect; it should read “it’s.”
3) “Reach out” is a cliché and should be banned from use.
4) Those single quotes should be double quotes.
5) And, finally, quotation marks in American English are always placed outside periods and commas. Learn this rule. Embrace it. Own it.
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