Can you spot what’s wrong in the Mistake Monday image below? Please post your answer as a comment.
I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.
There’s more than one way to rewrite this week’s example. What’s your suggestion?
Did you know that there are two kinds of quotation marks—straight and curly? Straight quotation marks don’t curve, whereas curly quotes seem to wriggle on the page (see image below). The actual appearance of the marks will vary depending on the font you use.
Straight quotes are a hangover from the days of typewriters when you would have needed separate keys to show the curly quotation marks that appear on the left versus those that appear on the right. Today, software can automatically supply the appropriate quotation marks. In fact, curly quotes are also known as “smart quotes” because they’re smart enough to lean in the appropriate direction.
Here’s what one blog says about straight versus curly in “Curly quotes and straight quotes: a quick guide.”
Straight quotes come from typewriter habits. Typewriter character sets were limited by mechanics, so they were replaced with straight quotes. That’s not an issue anymore with word processors and modern typing. Straight quotes are no longer a necessity.
Curly quotes are typically preferred by writers today because they’re more legible and flow better with the content. Straight quotes rarely have a place in any type of modern writing or typography, the technique, and art of arranging type. Designers and people who work with typography tend to stay away from straight quotes as a rule of thumb.
I favor curly quotes because they’re more modern and are generally preferred by my clients. If your company prefers straight quotes, that’s OK, but please use that style consistently. It’s jarring for some readers if you switch between styles.
There are some rare cases in which straight quotes might be preferred. “The ‘Smart Quote’ Struggle” discusses how the use of curly quotes is not supported for searches in some scholarly literature databases. (Thanks, Robyn Bradley, for this link!) This is also true, according to my techie husband, when technical query text is pasted from word processors directly into most database management software that uses some form of structured querying language (SQL).
To turn curly quotes on or off in Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, read “Smart quotes in Word and PowerPoint.”
Do you know when to use “historic” instead of “historical” in your financial writing?
For example, if you’re talking about the market setting new highs, you might refer to “historic highs.” That’s because “Historic is most commonly used for something famous or important in history,” as explained in “What’s the difference between ‘historic’ and ‘historical’?” on the Merriam-Webster website.
How do you write the plural of “Treasury”? Read my take on the topic in “Treasurys vs. Treasuries — Which is the right spelling?”
I wish I had known more about hospice care and the process of dying before a family member started it some years ago. Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully is a practical, down-to-earth book written by hospice nurse Julie McFadden. McFadden has a YouTube channel where you can get a taste of her approach to this topic.
On this topic, a friend also recommends The Good Death: A Guide for Supporting Your Loved One through the End of Life by nurse Suzanne B. O’Brien. The book is scheduled for release on March 18, 2025.
I’m a big fan of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
The museum is currently hosting a traveling exhibition of Flemish art, “Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks.” The show runs through May 4, 2025.
“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”
“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”
“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”
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I’ve long wondered why there is no apostrophe in words like “writers room,” ‘homeowners association,” or “teachers college.”
I found a good explanation in Emmy J. Favilla’s A World Without “Whom.”
Do not use an apostrophe when a word is primarily descriptive rather than possessive…. The word is acting more like an adjective than a possessive noun.
Grammar Girl agreed with this approach in a post on “Apostrophes” that’s no longer available. Here’s how she explained the lack of an apostrophe in farmers market:
The market is used by the farmers, populated by the farmers, but generally not owned by the farmers. So it seems reasonable to conclude that you don’t use an apostrophe because the word farmers is there to identify the type of market. It’s acting like an adjective.
There’s a word for these nouns that act as adjectives. They’re “attributive nouns,” according to Amy Einsohn in The Copyeditor’s Handbook.
And here’s a twist in the use of punctuation with attributive nouns. “If the plural form of the head noun does not end in s, however, the apostrophe is always used: the people’s republic, a children’s hospital,” says Einsohn.
English grammar sure is complicated.
Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I link only to books in which I find some value for my blog’s readers.
Note: This post was originally published on August 7, 2018, and was updated on Jan. 23, 2025.
Copyediting your firm’s bios seems like it should be easy. After all, bios simply report dry facts, right?
No! One problem is that employees may report the names of their employers and schools incorrectly. There’s probably no intention to deceive. Perhaps they knew the company by a short version of its name that wasn’t its legal name that should appear in a bio. Maybe their former employer or school has undergone a name change or been acquired. I’m familiar with the pain of acquisitions. I started working for Fleet Investment Advisors, which later became Columbia Management and is now Columbia Threadneedle Investments. It’s hard to keep up with all of the changes.
This kind of confusion is why, when copyediting bios recently for a client, I created a master list of school and company names, along with website addresses to document the organizations’ correct names.
You have options for how to refer to a past employer in a bio. For example, “ABC Investment Management (now XYZ Company)” or “XYZ Company (originally ABC Investment Management).” Whichever approach you choose, be consistent.
Paying attention to these details enhances people’s view of your organization as one that also pays attention to the details of how it manages client accounts.
Early in my career, I learned to put a comma before “as well as” when using it to mean “and.” However, apparently the recommended practice has changed, according to my recent research.
“As a general rule, you don’t need a comma before as well as.” That’s because “Using a comma turns the thing you’re talking about with as well as into an aside–information that’s less important than the rest of the sentence,” says Grammarly in “As Well As Comma.”
ProWritingAid agrees in “Comma Before ‘As Well As’: How to Punctuate Correctly,” saying, “The only time you might want to include a comma before as well as is if you want to de-emphasize the part of the sentence beginning with this phrase.”
In this case, I relied on Grammarly as well as ProWritingAid as resources to help me refine my punctuation.
By the way, “as well as” and “and” are not always interchangeable. This is explained in “’As Well As’ in a Sentence: How to Use It (with Examples)” on the ProWritingAid website. I mostly use “and” but sometimes use “as well as” for better rhythm or to de-emphasize the information that follows “as well as.”
To avoid other common punctuation mistakes, read my post on “Bloggers’ top two punctuation mistakes.”
This is the title of a Nielsen Norman Group decision tree infographic to help you decide whether it’s OK to use a form of generative artificial intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT for a task.
The decision tree starts with the question: “Does it matter if the output is TRUE?” If it matters, the next question is “Do you have the expertise and/or time to verify the accuracy of the output?” Then, you must take responsibility for any inaccuracies that sneak through. Even if the truth doesn’t matter, you still should do some checking. I hope this decision tree and the related article help people to use generative AI responsibly.
This useful infographic appears about halfway through “When Should We Trust AI? Magic-8-Ball Thinking” by Caleb Sponheim of Nielsen Norman Group.
Financial Blogging’s paperback version is on sale direct from the author for shipment within the U.S. as long as supplies last.
You can still buy a paperback copy of Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients for only $27 including shipping. Email me your shipping address so I can send you a PayPal invoice and confirm that you’re eligible for this offer.
The offer expires when I run out of copies. I have a limited supply of personal copies that I’m selling.
Michael Kitces says, “A great read for advisors who want to blog better—or learn how to start!” Learn more about the book.
Act now! The sale price is available only if you contact me directly.
I felt joy watching two chickadees take turns feeding on the sunflowers I grew from seeds.
However, I was not happy to see that some critter took a big bite out of a homegrown tomato. I also found a mostly intact tomato on the ground about 10 feet away, hiding under my rosebushes.
Still, I love my garden!
“Fast, effective, insightful. I can think of no better resource for superior financial writing.”
“Susan has an exceptional ability to tailor investment communications to the sophistication level of any audience. She has an uncanny ability to make very complex investment and/or economic topics accessible and understandable to anyone.”
“Susan’s particularly good at working through highly technical material very quickly. That’s very important in this business. A lot of people are good writers, but they have an extensive learning curve for something they’re unfamiliar with. Susan was able to jump very quickly into technical material.”
Attract more clients, prospects, and referral sources by improving your investment commentary with 44 pages of the best tips from the InvestmentWriting.com blog.
Tips include how to organize your thoughts, edit for the “big picture,” edit line by line, and get more mileage out of your commentary.
Available in PDF format for only $9.99. Buy it now!
Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients is available for purchase as a PDF ($39) or a paperback ($49, affiliate link).
Hire Susan to speakCould members of your organization benefit from learning to write better? Hire Susan to present on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” “Writing Effective Emails,” or a topic customized for your company.
A client used to abbreviate the United States as U.S. and the United Kingdom as UK. The inconsistency drove me batty. I couldn’t find a reason for that disparity. But it made me wonder, what are the rules for how one should abbreviate the United States?
The online AP Stylebook says “Uses periods in the abbreviation.” However, “In headlines, it’s US (no periods).” AP style seems to allow for multiple space-saving adaptations for headlines—like using numerals in headlines, but spelling out numbers under 10 in the body of the text. By the way, AP style has a similar rule for abbreviating United Kingdom.
Garner’s Modern American Usage says of U.S. and U.S.A.,
As the shortened forms for United States of America, these terms retain their periods, despite the modern trend to drop the periods in most initialisms… U.S. is best reserved for use as an adjective…, although to use it as a noun in headlines is common. In abbreviations incorporating U.S., the periods are typically dropped <USPS> <USO> <USNA>.
However, other style guides favor US. For example, the MLA Style Center says,
In its publications, the MLA uses the abbreviation US. (Practices among publishers vary, however, and it is not incorrect to use U.S. Whichever abbreviation you choose, be consistent.)
The MLA prefers to spell out the name United States in the main text of a work, in both adjective and noun forms. It uses the adjective form sparingly.
The Chicago Manual of Style also favors US, as it says in an online FAQ.
Until the 17th edition, Chicago style was to spell out the noun in running text, but abbreviate the adjective as US. Now, we allow US as a noun, but only if the meaning is clear from context—that is, the usage is subject to editorial discretion.
Notice how the MLA Style Center mentions consistency? Consistency is key because it makes your publications easier to read. Your organization should pick one style and stick with it.
I am sticking with U.S., unless I write for a publication with a style guide that calls for US. What about you?
If you like this post, you may also like “How to capitalize financial acronyms.”
I couldn’t find any rules suggesting why one should use U.S. for the United States along with UK for the United Kingdom. Do any of you have ideas about this? Please let me know. Curiosity is killing me.
One of my friends suggested that some publications mix the two styles of punctuation because UK is preferred in the United Kingdom.
Another suggested that it’s OK to drop the periods from UK but not U.S. because uk is not a real word, while us is a widely used pronoun.
Go to InvestmentWriting.com/book for details.
NOTE: I expanded this blog post on Oct. 31, 2022.
Commas drive me crazy. I’m often unsure about whether my clients’ long sentences need commas. A helpful rule is finally sinking into my head. I need to place a comma before an independent clause that follows a coordinating conjunction.
Here’s a nice, informative example from Actually, the Comma Goes Here by Lucy Cripps:
Each independent clause makes sense on its own, but it links very closely in theme to the other independent clause.
In the example, the phrases before and after the comma are each independent clauses.
“But” is bolded in the example to point to the importance of coordinating conjunctions like it in connecting independent clauses.
A coordinating conjunction—sometimes known as a coordinate conjunction— connects “elements of equal rank” in a sentence, in contrast with a subordinating conjunction that introduces “a subordinate element,” according to Words into Type.
A mnemonic—memory aid—can help you remember the main coordinating conjunctions. It’s FANBOYS.
For
And
Nor
But
Or
Yet
So
Some people, like Erin Brenner in “The Trouble with FANBOYS” quibble about the rules for FANBOYS, I think the mnemonic remains useful as a reminder that a comma may be needed.
Can you skip commas if a sentence consists of an independent and a dependent clause? It depends.
The following example from Actually, the Comma Goes Here both illustrates and explains the rule for when to use commas when combining an independent and a dependent clause:
If the dependent clause comes before the independent clause, we add a comma after the dependent clause.
Don’t use a comma if the dependent clause follows the independent clause.
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Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment.
I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.
A printed book is sometimes the best place to find a solution to your question about writing style, punctuation, or grammar.
Here are my five favorite reference books. I have updated this list because my favorites have changed over time, most notably with the elevation of Garner’s Modern American Usage from the “honorable mention” list.
If you’re passionate about good writing, you’ve probably got a favorite reference that I’ve overlooked. Please tell me about it by answering this poll question.
Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I provide links to books only when I believe they have value for my readers.
Updated: November and December 2021
Generally, one hyphenates compound modifiers that precede a noun, but not when the compound modifiers follow the noun. That means you’d write
That rule has been drummed into me, so I was surprised to read the following in Jan Venolia’s Write Right!: “Idiomatic usage retains the hyphen in certain compounds regardless of the order in which they appear in the sentence.” Venolia uses the following example:
Tax-exempt bonds can be purchased.
The bonds are tax-exempt.
One of my friends “corrected” me on social media when I posted asking examples of more words like “tax-exempt” that are hyphenated even when they follow a noun. I would have done the same thing before I read Venolia’s book.
I searched APStylebook.com, which told me to follow the dictionary in hyphenating “tax-exempt.” AP style follows the Webster’s New World College Dictionary, which uses a hyphen.
Similarly, a Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) blog says, “For matters of spelling, including hyphenation, Chicago usually defers to the first-listed entries in Merriam-Webster.” That blog post also says there are times that CMOS doesn’t follow the dictionary, as shown in the image below.
Have these exceptions confused you? They sure as heck confuse me. That’s why I subscribe to the online AP Stylebook, and I’ve added on an online subscription to Webster’s New World College Dictionary.
If you find some hyphen questions arise repeatedly, add them to your firm’s style guidelines.
Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I provide links to books only when I believe they have value for my readers.
Do you leave spaces around slashes in expressions such as “and/or” or do you open up spaces, using “and / or”? I’ve seen both styles.
The online AP Stylebook (paid subscription required) says “No space on either side of the slash.”
Here’s what Garner’s Modern American Usage says about “and/or”:
A legal and business expression dating from the mid-19th century, and/or has been vilified for most for most of its life—and rightly so. To avoid ambiguity, don’t use it…. Or alone usually suffices.
Notice that Garner doesn’t open up spaces around the slash. Also, he admits that there are times when this expression is useful.
I will continue to avoid putting spaces around my forward slashes.
Disclosure: If you click on an Amazon link in this post and then buy something, I will receive a small commission. I provide links to books only when I believe they have value for my readers.