What Is the Singular They, and Why Should I Use It?

Last year, Grammarly polled our social audiences to see if they supported gender-neutral pronoun usage. The results were a bit surprising: more than half of the audience polled felt that the idea of gender-neutral pronouns was a nonstarter.

With this knowledge, I’d like to make an appeal to our audience: consider the singular they. Language has changed a lot in the last year, with the singular they being voted the most important word of the year, and numerous dictionaries adding gender-neutral usage notes. Merriam-Webster even introduced the gender-neutral honorific Mx. to their unabridged dictionary this year, forever ending the question of what to call someone whose gender is nonbinary (i.e., not male or female).

It’s about time we talked about they in particular and gender-neutral pronouns as a whole, and it’s time we discussed why they’re important to binary and nonbinary folks alike.

First, Some Terminology

Since it’s Pride Month, we’d like to start by defining a few key terms in this discussion, with some help from our friends at the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Here are four gender-related terms that you should know:

Gender: A set of cultural identities, expressions, and roles—traditionally categorized as feminine or masculine—that are assigned to people based on the interpretation of their bodies, and more specifically, their sexual and reproductive anatomy. Since gender is a social construction, it is possible for people to reject or modify the assignments given to them and develop something that feels truer and more just to themselves.

Gender binary: A socially constructed system of viewing gender as male or female, in which no other possibilities for gender are believed to exist. The gender binary is inaccurate because it does not take into account the diversity of gender identities and gender expressions among all people. The gender binary is oppressive to anyone who does not conform to dominant societal gender norms.

Nonbinary: Adjective describing a person who identifies as neither male nor female.

Of course, these three terms are just the beginning of a discussion about gender, but for the purposes of talking about gender-neutral or third-gender pronouns, they’re a great start. If you have more questions about gender or sexuality, I’d highly recommend GLSEN’s resources on the subject.

Now, to return to pronouns . . .

English Evolves!

One of the great lies about the English language is that it remains static. Grammar pedants and trolls generally operate under a series of assumptions about language, which may or may not reflect current usage and accepted norms. In the linguistics community, there is actually a term for this view of language—prescriptivism.

Unfortunately for prescriptivists, English is constantly changing—and always has been. Some words that grammar pedants scoff at as obnoxious neologisms were in fact coined as long ago as the nineteenth century. Take “dude” for example. Reviled by grammar trolls the world over, this term has provoked the ire of multiple generations of fuddy-duddies. But did you know that it has its roots in late nineteenth-century British dandyism? Although the term originally described a cultural trend in England, it eventually came to mean “clueless city-dweller” to American cowboys and ranchers (as Mental Floss notes, this is also the origin of the “dude ranch”). However, by WWI, “dude” had flip-flopped again to its current meaning—a cool guy.

Even if we adhere to certain rules to make communication easier for people across regions, dialects, and levels of writing proficiency, the language will eventually evolve. The singular they is simply another way English is changing for the shorter, the more empathetic, the better. As we’ve mentioned before, the singular they is not even a new phenomenon. Merriam-Webster includes usage examples of the singular they dating back to Shakespeare, with notable additions from the likes of Jane Austen and even the traditionalist W. H. Auden. The singular they is nothing new, but in making our language more inclusive of people of a myriad of genders, this simple word is becoming more and more important.

LGBTQ Harassment and Personal Gender Pronouns

According to a 2013 GLSEN study, more than 64.5 percent of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer students hear homophobic remarks at school. Of these students, 33.1 percent have heard harassing remarks specifically targeting transgender students. For transgender, genderqueer, genderfluid, and other nonbinary students, this can have extreme consequences, from lower GPAs to missed classes to suicide.

Clearly, language matters, and it’s especially important to people whose gender does not match cultural assumptions. That’s why we support and respect the use of whichever personal gender pronouns a person or group may choose to describe themselves. What’s a personal gender pronoun, you ask? GLSEN defines personal gender pronouns (PGPs for short) as “The pronoun or set of pronouns that a person would like to be called by when their proper name is not being used.” For people who identify as male or female, this is generally he or she, but trans, nonbinary, or gender nonconforming folks may use a variety of pronouns. They could use the singular gender-neutral “they,” but they could also use one of these options:

Although we won’t touch on all the pronoun options listed here, you can see that there are many. So how do you know which one to use? Ask! Asking someone their personal gender pronoun is easy. Just say something like “What pronouns do you use?” or “Is this pronoun right for you?” Most people will be happy to inform or correct you, especially when you ask them early on in your relationship.

Since we’re focusing on the singular gender-neutral they here, it’s important to note that many people at different points of the gender spectrum use “they.” When you’re using it in a sentence, you can say something like this:

“They is a talented artist. I really enjoyed their painting of a flower in art class yesterday.”

But Wait, “They” Is Useful for Everyone!

Now that we’ve talked briefly about how to use they for people who have chosen it as their PGP, let’s talk about how it can help people who identify as he or she. Merriam-Webster sums up the situation well in their usage note for they:

They, their, them, themselves: English lacks a common-gender third person singular pronoun that can be used to refer to indefinite pronouns (as everyone, anyone, someone).

Although English has many great qualities, it’s never been great with indefinite pronouns. Traditionally, he was the default pronoun for a person whose gender you didn’t know, as in this quote from Thomas Huxley:

“Suppose the life and fortune of every one of us would depend on his winning or losing a game of chess.”— Thomas Huxley

But, as many have pointed out, gendering all unknown people as male is sexist and inaccurate. That’s why Merriam-Webster, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the American Heritage Dictionary have recently added notes supporting the use of the singular they for a person whose gender you don’t know. “The trend, then, is clear. Writers who choose to use they with a singular antecedent should rest assured that they are in good company—even if a fair number of traditionalists still wince at the usage,” says the American Heritage Dictionary, in their usage note on the subject.

Admittedly, using the singular they in a formal context may still cause some raised eyebrows, so be careful if you’re submitting a paper to a particularly traditional teacher or professor. But the tides are turning, and English will soon be more efficient because of usages like this:

If Sally or George got a cold, I would have sympathy for them.

Note that, if we did not use the singular they, that sentence would read:

If Sally or George got a cold, I would have sympathy for him.

Or, if we tried to make some awkward amalgam of current language norms, we might write:

If Sally or George got a cold, I would have sympathy for him/her.

Furthermore, if Sally or George identified as a gender other than male or female, even the above Frankenstein-ed sentence would be incorrect. After all, your name does not determine your gender or your preferred gender pronouns.

There must be a better way!

Luckily, using the singular they makes English a more efficient language, and it helps us to avoid awkward sentence constructions. More importantly, though, it allows you to avoid making assumptions about the gender of a person you don’t know.

Their Pronoun, Themself

Of course, not everyone will agree that it’s time to formally accept the singular gender-neutral they. GLSEN’s research reminds us that people who would use they as their preferred gender pronoun have long been the subjects of harassment and discrimination, although things are changing. Grammarly supports the individual choice of pronouns and is using the hashtag #theyisok this week to start a dialogue about PGPs, gender neutral pronouns, and the singular they.

What do you think about the gender-neutral use of they? Leave a comment below, or tweet your experience with personal gender pronouns.

Empathy vs. Sympathy

• Empathy is a term we use for the ability to understand other people’s feelings as if we were having them ourselves.
• Empathy can also mean projecting our own feeling onto a work of art or another object.
• Sympathy refers to the ability to take part in someone else’s feelings, mostly by feeling sorrowful about their misfortune.
• Sympathy can also be used in relation to opinions and taste, like when you say that you have sympathy for a political cause.

In 1855, Walt Whitman described his reaction to a person in pain in his poem “Song of Myself.”

I do not ask a wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person, My hurt turns livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

What did the poet mean when he said that he would “become the wounded person?” Would his transformation be an example of empathy or sympathy? What’s the difference between empathy and sympathy? The words are easy to confuse. They are both derived from Greek, and the spelling only differs by a couple of letters. It’s almost as if they were made to be used as synonyms. But they weren’t.

The Difference Between Sympathy and Empathy

Of the two words, empathy is the more recent entry into the English language. Sympathy was in use for almost 300 years before empathy’s first written record in the nineteenth century. You might notice that both words contain -pathy, and that’s what makes them sort of similar – they share the same Greek root word pathos, which means “feelings” or “emotion,” but also “suffering” or “calamity.” But while both words deal with emotions, they are still very far from being synonyms.

What Is Sympathy?

Sympathy derives from Greek words meaning “with feeling.” The word is most commonly used to describe the way we share someone else’s feelings, especially feelings of sorrow or trouble. Hence, greeting cards given to mourning families are called sympathy cards. Sympathy can also refer to the sense of harmony between people with the same tastes, disposition, or opinions. When a person feels sympathy toward a cause or an organization, he has feelings of approval, loyalty, or support.

What Is Empathy?

The Greek phrase that lends empathy its meaning is “passion from feelings or emotion.” Most people know empathy has to do with understanding and sharing the experiences, feelings, and emotions of another person. However, empathy can also refer to using imagination to ascribe your feelings or attitudes to an object, such as a painting or a natural object.

Examples: Sympathy and Empathy in Sentences

Which quality was Whitman illustrating in his poem? Empathy. By becoming “the wounded person,” he vicariously experiences their suffering. Is it possible to completely understand how someone else feels? Most people have to content themselves with feeling sympathy—the quality of caring about someone’s misfortunes or the feeling of emotional or intellectual accord with another individual. Neil deGrasse Tyson proposes that since “humans aren’t as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others . . . maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, [we learned] ‘reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.’” But if you finished your schooling, maybe these examples might help you understand the difference between sympathy and empathy: A Canadian woman has criticised a “disgusting” sympathy card sent by two “ambulance chasing” estate agents offering their services following the death of her mother. —The Telegraph

So I have to say that my sympathy for Tyrone would be fairly limited. —The Irish Times

From an evolutionary standpoint, empathy is a valuable impulse that helps humans survive in groups. —The Atlantic

People with a higher level of empathy learn to help others more quickly than their more hard-hearted peers, scientists say. —The Guardian

What Do Adjectives Modify?

Adjectives are words that modify nouns. They are often called “describing words” because they give us further details about a noun, such as what it looks like (the white horse), how many there are (the three boys) or which one it is (the last house). Adjectives do not modify verbs or other adjectives.

Most often, adjectives are easy to identify in a sentence because they fall right before the nouns they modify.

The old clock hung upon the wall.

A white horse galloped across the lush, green grass.

Have you met our three handsome boys?

Ours is the last house on the street.

In these sentences, old, white, lush, green, three, handsome, and last are all adjectives; they give us a more detailed description of the nouns they modify. An adjective might answer the mental questions, “What kind is it?” (as with an old clock, a white horse, the lush grass, the green grass, or the handsome boys), “How many are there?” (as with the three boys), or “Which one is it?” (as with the last house). Adjectives that answer the first question are descriptive adjectives. Those that answer the other two questions are limiting adjectives—they restrict or quantify a noun rather than describing it.

The five ladies go to Las Vegas every year.

Those flowers must go on that table.

She gave the best piece to her mother.

The examples above use the limiting adjectives five (how many ladies?), every (which year/s?), those (which flowers?), that (which table?), best (which piece?) and her (whose mother?). Technically, definite articles (the) and indefinite articles (a/an) also function as limiting adjectives.

Predicate Adjectives

Although many adjectives fall before the nouns they modify, as in the examples above, those used in sentences or clauses with linking verbs fall after the nouns they modify. Linking verbs describe a state of being rather than an action; the most common linking verb is to be, and others include sense verbs like appear, seem, look, smell, sound, and taste.

Cynthia is fatigued.

Those muffins look delicious.

The sunrise seemed golden.

Do you think this spaghetti sauce tastes spicy?

With linking verbs, adjectives like fatigued, delicious, golden, and spicy all fall after the nouns they modify (Cynthia, muffins, sunrise, spaghetti sauce).

4 Ways to Get Back to Work When You (Really) Don’t Want to

You know you need to work, but you really don’t want to. Millions of distractions—some worthier than others—compete for your time and attention. How do you drown out the voice of procrastination?

Here are four ways that will get you working again, even when you’d rather be doing anything else.

1 Reward Yourself

In Key of Knowledge, prolific author Nora Roberts writes: “There’s no reward without work, no victory without effort, no battle won without risk.” The converse is also true. Why work without a reward? Why put forth effort without a purpose? Likely, your job has some intrinsic value. Of Nora Robert’s 200 published novels, most of them fall into the suspense or romance genres. Thousands of people use her stories to escape from reality, to relax, or to entertain themselves. How does your job help the world? How does it benefit you personally? When you are typing a document at work, do you think about how the task will ultimately fund your child’s college education, for example? With a little thought, you can likely find that your job adds value to your life in various ways.

According to ASuccessfulWoman.com, you may do your job because of “the desire to control [your] financial destiny, the need for autonomy, or perhaps the belief that [your] service or product will potentially enhance the current marketplace.” Why stop there? The same website encourages you to create your own rewards for a job well done. You’ll be motivated to work harder if you know something good will come at the end of it.

2 Make It Fun

Do you enjoy things more when you are alone or with friends? If you like solitude, why not get to the office early on your first days back? The office will be quiet, and you will have time to get yourself organized before your day starts. Tidy up your desk and make a list of what you want to accomplish. Then, you can either work in silence or listen to some tunes before your coworkers start stopping by.

If you’re a social butterfly, invite your colleagues to join you. You can work together in a shared space or flex your collective imaginations in a brainstorming session. Be honest, though, about whether your friends will disrupt your productivity. If you think they will, schedule a group lunch or go out for drinks after work.

3 Ease Yourself In

In video games, the lowest level is usually the easiest one. As you advance, you gain experience and the challenges increase. When you return from a break, you can’t always expect to pick up exactly where you left off. Instead, look at your to-do list. Are there a few important tasks that you can quickly or easily get out of the way? Clearing away these tasks can free your mind from worry so you can concentrate on the difficult work. Besides, marking even short, simple tasks as “complete” will make you feel a sense of accomplishment.

Do all your assignments seem equally overwhelming? Find out why. Are you afraid of failure? Do you feel incompetent? Do you have all the knowledge necessary to be successful? MindBodyGreen suggests addressing the source of your resistance, and “leaning in” like a surfer: “Just like surfing a big wave — once you’re in it, there are only two choices — either lean in, make the drop, and do your best to surf the wave, or wipe out miserably. You might wipe out either way — but . . . “Let’s do this!” . . . feels more empowering than “Oh no!””

4 Make It Doable

If you focus on everything you have to do, you might start to feel stressed. Instead, break large projects into small chunks. You can organize your time into chunks. For example, you might set a timer and commit to working for fifteen minutes. When the alarm sounds, briefly turn your attention to something less demanding, such as answering an email or filing documents. After a few minutes, restart the timer and do it all again. You’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish in fifteen-minute intervals.

Not all tasks lend to chunking by time. Instead, try the step-by-step method. Consider whether you have to complete the steps of the task in order. Would it be more efficient to juggle the sections around and compile everything at the end? For a writing project, for instance, perhaps you want to print out a copy before you proofread. Some writers claim to catch more errors on paper than on a computer screen.

Regardless of how you organize your tasks, don’t forget to include brief breaks from intense activity. Using this method, you will find yourself on the last step before you know it.

Every task presents unique challenges, so it might help to do a little research about how you can get over a slump in your particular profession. To illustrate, writers can research how to overcome writer’s block and build some of the methods learned into their to-do list.

Do you have work to do right now? If you were reading this article as a form of procrastination, it’s time to put it away and put your nose to the grindstone. If you think of a reward and a way to make the task fun, break tasks down into small chunks, and start easy, it won’t even seem so bad. You can do it!

Small Talk 101 for Shy People in the Office

Small Talk 101 Syllabus

Course Description

Getting to know others in your office by striking up small talk conversations is an anxiety-inducing social activity, coming in right behind team-building exercises like the trust fall and that relay thing where you have to race around with a raw egg on a spoon. That goes double for introverted or shy people. This course will provide the student with five no-fail tips for striking up a conversation and sample scripts to demonstrate good small talk in action.

About Your Instructor

Karen Hertzberg holds a Ph.D. in Awkward Social Interactions from The University of Introvert Life. She specialized in Hiding in a Corner and Social Activity Avoidance until she challenged herself to study Conversation and The Art of Peopling. She is now a member of several social groups, the members of which not only do not find her boring but seek her out for conversations.

Prerequisites

Students should begin this course with an understanding that their own thoughts can be self-fulfilling. If you approach small talk with fear and trepidation, worried that you’ll be boring, you just well might be.

You should understand that you’re a worthy person with interesting things to say. Keep in mind that, particularly at office social functions, other people could well be in the same situation you are—just looking for someone to chat with. They’ll welcome you making an effort to get to know them by striking up a conversation.

How to Make Small Talk in Five Easy Steps

1 Be interested.

If you want to be interesting, be interested. Dale Carnegie (author of the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People) said it, as have other experts in the social arts over the years. The first and most important step toward making great conversation is to show a genuine interest in the people you’re chatting with. Let curiosity lead the way!

2 Ask questions and follow-up questions.

Your questions don’t have to dive deep in order to make great small talk. You can start simply by saying something like, “How was your weekend?” or “Are you enjoying the party?” Really listen to the answer, and then ask meaningful follow-up questions that show you were paying attention. If the person you’re chatting with says that their weekend was quiet, for example, you can say, “We all need that from time to time! What do you like to do in your downtime?”

3 Be present and watch your body language.

As Dolly Parton’s character in the movie Steel Magnolias cheerily suggested, “Smile! It increases your face value.” Uncross your arms. Don’t look over your shoulder as though you’re planning your exit. And, whatever you do, hands off your smartphone.

4 Find ways to relate.

While you don’t want to monopolize the conversation, you also shouldn’t make the other person do all the talking. Find some things you can relate to from time to time, and inject your own observations and experiences. After adding some brief commentary of your own (see step 5), be sure to ask another question to lead the conversation forward. If the other person mentions that they like hiking, you might answer, “Oh, me too! I hiked part of the Pacific Crest Trail last year and it was amazing. I usually stick closer to home, though. Where do you usually hike?”

5 Consider the twenty second rule.

Dr. Mark Goulston, author of Just Listen, recommends speaking for no more than twenty seconds at a time. Think of conversation as a traffic signal. In the first twenty seconds, you have a green light—the person you’re chatting with is engaged and enjoying the conversation. But if you go beyond twenty seconds, you’ve got a yellow light. Caution! You’re edging toward boring. At the forty second mark, you’ve officially become too chatty or self-absorbed—red light!

Small Talk Conversation Examples

Need some inspiration for your next small talk social challenge? The Muse put together forty-eight fun questions to consider asking. Need more small talk examples? Here are some scripts to help you get a better understanding of the process.

When the other person doesn’t have much to say

Be prepared to add some details from your own life before moving on to your next question to keep the conversation from sounding like an interrogation.

“Where are you from?”

“Boston.”

“Ah, I visited Boston a few years back. Great city! I wasn’t a big fan of driving there, though. Next time I’ll take cabs instead of renting a car. Did you like living there?”

“Yeah, it was great.”

“What do you miss most about it?”

When you want to deepen the conversation

Introverts tend to do better in conversations that go deeper than talking about the weather. Ask questions that will challenge the other person to give a thoughtful response.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a writer for the email marketing team.”

“Interesting! What sorts of things do you write?”

“I write some ad copy, but mostly I work on the company newsletter.”

“So, how did you become a writer? When did you discover your talent for words?”

When things get awkward

Sometimes conversations take a turn for the awkward. If that happens, acknowledge the awkward thing the other person said to let them know they’ve been heard, and then move on to another topic.

“Are you enjoying the party?”

“Not really. My girlfriend broke up with me earlier today.”

“Wow, break-ups are rough. I’m sorry to hear it. Have you lived in Los Angeles long?”

When you need to make an exit

It’s okay to bail if the conversation is going nowhere, just do it gracefully. Summarize the last thing the person said to you, then excuse yourself.

“It’s pretty amazing that you’ve trained your cats to reenact scenes from your favorite sci-fi movies. Sounds like you’ve found your niche. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go make a phone call. Enjoy the party!”

Homework: Go Be Interesting!

Making small talk doesn’t have to be anxiety-provoking or tedious. When you worry less about whether you’re being interesting and, instead, show an active interest in others, you become more likable. Think of social interactions not as performing but exploring.

How to End an Email: 9 Best and Worst Email Sign-Offs

You’ve worked to make your email clear, and you’ve carefully edited to streamline your writing. The body of your email might well be perfect, but it can all go awry if you use the wrong sign-off. It’s just a word or a short phrase, followed by your signature, and yet finding the right tone to close your email often requires a surprising amount of thought and finesse.

When you’re struggling with how to end an email, it’s best to consider the context. What works for a friend or close colleague won’t work in a strictly professional correspondence with a distant acquaintance or someone you’ve never met before. Here’s a rundown of some of the most common email settings and the tried-and-true sign-offs that work best for each.

Nine Email Sign-offs that Never Fail

Email Closings for Formal Business

1. Regards

Yes, it’s a bit stodgy, but it works in professional emails precisely because there’s nothing unexpected or remarkable about it.

2. Sincerely

Are you writing a cover letter? Sincerely conveys the right tone for formal correspondence. Keep in mind that it’s likely to come off as stuffy in more casual business emails.

3. Best wishes

A good blend of friendliness and formality makes this sign-off a safe bet, but be aware of its greeting-card vibe and use it only when it fits well with the tone of your email.

Email Closings for Friendly Business

4. Cheers

A recent study by the email app Boomerang rated cheers as the most likely sign-off (that isn’t a thank-you) to get an email response. It works well if your email is friendly and conversational but, unless you’re actually British or Australian, it may come off as affected in more formal settings. Cheers, mate!

5. Best

Best conveys best wishes in a cheerful, pithy way. If you get a lot of email, you know that nearly everyone uses this sign-off. That familiarity makes it seamless in the same way that regards is seamless in more formal emails. The downside is that it can be safe and dull, especially if you want your message to be dynamic and attention-getting.

6. As ever

This is a fine choice for people you’ve built an ongoing working relationship with. It reassures your contact that things are as good between you as they’ve ever been.

Email Closings for Gratitude and Requests

7. Thanks in advance

According to the Boomerang study, emails that include thanks in advance have the highest response rate. Maybe it’s because this sign-off expresses gratitude but also sets an expectation—you’re saying that you’ll be grateful when (not if) the person you’re emailing comes through. In more formal circumstances, thanking someone in advance may come across as too demanding, so take care where you use it.

8. Thanks

A simple thanks is also a solid choice when you want to express gratitude. But, just like thanks in advance, it can convey a tone of expectancy. Save it for when you actually mean to imply, “I expect you to do this.”

9. I appreciate your [help, input, feedback, etc.]

There’s never really a wrong time to express appreciation when someone has helped you out.

Nine Email Sign-offs to Avoid

1. Love

I have a friend who once accidentally signed an office email to his entire department with love. He never lived it down. Save this one for family, close friends, and your significant other. The same applies to hugs or XOXO.

2. Thx or Rgrds

You’re not thirteen, and this isn’t a conversation happening in a messaging app. Use your words.

3. Take care

On the surface, take care sounds pleasant, but on closer examination, it seems to imply that the recipient should be wary of potential dangers. Use this only if bears are known to lurk by the Dumpster outside the recipient’s office. (We’re only half kidding!)

4. Looking forward to hearing from you

This one also sounds nice at first, but it’s ultimately passive-aggressive. Your recipient is likely to hear an implied “You’d better write back.”

5. Yours truly

Do you really, truly belong to the recipient? Nope. This sounds insincere and hokey . . . unless you’re writing a letter home to your parents from summer camp.

6. Respectfully / Respectfully yours

This one’s okay if you’re sending a formal missive to the POTUS, but it’s too formal for anything else. In fact, according to Business Insider, respectfully yours is the standard close for addressing government officials and clergy.

7. [Nothing at all]

We live in a world where people frequently email from mobile devices, so excluding a signature certainly isn’t a no-no as an email chain progresses, particularly if your recipient also drops the more formal sign-off. But not signing an initial email or using only the formal signature you’ve created to append to your outgoing emails comes off as impersonal. (Bloomberg disagrees, stating that email has become more like instant messaging than true correspondence these days, but we’re sticking to our convictions.)

8. -[Name] or -[Initial]

While this sort of sign-off may work for very brief, informal emails, it’s too cold and detached for most, particularly when you’re connecting with the recipient for the first time.

9. Have a blessed day

It’s best to keep anything with religious overtones out of your professional correspondence, although this one’s fine if you’re emailing an acquaintance about what you’re bringing to the church potluck.

Bonus Bad Sign-off

Although this sign-off tends to happen more by default when the sender forgets to add an actual signature, we thought it was worth mentioning the ubiquitous . . .

Sent from my iPhone

This may be the most common sign-off of them all. It has merits, of course. It explains away brevity and typos—who’s at their best when typing on a phone? But it also conveys that you don’t care enough to do away with the default email signature that came stock with your device’s email app.

Some people get creative with this signature. A few fun (if not necessarily business appropriate) examples found round the Internet include:

• My parents wouldn’t buy me an iPhone so I have to manually type “Sent from my iPhone” to look cool
• Sent telepathically
• Sent from my laptop, so I have no excuse for typos
• Sent from my smartphone so please forgive any dumb mistakes
• I am responsible for the concept of this message. Unfortunately, autocorrect is responsible for the content
• Sent from my mobile. Fingers big. Keyboard small.
• iPhone. iTypos. iApologize.
• My phone can’t spell for carp

And, for the Stephen King fans among our readers:

• Sent from Jack’s typewriter, Rm 237. No autocorrect. REᗡЯUM

What’s your favorite email sign-off? Do you have a quirky or effective signature you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments.

5 Biggest Business Writing Mistakes

We use the expression “there’s no room for mistakes” when we want to underline the importance of doing something correctly. But still, as you probably know from experience, mistakes appear whether there’s room for them or not. When they turn up in your business reports, memos, business emails and letters, and job applications, it can be downright embarrassing. We’ve gathered the biggest and most embarrassing, potentially devastating, and sometimes sneaky mistakes people make in business writing.

1 Using i.e. and e.g. Interchangeably

I.e. and e.g. might look similar. They even have somewhat similar meanings. But they are not the same, and they shouldn’t be used interchangeably. I.e. is an abbreviation of “id est,” which translates from Latin as “that is,” and e.g. is an abbreviation of “exempli gratia,” which translates as “for example.” Use i.e. to expand or explain something you’ve already introduced. Use e.g. to introduce an incomplete list of examples for something you mentioned earlier in the sentence.

2 Writing with an Improper Level of Formality

Different industries and different types of businesses are accustomed to different levels of formality in written communication. For example, if you were to write a business letter to a partner in a law firm or a big corporation, you’d be well advised to use a very formal business writing style—use a colon after greeting and follow all the other conventions of formal business letters. On the other hand, a CEO of a startup, even if it’s a very successful startup, might not mind if you start a business letter with “Dude!” Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but things like emoticons have no place in traditional business writing, even though they might be okay in industries that are more open to informality. When in doubt, err on the side of formal.

3 Overusing Exclamation Points

There are some things that you should never do with exclamation points in business writing. You shouldn’t write three of them in a row, even if you want to make sure your point really gets across. You shouldn’t write three of them in the same paragraph either, because that has to be one exclamatious (not a real word) email you’re writing if there’s such a need to exclaim. Generally, you can use actual words to express excitement, disbelief, surprise, or whatever you are tempted to use the exclamation points for. Save them for those really important occasions when you really need them, or when you want to express enthusiasm in the greeting or closing of a letter.

4 Problems with Clarity

“Problems with clarity” is an umbrella term we’ll use here for a whole bunch of mistakes people make that affect the clarity of their business writing. Mistakes such as writing too much in the passive voice, overuse of prepositional phrases, and confusing pronouns can all lead to problems with clarity. Overly complex sentences kill clarity. In business writing, it’s often best to keep it as short and informative as you possibly can. Exceptions exist, as they always do, but the rule of thumb is to never use two words when one will do, and never use complicated language when you can say it in plain English.

5 Bad Timing

You can craft a perfectly worded email, chock full of well-explained and well-presented information, and you can proofread it over and over until there are no mistakes in grammar or spelling. But if you send it too late, the information might lose its relevance and then all the work you put into it won’t matter much. This is especially important when replying to business-related messages. With emails, the standard is to respond within twenty-four hours; for written correspondence, it’s five days. If it takes you longer than that, the person waiting for your reply can become worried, frustrated, angry, insulted, or simply uninterested in what you have to say.