On the ninth day of Content, a random writer gave to me …

Nine slightly advanced writing and editing tips.

Actually, many of these may not be very advanced, and some may be a little subjective. But I wanted to write an article about them because I find myself making these same edits every day and often, explaining them to surprised clients.

So with apologies in advance, here are nine writing and editing tips. If anyone reads all of them, let me know and I’ll send you a lifetime supply of exclamation points.

#1. Hyphens

This is far and away the biggest mistake I see every day. So much so that I was starting to wonder if someone changed the rules but forgot to tell me.

Here’s the deal: When two words come together to describe (modify) a third, they’re called a compound adjective and need to be hyphenated. “World-class software,” “Industry-leading solutions,” and “market-disruptive technology” are all perfect examples of these. (Except that we all agreed not to use these phrases). But you see my point.

Ready for a graduate-level example? (How’s that for a compound adjective?) Sometimes we create a compound with two words that share their connection to the third, but are separated by a conjunction. For example, “short- and long-term growth.” The first hyphen is correct, even though I’ve had clients tell me they wouldn’t use it because they thought it didn’t look right.

2. Two spaces after a period

An argument as divisive as Democrats and Republicans, Red Sox vs. Yankees, or the Hatfields and the McCoys.

I’m old enough to tell you that I took typing in high school, where the teacher taught us to use two spaces after a period or a colon. But you need to know that this was only because typewriters used monospaced fonts, where each letter took up the same amount of space. Here’s a much better explanation.

Today, any potential reader issues are now solved with modern fonts, good graphic design, or digital production. These last two are why I gave up two spaces. If you consider that the vast majority of our writing goes somewhere else before a reader sees it – to a graphic designer or a web developer – it just makes sense to use one space.

#3. Unnecessary use of quotation marks

I don’t want to be a “pain” but misuse of quotation marks is becoming a “problem” that needs a “solution.”

No, no, and no.

#4. Acronyms

Many people think that the act of creating an acronym means that we should capitalize the first letters of each word that create the acronym. So I see a lot of “the company hoped to achieve a fast Return on Investment (ROI)” or “the campaign was missing a strong Call to Action (CTA).” Maybe this is related to another editing issue, which I’ll describe below – random, excessive capitalization – but these should be lowercase.

Many people also struggle with how to make acronyms plural and often add an apostrophe where it is not needed. Where some may write “the conference was attended by many CEO’s,” “CEOs” is correct. (I hate to sound like a Grinch, but I see this with family last names on holiday cards. No apostrophe needed.)

5. Symbols

Strict editors and style books prefer to spell out words like “percent” or “and” and don’t like “%” or “&.”

I actually don’t mind the percent symbol, but not for formal writing, especially press releases. I recommend you use the & symbol where space is limited, or for casual, less formal writing.

But draw the line here. Don’t start using $, +, @, #, or other symbols as shorthand.

Because if you do, B4 u know it, we’ll give ↑ on writing rulez & that will be < gr8.

6. Bulleted lists

So many issues here.

First, if a list of bullets (a “vertical list”) follows a lead-in sentence, each bullet needs to support this part of the sentence as if it were one long sentence. Many writers lose their thought by the fourth or fifth bullet, and the whole list no longer makes sense.

Bulleted lists also need to be parallel. This essentially means consistent, so all bullets need to start in the same way; for example, each one with a noun, a verb, or adjective. You pick, but make sure they’re the same.

Format and punctuation. I prefer to capitalize the first letter of the first word and use end punctuation for each bullet if they’re complete sentences (no punctuation if they’re not). But there are other styles that are correct, too. Again, it’s up to you, but make sure you’re consistent throughout all of your writing.

How many bullets are too many? There are no hard-and-fast rules here (again with the hyphenation!), but I think anything more than six is too many. It may need to happen but consider revising to avoid them, using two columns, or other approaches to avoid a long scroll.

7. Random over-capitalization

Somehow this fell to point #7, but it’s the second-worst offender after missing hyphens. So many writers believe that so many words deserve to be capitalized as if to give them a little more emphasis or credibility.

I see it all the time with business units (“the Payroll department”), positions (“contact your Account Manager”), technology (Cyber-Security and even the Cloud), business processes (“submit your Expense Report”), and many other examples.

One of the most common is with job titles. It is correct to capitalize a title when it precedes someone’s name but lowercase after. So “General Manager Jason Rasmuson” and “Jason Rasmuson, general manager” are both correct. I can’t tell you how many people resist this, probably because they want to be respectful to the person they’re writing about and think capitalization is the way to go.

#8. Starting a sentence with “and” or “but”

Many of us believe this is an actual grammar rule, but it isn’t. It’s a holdover from elementary school teachers who tried to teach us how to avoid tacking incomplete sentence on top of each other.

We want our writing to sound natural and casual. And what better way to do this than with an occasional sentence start with a conjunction?

See what I did there? So in my opinion, this doesn’t break any rules, but you still might want to use it sparingly or take the higher road with clients who object.

#9. The ellipsis (…)

An ellipsis is three dots with space before and after. It shows a pause or a thought that is trailing off. (If you’re still reading this, your thoughts may be turning to …”

A table of contents uses a “fill,” which can look like an ellipsis, but will contain many more periods.

But I tend to see a hybrid approach where writers use a random number of dots that are intended to be an ellipsis. It may look like this ………… where they aren’t quite sure what they’re doing.

Honorable mentions:

Overuse of the exclamation point! It’s getting so bad!!!

To serial comma or not to serial comma

Why, when, and how to use a semicolon

Hyphen, en dash, em dash

Verbal use of “literally”

Whew! That was a lot of information, and I know. I’m the worst. My kids tell me all the time.

But I hope it helped someone learn a lot or many of you learn just a little. I also hope this overall blog series is valuable, but as always, let me know what you think.

Writing standards have gone down, yet prospects continue to be put off by content they don’t need or want. Running Start Communications is a content marketing studio focused on helping companies differentiate themselves through better strategies and execution. Visit our website to learn more.