Use good English like what I do

I’m well annoyed.  I’ve spent most of the day trying to make sense of a tender document that was stitched together from a dozen or so different other documents.  I’ve been trying to make it look as if it was written by the same person, in the same style and in the same format in the firm belief that it is more likely to be taken seriously if this is the case.

What is it that they say?  You only get one opportunity to make a first impression.  I want to make sure that the first impression of the recipients isn’t that we are ignorant or illiterate and that instead we present ourselves well and tell a good story.  Perhaps they shouldn’t be or perhaps they should but these things are important.  How can we convince an organisation that we are the ones that they should deal with, with all of the professionalism and coordination that that entails if we can’t even string a few sentences together coherently and present a document in a cogent manner?

So what is it that has been troubling me?  What is it that has got my ire up so to speak?  Well there have been a few:

Firstly, if you are going to tell a story, how about starting with once upon a time.  It should have a beginning a middle and an end.  The beginning should lead you into what you want the tale to tell and the end should draw some conclusion.

Secondly please try and keep the tense in some logical order.  Stick to past tense for those things that have happened, the present for those underway and the future for things to come.  If you are making a service commitment try to be positive and not passive, saying will and can rather than should or would or could.

Thirdly, watch what you are doing with apostrophes, especially with possessives and not for plurals (PC’s is just wrong).  Don’t just stick them anywhere and, while I’m at it, in a formal document it’s better to us the full word rather than its shortened version, such as cannot rather than can’t.  I feel this is more business-like but this may just be me. (By the way, this is not a formal document hence the liberal smattering of concatenated words.)

And finally (there are probably more) try not to use the same word too many times, especially if they are close together and watch that you don’t repeat the same message over and over again.

Anyway, that’s my rant over.  I need to stop now as I’ve still got fifteen pages of the tender or so to deal with.