| Book of the Month | ||
|
The Business Grammar Handbook | |
Publisher: M.Evans
Authors: Scott R. Pancoast & Lance M. White
US$12.95
ISBN 978-0-470-12764-3
'Promising ideas (and promising careers) are oftentimes lost through ineffective communication.' The Business Grammar Handbook has but one objective - to improve the quality of business writing, especially that of important documents such as company reports. As the authors explain, many books on business writing are simply school grammar texts re-written to include examples from the world of business. This book is written by business people for business people, and the extracts are from published business texts. This is not a complete grammar, because the authors decided to concentrate of the top forty errors which they say make up ninety percent of all mistakes in business communications. It is important to eliminate these errors since a reader has to wonder how much effort and professionalism the writer is putting into his job if he can't write, or is too sloppy to write, in proper English.
There are 200 pages in this book, all solidly packed with text. If you are looking for amusing cartoons to lighten the text, look elsewhere, though note that the writers have a relaxed and humorous style which makes reading easier. The main text is arranged into 'Challenge' and 'Review' sections. In the challenge, a series of extracts from real business documents are presented, and the reader is challenged to see what errors, if any, are to be found. The review section explains the error and what the correct form is, and why. A deliberate effort has been made to keep the description as jargon-free as possible. So in one section where they recommend keeping the main parts of a sentence together (e.g. verb and object) they describe the minor and prepositional phrases that might come between simply as 'noise'. Pages 130 to 190 are a guide to making easily-understood charts and graphs, and while these will certainly benefit the target audience, they are of less interest to those studying business grammar. There are a set of appendices showing the correct way to present figures in reports, and a useful index.
Who is this book for? Though written for the American market, there is little in this book which is not relevant to writing good English anywhere on the planet. Students of grammar will find the book's idiosyncratic approach a bit hard to reconcile with what they have already been taught, but if you want only one book, think hard about this one before getting the Economist's Style Guide instead. Preferably get both. However, if you have to write important reports, and are uncertain of the difference between 'less' and 'fewer' or between 'affect' and 'effect', stop reading now, get to your online bookseller and order this book. It might save your job.
Verdict: Eliminates 40 annoying errors
Assessment 8/10