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Punctuation and the hobgoblin of little minds
Not a complete document -- just a place to vent my feelings. For a more detailed information, see other documents on writing in this site.
know it is pedantic but I find that lot of Indians flout the following rule. Whenever there is a comma, fullstop, or a question mark, it is followed by a space, not preceded by it. Which means, the following is wrong:
"Do you know how to use Eclipse ?".
Hint: The space should be after the "?".
There is one more mistake that is ubiquitious. That is lack of parallelism. If you are numbering several items, in your mind, read it without the numbers and see if it makes sense. For example:
There are several creatures in the ocean:
- Nemo
- Bruce
- Dory.
What are the mistakes here?
It should be:
There are several creatures in the ocean:
- Nemo,
- Bruce, and
- Dory.
It is as though, if you flatten the list, it reads like English.
Check out the writing manual on the intranet for links on lessons in writing. In dealing with the clients these are the little things that make an impression.