Punctuation is just good manners

I made my monthly pilgrimage into Bournemouth town centre and ended up in a large high-street chain of bookshop (I think I was shielding myself from the obsessive wind and rain). I had wanted a particular book for quite a while, having had many friends raving about it, so took this opportunity to buy it. Low and behold it is rave-worthy!

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss should be an imperative read for all PR practitioners. If you don't know your apostrophes from your semi-colons you are a disgrace to the profession. A bit strong I know, but everyone should at least attempt to understand this mythical land of squiggles and dashes. Consider this; a press release that you have spent hours researching, drafting, re-drafting, finalising, authorising and then sending, and there is a grammatical error in it. Now I have had this experience while on placement and I have learnt from this intensely terrifying mistake. The message you wanted to send out to that comprehensive list of media is in tatters. Everyone is staring at your big, fat mistake. Nothing can be done about it.

Now, nobody wants to be in that position more than once and most certainly only ever in your first few months of PR working life. If it does happen, learn from it and learn grammar. I think every school should make it compulsory and especially on a PR degree. Writing is so very important to PR and constitutes a large part of a practitioner's job. So please, do it for your future. For your family. For your life. For poor, misused apostrophes who are crying at being left out or for being added on to words. Do it for them all (and don't focus on my mistakes, focus on your own)!