Grammar mistakes in business writing can damage your company's credibility, and even experienced professionals make them. Four of the most common are mixing up "I" and "me", "fewer" and "less", and "e.g." and "i.e.", and ending a formal sentence with a preposition.
If your work involves a lot of written communication, read through these four mistakes and their fixes. Which of them do you make most often?
"I" vs. "me"
Both "I" and "me" refer to yourself, but they do different jobs in a sentence: use "I" as the subject and "me" as the object. It can still be confusing to know which one to use, especially when you are one of two people in the sentence. Here is an example where you should use "I" instead of "me":
- Wrong: "Me and Mr. Runner have not received any email confirming the shipment of Acme cannons."
- Right: "Mr. Runner and I have not received any email confirming the shipment of Acme cannons."
And here is one where you should use "me" instead of "I":
- Wrong: "Thank you for accompanying Mr. Runner and I during yesterday's plant tour."
- Right: "Thank you for accompanying Mr. Runner and me during yesterday's plant tour."
A quick test: leave out the other person. You would never write "Thank you for accompanying I", so "me" is right. Me, myself, and I explains the rule in more detail.
Fewer vs. less
You may use these two words interchangeably in conversation, but "fewer" and "less" go with different kinds of nouns. Use "fewer" for things you can count and "less" for things you can't:
"As our office plans to use less paper, we will need fewer photocopiers."
Deciding whether something is countable is usually easy, but it can be confusing. Water is uncountable, yet water bottles are countable. See the difference? The word "bottles" divides the uncountable water into units, so "water bottles" can be counted.
You also use "less" for amounts of money and time, even though you can count money, and you can certainly count time in seconds, minutes, and hours:
"We have less than a week to complete this project."
"We have less than $20,000 in cash reserves."
e.g. vs. i.e.
The abbreviation "e.g." stands for exempli gratia, which means "for example." Use it when you give one or more examples.
The abbreviation "i.e." stands for id est, which means "that is," "in essence," or "in other words." Use it to restate an idea in other, often simpler, terms.
"Our new website has a high conversion rate, i.e., the number of conversions divided by the number of unique visitors is more than 10%."
"We use a variety of offers to attract potential customers, e.g., a free six-month subscription, gift certificates, and free upgrades."
When to use i.e. and e.g. has more examples of both.
Ending sentences with prepositions
This one is debatable. Your teacher at school may have frowned upon it, but ending a sentence with a preposition is not a grammar mistake. The rule was modelled on Latin grammar, and although English owes a great deal to Latin, the rule has no place in modern English.
Many writers don't care what they end their sentences with. In business writing, however, a sentence that ends with a preposition may come across as unprofessional or too informal.
So how do you avoid it? Luckily, this "grammar mistake" is easy to fix by rephrasing the sentence:
- Informal: "We would like to inquire which department Mr. Roger is in."
- Formal: "We would like to inquire in which department Mr. Roger currently works."
Check before you send
Those are four common grammar mistakes in business communications. To catch the ones that your tired eyes miss, run your business letters and emails through the Spell Checker before you send them.