A business letter worth admiring

There are a few things in this letter I would correct: deeply-valued shouldn't have a hyphen; the men's names should have probably appeared in the same order throughout; and the family may be close, but there does need to be a space in "TheOrton." All in all, though, I thought the letter was wonderful. The message was warm and sincere, despite the sentimental content, and the picture of the company that emerged was solid.

I was especially happy to see that

• the right case (objective) was used in "No matter whom you're shopping for this holiday season";
• parallelism was preserved in "you'll find truly unusual gifts that evoke happy days, promote warm feelings, and bring a beaming smile to the face";
• a hyphen was used in the adjectival compound "a family-owned business";
• no comma separated adjectives in "special young person";
• no comma appeared before the restrictive clause "when young ones raced downstairs"; and
  
• that was used to denote the restrictive in "a family and a tradition that have endured."

The diction of the letter is also deserving of mention, I think: cherished; authentic; precepts of ardent, honest customer service; gratitude for…kindness, privileges, and opportunities. And note that three sentences toward the end begin with we:

• We will celebrate being part of a family and a tradition that have endured through hard work, frugality, imagination, and ingenuity. [The last four nouns are nothing special by themselves, but together they are fresh and strong.]
• We will celebrate the vast and growing audience of customers who today are part of that tradition, expanding it through their own deeply-valued stories and memories.
• We are delighted to welcome you to this tradition and to our family.
  

When the reader finally gets to "Enjoy!" the exclamation point does seem fitting.

Just for kicks.

Punctuation matters too!

Lisa L. posted about when to capitalize a word; and how the meaning of a word can change depending on whether or not a capital letter is used. The same can be said about punctuation. The meaning of a sentence can be drastically altered by the arrangement of the punctuation.


Written by Richard Lederer and John Shore, "Comma Sense - A FUNdamental Guide to Punctuation," relies on humor to teach the principles of punctuation.


“‘Writing well is important for business, but it also can be crucial in love,’ the writers warn. “Do you want to say, ‘I would like to tell you that I love you. I can’t stop thinking that you are one of the prettiest women on Earth,’ or ‘I would like to tell you that I love you. I can’t. Stop thinking that you are one of the prettiest women on Earth.’? As Lederer and Shore say, ‘Punctuation can mean the difference between a second date and a restraining order.”"

Punctuation Saves Lives! (Another illustration of commas with direct addresses)

Facebook, it seems, proves to be a venerable buffet of errors in punctuation, grammar, and spelling. This morning, I came across this little gem (whose author shall remain anonymous!):

"Damn we going to eat good people!"

Ignoring the incorrect use of the present progressive in the author's verb, your eyes might be drawn to the more hilarious problem at work here—eat good people! Because of the way this sentence is written, it appears that the noun phrase good people is the direct object of the sentence's main verb, eat. A direct object is the element in a sentence that directly receives the action of a verb—it answers the question of "what?" or "whom?" In the case of this particular sentence, the direct object would answer the question of "eat what?" or "eat whom?"

That's right: eat good people. In other words, we are going to eat people who are good.

Most readers of that sentence, however, would probably safely assume that the author is not revealing his or her cannibalistic tendencies, but is rather addressing an audience, whom he or she refers to as people. The author is telling people that we going to eat good or, more correctly, that "we are going to eat well." To avoid causing certain readers to spit out their Special K cereal during their casual perusals of social networking Web sites, the author should make it clear that he or she is directly addressing an audience by inserting a comma to separate the addressee from the rest of the sentence. Thus, the sentence would read, "Damn we going to eat good, people!"

There. Now we know that people aren't going to be eaten.

Oh, and on a somewhat related but somewhat less important note, one should also insert commas to set off interjections in sentences. Words like "yes," "no," "hi," and "bye" as well as emotive expressions like "ugh," "ahem," "wow," and "gosh" are interjections. Damn, which is a markedly more intensified variation of "darn," would fall into the interjection category—it's a word that, as Wikipedia puts it, expresses an isolated emotion related to the rest of the sentence. Anyway, with commas properly in place to set off interjections and direct addresses, the sentence above would read, "Damn, we going to eat good, people!"

So, remember, folks: A comma is sometimes the only difference between an innocent call for joyful merriment and a merciless command to evoke humanity's most ignoble instincts!

"Let's eat, Grandma!" vs. "Let's eat Grandma!" Which one do you mean?

Comma Chameleon

Here are the first few sentences of an article by writer Mike Todd in which he describes his epic struggles with the mighty comma. Click on the post title to see the rest of the piece.

Did you know that the correct punctuation differs between the phrases “my cousin Rachel” and “my wife Kara”? An astute reader recently pointed out that the phrase “my wife Kara,” which readers of this column (including, and sometimes limited to, my mom) might recognize as appearing in this space with the same frequency that severed limbs appear in Quentin Tarantino movies, really requires a comma between the words “wife” and “Kara.”

After several salvos in a grammatical battle that could only be described as epic (by me) or unbelievably dorky (by Kara), my defeat became impossible to ignore…

semi-colons

I know that semi-colons should not be used when two independent clauses are joined with a conjunction, but someone told me once that a semi-colon should be used if there are commas
present in each of the independent clauses.
Example: Therefore, I thought he said that his sister, Cindy, lives in Alaska; but it turned out that, in fact, she lives in Hawaii.

But then, someone else told me that a punctuation is not needed at all if two clauses joined by the conjunction already have commas within themselves.
Example: Therefore, I thought he said that his sister, Cindy, lives in Alaska but it turned out that, in fact, she lives in Hawaii.

Or should a comma be used?
Example: Therefore, I thought he said that his sister, Cindy, lives in Alaska, but it turned out that, in fact, she lives in Hawaii.

Is there such a thing as too many commas in a sentence?

i'm like, "what?"

Quick question: When punctuating dialogue, and the person has the tendency to said "like" a lot; do we need commas around "like"?
I'm asking because I know a court reporter who has to deal with this dilemma when she transcribes depositions verbatim.

I thought he was like going to stab me!
or
I thought he was, like, going to stab me!