Grammar Lessons from a CMO

Verbal cues and written misdemeanors prohibiting you from promotion.

How you speak and write in your career can have a huge impact on whether you get promoted or get your dream job. Yet, most of the time it’s not so much how you write, but more about how you speak and convey your ideas to leadership.

Even though I was a Speech Communications major in college and I took public speaking courses, my grammar and speech are far from perfect. Over the years I have picked up on other people’s pet peeves and added a few of my own. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Verbal cues inhibiting you from getting promoted

TOO MUCH DETAIL → TAILOR TO YOUR AUDIENCE

When speaking to executives I have learned too much detail makes you sound junior. I now tailor my answers depending on who I am speaking to. If it’s a junior person who needs context, I often use more words. But if it’s my CEO or the Board, I use fewer words to get my point across. (And if I can’t, believe it or not, I just say nothing. I go back to my desk and write up my thoughts in an email, which often allows me to succinctly organize my thoughts.)

UMS…

When speaking to an audience it is very hard to not insert a filler word such as “um.” But too many ‘ums’ make you sound less credible and they are really hard on the receiver’s ears. I once worked with a very smart fellow who used “um” as a filler pause when he spoke. They weren’t short ums either, they were long and drawn out — uummmmmms. We did a webinar and he had 47 ‘ums’ in 30 minutes we had to edit out (before AI tools came along to make this easier).

FILLER WORDS

We unconsciously use filler words (like, um, you know, I mean, actually, well) in our speech all the time when we are searching for the right words or when we are not confident about our answer. The problem with filler words is they make you sound less credible or less smart. Taking a pause, even for a few seconds, would be better. Fewer words strengthen your message.

GOT

Other than when talking about Game of Thrones should you ever use “got” in a professional sentence. In most cases you can use conjugations of the word “have” to replace “got.” My 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Laskin, broke me of this habit very quickly after I responded to her question with “I ain’t got none.”🤣

LIKE

Mrs. Laskin also hated the word “like” and would say, “I don’t want to know what something is like, I want to know what it is. Try again.” You’d have to repeat your answer until you didn’t use the word “got” or “like” in your sentence. I’m starting to think 5th grade was brutal.

Written misdemeanors which make you sound less smart

THAT

I once had a CEO who hated the word “that” and would strike it out of every sentence. Truth be told, they were right. You don’t need it. It’s a filler word. And please don’t get me started on when people use the double “that that”…..sigh.

DEFINITELY

My number one pet peeve is when a VP or Exec writes me an email and misspells the word “definitely” with an ‘a’ and writes it as “definately” 🤯 because my immediate thought is how in the f* did you get this job, you can’t even spell a 7th grade word? I know, I’m judgy, sue me. Also, most email has spellcheck baked in.

The second thing I wonder is how they never learned the mnemonic device for remembering how to spell this word. Doesn’t everyone know definite is always ‘finite’?

FEWER vs LESS

The rule of thumb here is you use “fewer” when talking about countable nouns, such as apples, words, widgets. You use “less” when talking about uncountable nouns such as time, effort, salt. But so often we see people mixing them and saying things such as “Use less words” when they really should be saying “Use fewer words.”

DOUBLE SPACING AFTER A PERIOD 🙄

In 2019 it became official in all of the style guides, but nothing says your age more than when you type two spaces after a period.

RUN ON SENTENCES

My second pet peeve is diarrhea of the pen. You just keep writing and writing more words to hit a word count or to get your point across. Globally, 2.8% of humans have ADHD and probably aren’t going to read all of your prose. Always remember, less is more. (see what I did there?)

PERIOD IN THE PARENTHESES

If the parenthetical blurb can stand on its own in a sentence, then it goes within the parentheses.

COMMAS IN THE QUOTATION MARKS

This drives me bananas and it’s the number two thing I correct in most written prose. This can be confusing because colons and semi colons go outside the quotation marks.

EMAIL LENGTH

There is an art of knowing when you need to call a meeting versus write an email. If the email is going to be more than five sentences, I’d argue save it for a 1:1 meeting. You’ll be much more effective at communicating your point. You can always send the email afterward for documentation of the conversation. This also gives your words context and tone, which they didn’t have before.

OXFORD COMMA

Lastly, I love the Oxford comma, but some people abhor it. Yet, it can make or break a sentence’s meaning in many cases. It even cost this dairy company $5M in overtime pay to drivers because it lacked the comma. The best rule of thumb is to read your sentence aloud when you have more than two items in a list and see if the sentence sounds differently when you read it out loud with or without the comma (pauses).

IN SUMMARY

The English language is hard. Grammar is hard. Public speaking in front of even an audience of one, can be hard. Some people want to sound more authentic so they insert filler words or run on sentences. You don’t need to in order to sound coherent. Omitting filler words takes practice.

For run on sentences and other grammar offenses, there are tools for these.

Grammarly has a free tool to correct many on this list. My favorite for run on sentences is ProWritingAid’s run on sentence checker.

Do you have a grammar pet peeve? List it in the comments.

p.s. my friend Carilou who writes HyperGrowth has a great post on how to talk to the C-Suite I highly recommend reading.