The third episode of Sneaky Grammar by Writesaver covers another seemingly simple grammar mistake. Most mistakes are merely embarrassing, but some can actually change the meaning of your sentence. In this episode, we’ll go over using ‘Dear’ as a greeting.

“Dear John,” is a formal greeting, perfectly suited for a business email. Using it after another greeting, however, will create a misunderstanding. For example, if you write “Hello dear John,” it will confuse your reader. At best, they will assume your English is lacking, which is bad enough. However, ‘dear’ is a term of endearment, and by reading it after the greeting they might assume you’re trying to be romantic.

Best greetings

Your greeting is the first thing a client or co-worker will read. It’s important that it reflects the intent of the email you’re sending. We already know that “Hello dear,” is not really an option. Let’s go over the right choices. If you want a casual greeting used to start a regular conversation, you can go with “Hi John,”. Now, if you’re looking for something even more casual, you can use “Hey John,”.

When you want to convey formality, you can use “Dear John,” or “Hello John,”. Separately, those are the best formal greetings you can use for your message. Just make sure not to use them together and you’ll be golden.

Worst Greetings

Besides “Hello dear John” there are other greetings you should stay away from. They might not be as confusing, but they are still among the worst ways you can open a business email. “Greetings of the day,” is a popular mistake by non-native English speakers, but it’s not used by fluent speakers of English. You should also stay away from “Greetings,” outside of the holiday season, because it just sounds strange. Other bad calls are “Dear friend,” and “John!” (why are you shouting at John?).

To make this easier, we prepared the following infographic with the best and worst ways to open a bussiness email.

If you found this episode helpful don’t forget to share it. Sneaky Grammar will back soon with a new common misunderstanding for you to avoid.  

Do you have an idea for a great Sneaky Grammar episode? Email us at submissions@writesaver.co with the subject “Sneaky Grammar” or tweet your suggestion with #SneakyGrammar.

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Check out Gatekeeper’s advice on how to write a contract.

For the second episode of Sneaky Grammar we present another seemingly simple typo that can change the entire meaning of your sentence. If you write, “They complemented each other”, with an ‘e’, it would mean they worked well together.

Just by changing one ‘e’ to an ‘i’, as in “they complimented each other”,  it would mean they said nice things to each other.

In the video we saw an example of a potential problem in the workplace. Every boss is on alert for sexual harassment, in which case the difference between complement and compliment could be a big deal. You need to be careful when writing your reports to avoid embarrassing misunderstandings. You could save Steve a pretty uncomfortable conversation with his boss.

The same issues could come when pitching to a client. If you want to convey that your team works very well together, you could say they complement each other. Now, if you write they compliment each other your client will think it’s very strange you’re sharing that information.

It can also go the other way. Andrew is a new employee, he’s doing a good job and could use some encouragement. You might write a task for his supervisor “compliment Andrew’s efforts”. Just by changing that to “complement Andrew’s efforts” you’d be asking the supervisor to help Andrew instead. This will make the supervisor waste valuable time, and it will send Andrew the wrong message.

Want more Sneaky Grammar? Here’s the previous episode.

If you found this episode helpful don’t forget to share it. Sneaky Grammar will back soon with a new common misunderstanding for you to avoid. Let us know if you have any questions in the comments section, we’re happy to answer all your grammatical doubts.

Do you have an idea for a great Sneaky Grammar episode? Email us at submissions@writesaver.co with the subject “Sneaky Grammar” or tweet your suggestion with #SneakyGrammar.

Sneaky Grammar #1 – The Meaning of “Willing”

Grammatical mistakes are very common, even experienced authors can miss one every once in a while. Usually, they are just embarrassing, but some can lead to real misunderstandings. At Writesaver we are constantly catching these issues, and we want to share the most interesting mistakes with you.

The first episode of Sneaky Grammar will cover one of our favorites: the meaning of “willing”. Because the noun form of ‘will’ can mean ‘desire’, people assume the verb form has a similar meaning as well, but it doesn’t!

The case in this video is one of the classics. You need to be careful when asking a client for feedback. They might be willing to use a pink background, but what if they really want something else? Avoid a silly misunderstanding that might affect your client’s opinion of your work by double checking your vocabulary choices.

There are many other cases where “willing” can backfire. Are you trying to schedule a meeting? They might be willing to meet on Thursday, but what if Friday is a better option? If you’re writing an informative article, don’t use ‘willing to’ to mean ‘want to’.

Now, there are cases where “willing” is the right word to use. If you’re doing a pitch and offering two alternatives, you could ask if your client is ‘willing’ to go with your favorite choice. You’ll be able to use that choice unless they have specific problems with it.

If you found our first episode helpful don’t forget to share it. Sneaky Grammar will back soon with a new common misunderstanding for you to avoid. Let us know if you have any questions in the comment section, we’re happy to answer all your grammatical doubts.

Do you have an idea for a great Sneaky Grammar episode? Email us at submissions@writesaver.co with the subject “Sneaky Grammar” or tweet your suggestion with #SneakyGrammar.