English Grammar Demystified - A Self Teaching Guide

Liz—Lunch? what time?

H.

If, however, you send the following to a business contact, you risk changing that
person’s opinion of you. Again, don’t forget that your name is on the e-mail. If the
person who receives the e-mail stores all communications as a record, your e-mail
becomes a plastic bottle: you write it in fi ve minutes, but it’s stored in the e-mail
environment forever.

From: Joe Hidalgo

To: Harry Malcolm

Subject:

Harry you and i talked about instaling an air conditioning system in your

plant are you ready to go ahead with it can you call me tommorow at 11AM to

plan the project

Joe

How can you improve this e-mail? Start from the top. The subject line is blank.
Should Harry, a very busy man, have to read through the entire e-mail to determine
the subject? What specifi c subject would you include?
Now look back at the body of the e-mail. Find the run-on sentence errors. How
would you correct them? In the following example, you’ll see one way of correcting
the errors. Notice that spelling errors have been corrected as well. (Why didn’t Joe
at least use the spell-checker on his computer?)

From: Joe Hidalgo

To: Harry Malcolm

Subject: Date for installation of air-conditioner

You and I talked about installing an air-conditioning system in your plant.

Are you ready to go ahead with it? Can you call me tomorrow at 11 A.M. to

plan the project?

CHAPTER 1 Elements of the English Sentence^11