One thing that many people worry about is that they “don’t know grammar”. Are you one of them? Here is why it’s a silly thing to worry about.

The truth is, writing freaks out a lot of people. There are many reasons why. Sometimes it’s because of worries about spelling. Sometimes it’s because ‘being a writer’ is fairly specialised. Sometimes it’s because the issue of vocabulary is a perceived problem.

Most often, though, people worry that they ‘don’t know grammar’.

But as I always say to people: if you can speak the language, if you can read the language, you know grammar. What you don’t know is the technical term for each part of what you write.

And unless you are in a profession like mine, where you have to explain reasons for your linguistic choices, you don’t need to know technical grammatical terms.

A basic sentence is a noun and a verb. Hence, ‘Jesus wept’ is a complete sentence. But how often do you need to explain that? Chances are, the answer is ‘never’, or at least ‘very rarely’.

When you write anything for your business, the key is to write what you know about, with passion. If you are able to do that, even if your grammatical structure is imperfect, you will still be able to engage your readers. Leave worrying about the niceties of grammar to people like me.

Tags: copywriting, grammar
Filed under: How-to