By Marsha Hall, Senior Counselor

Newsletters: does your audience read or toss them?

That’s the decision readers make every time they receive your newsletter or Ezine. What they decide will depend largely on two factors: the newsletter’s content and the quality of the writing.

Actually, there is no single or “right” way to write a newsletter or Ezine. Content and style will be determined by the communication piece’s audience and its purpose.

The newsletter you compile for a local hospital to encourage employee retention and boost morale may be light, chatty and personal. The newsletter that updates customers and potential customers about new high-tech products and services will likely be more serious and may have an educational tone.

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By Marsha Hall, Senior Counselor

Add a dash of flavor.

If you like to cook, you have probably followed recipes that include a dash of salt, pepper or another ingredient. While adding a dash of a salt can spice up a culinary creation, using a dash in your copy—when appropriate—can add flavor to your writing.

The dash as a grammatical element, however, can be tricky and is often misused and even overused. Following the guidelines below will help you decide whether a dash is right for your sentence.

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By Kristan Leedy, Senior Counselor

The comma is king. 

Writing is hard work. Never mind being artful, or changing hearts and minds. Writing what you mean in a way your audience will understand is tough enough. One reason is that writers have lots of choices. There’s a whole language out there, and choosing precisely the right word can be as maddening as choosing your bath soap: Powder Fresh or Flowery? Antibacterial or sensitive? Exfoliating or moisturizing? Original formula — bingo! 

We also make choices about punctuation. If grammar can make us peevish, punctuation can drive us nuts. Consider the comma. 

The organic, friendly looks of this little mark are misleading. The comma is all-powerful when it comes to writing what we mean so that others can understand it. Indeed, an actual debate rages over the fate of the serial comma, which the AP Stylebook is accused of killing with the stroke of its dictum: 

 ”Use commas to separate elements in a series, but do not put a comma before the conjunction in a simple series: The flag is red, white and blue. He would nominate Tom, Dick or Harry.” 

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By Marsha Hall, Senior Counselor

Those pesky but proper pronouns

I cringed the other evening when I heard a TV reporter state, “And then they presented the award to he and I.”

Whoa, I thought, back up that grammatical train.

He or him? Me or I?

Actually, this reporter would receive a big red line through both pronouns if she submitted this verbiage as part of an English assignment during one of the courses I taught at Marion Technical College. But, she is not alone. Many of us will confess that we have problems determining the proper case for some pronouns.

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By Jenny Fuerst, Director, Corporate Communications

I think we have to admit that we were a little surprised by all the responses to our recent blog post on grammar pet peeves, which even got coverage in Ragan’s PR Daily. The page views, comments and shared links have inspired us to develop a series dedicated to good grammar. You ask; we deliver.

With 140-character limits, text messaging, and all the other instant forms of communication these days, it’s still as important as ever to be grammatically correct, no matter which style you follow. As PR pros, we’re trained as journalists and mostly write for journalists, so we generally follow the AP Stylebook. But, Fahlgren Mortine is part of a full-service communications agency, and as such we often work with advertising copywriters. We understand creative writing and know there are times to take creative liberties. In addition to news releases and story proposals, we’ve also written marketing collateral, speeches, white papers, Web copy, community reports, and even ad copy.

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By Aaron Brown, Associate Vice President

Grammar rules.

I really can’t believe I’m blogging about grammar. I vividly remember sitting in my precision language course at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. I was afraid of grammar. The professor told us, “One day, you’ll be listening to the radio or watching the news and you’ll become frustrated with the bad grammar used.” Seriously? I was used to spelling grammar as grammer. 

But it happened to me. In the nearly 10 years since graduation, I’ve been the annoying guy correcting my friends’ grammar. I find solace knowing that my clients expect it from me. They want their communications to be grammatically correct. Now, if we could just get the lion’s share of the media to feel the same way. 

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By Karen Bailey, Senior Account Specialist

Challenging the status quo with new communications tactics

Super Bowl Sunday is traditionally one of the most watched nights of television. An evening devoted to crunching shoulder pads and advertising creative directors. And, the president? Some of you may have caught President Obama’s interview with CBS’s Katie Couric as part of the pregame programming. What you may not know is that this is all part of the President’s communication strategy. 

If you feel like you’ve seen the president doing a lot of interviews, you’re right. According to an article in the New York Times this week, the president has given 161 interviews in his first year. To compare, President Bush only gave 50 interviews and President Clinton 53 during the same time.

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By Julie Russo, Vice President

It’s been a banner month for animals making news. 

Just last week, Lily the Black Bear had a baby. Newsworthy? Doesn’t seem like it. But a webcam was there to bring the event to the masses. And therein lies the news. It turns out black bears don’t usually give birth in such close proximity to a webcam. (Reality TV humans, please take a cue from black bears’ privacy mores.) Great PR for bears, especially after the beating their public image takes at the hands of Stephen Colbert. With nearly 63,000 fans on Facebook, Lily is another example of great content being the best way to draw attention. 

Earlier this month, Yun Zi, a panda cub at the San Diego Zoo made his public debut. A webcam had been a part of that news also - Panda Cam, to be specific. Oh, how I love Panda Cam. There is even a time-lapse feature, which comes in handy, given pandas aren’t notoriously vivacious. (Not to say they couldn’t be, but according to the news, they mostly “eat, nap, forage, repeat“.) 

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