Why Punctuation Matters in Marketing

Lisa Stiles / Sep 24th / Comments

I once taught English composition to college freshman. The first essays they turned in were punctuation nightmares. Bloodied commas, bruised quotation marks, and slain apostrophes littered the written page. The carnage was horrifying, yet the students didn’t understand the enormity of their punctuation crimes. When they routinely sent messages that might say, “c u l8r @ crnr str,” it’s easy to see why they forgot that they had access to the beauty and power of words.

What held true for college freshman is equally applicable in the world of marketing. Everyone wants to be understood, whether it is in an e-mail to your boss or in an expensive direct mail piece to your top potential target. A missing comma or quotation mark can deliver a world of difference in your message.

Punctuation is there because it helps you communicate clearly to the reader. That’s it. All those commas, apostrophes, quotation marks, periods, and uppercase rules, blended together, function to let your eyes and brain travel along the page in an understandable manner.

Imagine this: You are driving down a street, but the dividing lane is not marked. There are no stop signs when traffic intersects and no yield signs when cars merge into your space. What would happen? It would be a mess, and confusion would reign. That’s exactly what happens when punctuation is ignored.

Also consider that every time you write something and send it out into to the world – whether it’s a tweet, e-mail, sales letter, brochure, or even a business card – your intelligence is stamped all over it.

For example, there’s a reason why e-mail spam sticks out. It is full of punctuation errors and other indicators that convey to our brain that something isn’t right. We automatically assign a level of intelligence to the person who wrote it. The same thing happens when someone reads something that came from your company. The effect of the right words, used in the right way, can be awesome or awful.

Do yourself a favor today. Pick one mark of punctuation you struggle with and resolve to master it. Grab a grammar guide, listen to a great podcast, and do a couple of exercises. Invest a little in your education. You’ll be glad you did.