While I will never claim to be a writing guru, and appreciate that to ‘err is human’ (I make enough mistakes myself), I hate sloppiness!
I receive a fair amount of emails from students and public relations professionals prospecting for jobs. Unfortunately, it often seems that the requirement for PR people to have basic written skills has ‘left the building’.
I’m becoming rather concerned that the “grocers’ apostrophe”, once berated by our elders and betters in the PR world, is now seen as nothing to worry about. Surely good punctuation and grammar is an essential element of being able to communicate effectively? Hopefully this particular skill isn’t as dead as Elvis.
If you want to improve your basic writing skills, an excellent place to start is the CIPR’s Skills Guide and a great book I’d recommend is John Foster’s ‘Effective Writing Skills for Public Relations’.
