We had to chuckle at her honesty. The sad thing is, though, that instead of believing you to be smarter, your audiences will perceive you to be obscure, pretentious, and unin- formed. Punctuation is a vital and necessary part of good writing. In fact, the best writers know that they can have wonderful ideas and cleverly phrased sentences, but poor and inaccurate punctuation will ruin their writing. The Power of Proper Punctuation.
Punctuation demands a book in itself.
We recommend that in conjunction with a good grammar and reference text, you purchase a punctuation manual. Several are listed in Appen- dix C, Additional Resources for Business Writers. We will highlight here several aspects about punctuation that good business writers need to know. Put the Period. The mark of punctuation most needed and least used in business writing is the period.