Welcome to your Crash Course English Grammar, tailored specifically for the business world. Whether you’re drafting emails, preparing presentations, or speaking with colleagues and clients, mastering these 12 grammar rules will enhance your clarity, professionalism, and effectiveness.
Would you like to improve your English grammar and fluency for your career? The English Center provides quality, private Business English training, online and on location in Amsterdam, Den Haag and Amstelveen.
English Grammar is a complex minefield of rules with lots of exceptions. We have chosen our top 12 to give you our personal English Center rapid tutorial on English Grammar.
In business communication, using the active voice is preferred because it makes sentences clear from the start. In the active voice, we know immediately who is acting – who is performing the action expressed by the verb. In English, we generally prefer to know the “who did it” right up front. Another plus of active voice is that it generally requires fewer words, so it ticks the all important concision box. (More about that later.)
Passive: The report was completed by Tom.
Active: Tom completed the report.
Consistency in verb tenses helps keep your message straightforward and easy to understand. Switching tenses mid-sentence can confuse the reader.
Inconsistent: We were moving quickly with planning the project while the other team had been encountering lots of problems.
Consistent: We were moving quickly with planning the project while the other team was encountering lots of problems.
Request a free intake with The English Center and start your journey to better English today!
Commas can change the meaning of your sentences dramatically. They clarify meaning by indicating pauses and separating elements within a sentence. And the presence or absence of a comma can (sometimes) dramatically change the meaning of a sentence. For example, compare:
“Let’s eat, Tom.” (This sentence contains a comma and is a polite suggestion to your colleague,Tom, to have lunch together)
and
“Let’s eat Tom!”.:-o (This sentence is a suggestion to a third person or a group of people to cannibalize/eat Tom. Oh my. Thankfully, not all comma errors are that dangerous ;-).
For a useful list of concise commas rules, go to The English Center blog Comma Rules Made Simple.
In business writing, brevity is key. Avoid using redundant pairs, excessive adjectives (try to find the perfect verb instead), and filler words that don’t add value to the content. When you edit your work, delete the unnecessary words. Think of yourself as a sculptor, chiseling away everything that is not needed in order to reveal the beauty of the final product.
Verbose: We are currently in the process of reviewing all of the various different options.
Concise: We are reviewing all options.
Pronouns replace nouns. Pronouns should always agree in number and gender with the nouns they refer to. Misuse / excessive use of pronouns can lead to confusion and appear lazy or unprofessional.
And in the post millennium period, be especially sensitive to the pronouns you use for people who may be trans, nonbinary, etc. If you are not sure of someone’s preferred pronoun, ask them. Finally, be aware that the pronoun “they” is now accepted as a singular pronoun for non binary people.
Incorrect: Mary and Lisbeth are really fun to work with. She is always cracking jokes and keeping us laughing while we work.
Correct: Mary and Lisbeth are really fun to work with. They are always cracking jokes and keeping us laughing while we work.
It’s is a contraction of ‘it is’ or ‘it has,’ while ‘its’ is a possessive pronoun (a pronoun that shows to whom something belongs.) This is a common mistake but it’s easily corrected.
Incorrect: Its important to check it’s toner.
Correct: It’s important to check its toner.
There are lots of ways to speak about the future in English, so this is one tense that should not make you tense (haha). Here are some examples. Contractions have been added to illustrate the many correct ways to speak about the future..
I fly to Paris tomorrow.
I am going to fly to Paris tomorrow.
I’m going to fly to Paris tomorrow.
I am flying to Paris tomorrow.
I’m flying to Paris tomorrow.
I will fly to Paris tomorrow.
I’ll fly to Paris tomorrow
I will be flying to Paris tomorrow.
I’ll be flying to Paris tomorrow.
Of course, there are some nuanced differences in the sentences above.
PRO TIP > – When we say, “going to,” we emphasize that the future action is planned, Thus, when your boss says, “When will the report be finished?”, it’s better to say, “I’m going to finish it today,” than to say, “I’ll finish it today.” The former sounds like finishing the report is already a planned item for today, and the latter sounds like you are responding in the moment. Maybe there was no plan. Thus, English speakers use “going to” to show intent. To indicate that a plan is already in place. To reassure your manager that you are “on top of it.”
Want to know more about the future tense? Our favorite grammar book, English Grammar in Use, by Raymond Murphy, has a great one page explainer about the future. It’s on page 295.
Capitalization rules help identify proper nouns and show us that a new sentence has begun. But watch out! American English and British English have different rules about capitalization. In general, Americans use a lot more capitals than the Brits, Aussies, etc.
PRO TIP> Know the style guide for your company and stick with those rules.
I have to admit to capitalization mixing, as I just cannot decide which style I like better. Hopefully you will not fall prey to this problem. And 2 more tips: “uppercase” and “capital letters” are the same thing. Finally, title case is different than sentence case.
Sentence case rules are generally the same in both AE and BE and simply instruct us to start each sentence with a capital letter and to use capitals for proper nouns.
Title case rules are where we see differences:
AE: Capitalize the first word, the word I, proper nouns, and all words more than 4 letters.
BE: Capitalize the first word, the word I, and proper nouns.
Incorrect title case AE and BE: About the acme marketing department
Correct title case AE : About the Acme Marketing Department
Correct title case BE: About the Acme marketing department
Incorrect sentence case AE and BE: The acme Marketing Department is very strong.
Correct sentence case AE and BE: The Acme marketing department is very strong.
In AE title case, capitalize ALL words longer than 4 letters!
In BE title case, use sentence case. In other words, use the same rules you would use for a sentence.
This rule applies in both AE and BE: Always capitalize these things – first words and proper nouns (names of persons and places).
Still not clear about proper nouns? Proper nouns are words such as Amsterdam, Mary, Rijksmuseum, Empire State Building, Schiphol, President Macron.They are words that pertain to a particular being or thing.
PRO TIP> Want to know more about American capitalization? Check our these concise capitalization guidelines from the APA
PRO TIP> Want to know more about capitalization and all things stylistic in British English? Consider getting a copy of The Economist Style Guide.
Use apostrophes to indicate possession OR to form contractions. Omitting or misplacing apostrophes can cause misunderstandings or give an unprofessional impression.
Possession singular noun: The company’s policies
Possession plural noun: The companies’ policies
Possession and contraction: At Maxim’s Sportswear, we’re expanding our market, and we won’t stop till we’ve achieved our goals.
Are you interested in Intensive English grammar training? Learn more about our intensive English courses here.
Prepositions are important for describing relationships between different elements in a sentence. Misusing them can make your meaning unclear or make you sound less natural when speaking English. Adding prepositions when they are unnecessary can make your sentences wordy and less concise.
Incorrect: She is responsible with managing of the team.
Correct: She is responsible for managing the team.
Correct but unnatural: That is the desk of Susan.
Correct and natural: That is Susan’s desk.
Correct: The center of the city is bustling with activity.
Correct and more concise: The city center is bustling with activity.
PRO TIP> There are so many possible proposition combinations that this is, admittedly, a tough area to master. But here is one rule that generally works. When speaking of transport, use “on” for trains, buses, trams, ships, horses, bikes, airplanes. The memory cue is that you can stand up on these. For situations where you cannot stand up, use “in.” In a car, in a truck, in a helicopter.
PRO TIP> Speaking about hospitals: In or at?
If you say you are in the hospital, the listener may be alarmed and will assume you are sick or you have had an accident.
If you say you are at the hospital, the listener will think you are visiting someone who is sick.
This one is straightforward. If you are adding an -s to a plural, never use an apostrophe. The plural of a noun is usually -s without an apostrophe.
Incorrect: Photo’s
Correct: Photos
Incorrect: I have so many report’s to finish by the end of this week.
Correct: I have so many reports to finish by the end of this week.
Words ending in -y, change to -ies.
E.g Dictionary > Dictionaries
Words ending in -s, -sh, -ch, -x and -o change to -es
E.g bus > buses, dish > dishes, church > churches, box > boxes, potato > potatoes
Irregular plural forms children, men, women, feet, mice, fish
In statements about the past, we use a past tense verb.
I worked a lot last week.
But… in questions and negative statements with the auxiliary (helping) verb “did,” we use the infinitive form. For example:
Did you work a lot last week? No, I didn’t work much at all last week.
This rule works for regular and irregular verbs. 🙂 And it works when you use the contraction (didn’t).
PRO TIP> This rule may seem counterintuitive, but when you have learned the pattern, it will become easy to avoid this common error. Learn the pattern with these examples:
Negotiate
– Statement: She negotiated a new contract with the client.
– Negative: She did not negotiate a new contract with the client.
– Question: Did she negotiate a new contract with the client?
Think
– Statement: I thought about our project goals over the weekend.
– Negative: I did not think about our project goals over the weekend.
– Questions: Did you think about our project goals over the weekend?
We hope you found this Crash Course English Grammar useful. Want to learn more about English grammar for business? Take a look at our English Language Short Course!
What do our clients think about us? Just click the TrustPilot icon to read some reviews.