“What’s with the grammar errors & sentence fragments?”

“The pitches you’ve shown have grammar errors and sentence fragments and lots of abbreviations – what’s your take on that?”

That was a question I got when I did a special webinar Tuesday. You see, I had been asked to help current university PR professors get caught up on all the changes in media relations so they can update the way they teach their students.

I was happy to accept the invitation because I love those folks (had some great mentors myself in school – thanks Drs. Wilson and Valenti) and I can only imagine how hard it is for them to juggle all their responsibilities AND keep up with everything.

And it didn’t surprise me that at least one of them was hung up on what I’ll characterize as the “informal” tone of the example pitches I showed.

Often when I do my boot camp and show an example, someone will say, “Well, the reporter obviously knew you before this pitch, right?” But the answer is no. I show people how to succeed with cold pitches, because if you can do those, you can easily adapt to people you have a relationship with.

Don’t get me wrong – my example pitches are not flippant or disrespectful. Neither are they sloppy. The reason they stood out to this Ph.D. who was asking is because they lacked the formal, stuffy tone that many of us used to associate with business writing.

Instead, they read like social media posts, or like a person would actually talk.

What the professor would call “grammar errors,” I’d term adaptations to acknowledge more common usage. Like starting a sentence with “like” instead of “such as.” And starting a sentence with a preposition :).

Also, sentence fragments = crisp communication. Abbreviations are fine if the reader will immediately know what they stand for – if you spell out National Football League, you’ll sound officious.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s no place for sloppiness, typos, or legit grammar errors. Read everything twice. Just read it aloud the second time, and if it sounds forced or stale, loosen up and keep it real.

P.S. If you like seeing LOTS of examples of successful pitches, that’s what we do in the Inner Circle. Here’s your last chance to get on the Preview Pass before the next Inner Circle enrollment window opens on Nov. 17.