Zazou Marketing

Despite the title of this post, I am not going to cover all rules for commas here. Instead, I am going to review the rule about essential phrases and nonessential phrases. That’s because this is a rule I use all the time and, for some reason, I have to look it up every time.

In fact, I had to look it up again this morning when I was working on a client’s marketing one-sheet. For the marketing collateral, I needed to include the name of person and a descriptor before her name. The marketing material also had to include the name of a title of a show. In each case I had to decide when and if a comma was necessary.

So, which of the following is correct?:

The creator of Pole Superstar, Diane Passage, will be a judge.

The creator of Pole Superstar Diane Passage will be a judge.

Similarly, which of the following is correct?:

Her varied accomplishments include producing the off-Broadway play, “Artfuckers.”

Her varied accomplishments include producing the off-Broadway play “Artfuckers.”

Once again, I headed to my handy APA Style Book and looked it up. In short, it says that an essential phrase, one that is “critical to the reader’s understanding of what the author had in mind,” is not set off with commas. And a nonessential phrase, which “provides more information about something,” is set off by commas.

OK. Makes sense. But what about the above examples?

In the first one, her name is a nonessential clause (and needs commas) because only one person is the creator of Pole Superstar, so including her name is additional information. Even without her name, no one else could have been meant.

In the second one, “Artfuckers” is an essential clause (and does not need commas) because many plays are off-Broadway plays, and without the name the reader does not know which play is being referred to.

So, the final verdict is:

The creator of Pole Superstar, Diane Passage, will be a judge. Her varied accomplishments include producing the off-Broadway play “Artfuckers.”

By the way, if you want to read about a similar dilemma — Deciding Whether to Capitalize “How” in a Title — see my past post.

When you’re writing words like shake up, shape up or set up, do you ever wonder whether to use two words or combine them into one with a hyphen? Well, you’re not alone. Here’s a little rule to follow, use “shake up” when you need to use a verb and ”shake-up” as a noun or an adjective. Others that fit in a similar camp are:

Verb            Noun or Adjective
shape up        shape-up
speed up        speedup
set up            setup
sell out          sellout
stand in         stand-in
tie in              tie-in

Of course, the English language often makes no sense at all. For example, “second hand” is a noun, while “secondhand” is an adjective or adverb.

So, remember, next time you shape up your house, set up a garage sale and get rid of all of that secondhand clothing…

In this series, “Quick Tip”, we offer you linguistic rules of thumb. These explore grammar rules that will help you keep your business correspondence and marketing materials error-free. After all, you want your writing to reflect just how professional you are, don’t you?

So, here’s our first grammar tip for writing business correspondence and marketing materials:

The last time you wrote an e-mail asking a colleague to meet a deadline, you may have written, “Will you try and have that done on Monday?”

That’s fine for everyday relaxed conversation (and e-mails).

But for formal, precise prose, use the infinitive: try to (“Will you try to have that done on Monday?”).