Business English Writing for Non-Native Speakers: Common Spelling & Grammar Errors

Writing in business English is for business or professional reasons, so it needs to be impeccable in terms of grammar and spellings in order for people to take it seriously. If you are not a native English speaker, chances are that you happen to commit some of the common spelling and grammar mistakes common in non-native English speakers or English-speaking people from outside the US.

Here are some of the most common errors and their correct counterparts.

Capitalization Errors
One of the most common errors in written English that have appeared recently, after the widespread use of instant messaging and internet communications is improper capitalization.
While it can be acceptable to capitalize any word you want when talking to your pals our WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, business communications must follow the strict rules of capitalization in line with the proper English Grammar rules. Here are some rules that you must follow regarding capitalization, especially when writing in business English:

⦁ Capitalize every proper noun you write. This includes the names of people, brands, religions, countries, rivers, and also, political parties.
⦁ Never forget to capitalize the pronoun I.
⦁ Capitalize all units of time like months, days, and holidays.
⦁ In the titles and headings, always capitalize the adjectives, nouns, and verbs. For example: Do Presidents Use Electric Cars?
⦁ Never write a word in all caps unless ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.

Incorrectly Spelled Names
No misconception about the English language is more prevalent than the notion that it is okay to spell names any way you want. Names are the most important part of any written text and they should not be taken lightly. No one comfortable with their name spelled the wrong way and, in some cases, this can even lead to serious confusion. Here are some tips about getting names right in business communication:
⦁ Be attentive to the cultural and linguistic differences in names. The same name can be spelled differently in different cultures.
⦁ Pay attention to double letters and language-specific characters when writing the name of people from non-English areas.
⦁ Consult a credible source or just copy and paste the names of people to be sure that you are not messing up the names.

Mixing British and English Spelling
English has become a global language but that has only made it more complicated. There are hundreds of different dialects of the language in practice right now but two of them are the most common and most widely used i.e. American and British.
Try to determine the audience of your communication and use the appropriate dialect. It is of paramount importance to note that you must consistently use one of them, NO MIXING.
Here are some examples that can help you to get this point and improve on this front:

⦁ In American English, words generally end with or instead of our in British English. For example, color vs. colour, labor vs. labour, honor vs. honour, and so on.
⦁ The same words end with re in British Spelling and er in American. For example, metre vs. meter, centre vs. center, ochre vs. ocher, and so on.
⦁ Britons like ending words with ise instead of ize used by the Americans. For example, patronise vs. patronize or legitimise vs. Legitimize.
⦁ Americans like to replace double consonants with single ones, as seen in cancelled and canceled or jewellery and jewelry.
When facing the dialect problem, carefully determine the target audience and make sure you are using correct English. When writing in business English, be consistent; do not use conflicting spellings in the same text.

Punctuation Errors
This is probably the most dreaded rule of grammar in any language. While they are meant to replicate the tone of talking in a written text, commas, periods, colons, and others of their family are a pain to get right. However, it is of cardinal importance to get them right in business communication or you might end up saying what you do not want to and that can spell major disaster for you. Here are examples of some common punctuation mistakes that you need to steer clear of:

⦁ Never use more than one exclamation mark.
⦁ Never put the final punctuation mark like a period or a question mark outside the quotes.
⦁ Never add multiple spaces after a punctuation sign.
⦁ Do not join independent clauses using a coma and make a single sentence out of it.
⦁ Be careful where you use single and double quotes, they are not interchangeable.

Use Hyphens and Dashes with Caution
While this technically falls in the domain of punctuation, hyphenated words are important and need to be addressed separately. Here are some of the things that you need to keep in mind when using these two marks of punctuation:

⦁ The shorter dash (-) is the American version while the loner one (–) is its British relative.
⦁ Both of these dashes are longer than the hyphen.
⦁ Dashes and hyphens are not interchangeable at all.
⦁ Some word processor applications can automatically change double hyphens into dashes.
This is, by no means the complete list of mistakes people make while writing English. There are countless of them. These are just the ones that are the most commonly seen and pointed out in business communication.

If you’ve been doing any or all of these mistakes, now is the time for you to repent and promise you will not do that again. That promise might be a difficult one to fulfill so we have a little bit of technical advice for you. You can use software tools to review your writing for you. One excellent example of this is Grammarly. It can be added to most of the word processing software and web browser and highlights your mistakes and can even suggest you the correct alternatives. However, you can only depend so much on Artificial Intelligence and the best practice is to proofread every last word you write, and only then, you can be sure that you left no mistake in your writing.