My friend, Paul Myers, sales copywriter extraordinaire, offers this excellent piece of communication and persuasion advice, both for the written and spoken word. He says, “The purpose of grammar is to help ensure clarity of communication. If grammar gets in the way of getting your point across, toss the rulebook out the window.”
While that advice might make the skin of an English professor crawl (or, is it, make crawl the skin’ of an English professor?), Myers’ suggestion is right on the mark. The first goal of the communicator (the positive persuader) is to be relatable to the other person. This establishes rapport. Only then can understanding occur and effective communication and/or persuasion take place.
My friend, Stefanie West Allen once sent me an email and, not wanting to end a sentence with a preposition (perish the thought!) 🙂 and having the excellent sense of humor she has, began with, “So Bob, to what are you up?” Can you imagine actually asking someone that question, even though it’s more grammatically correct than, “What are you up to?”
The same rules apply for using really BIG words when easier-to-understand words will be…err, easier for the person to understand. And speaking technical jargon to one of the non-technical persuasion? Naw!
But, this article is really about communication and grammar. And, communicating your point in the easiest to understand and most persuasive way possible trumps correct grammar every time.
Don’t it?
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Really great message here, Bob. “to what are you up?” definitely gave me a chuckle. We’re looking forward to interviewing you on the TV show as we’re always learning from our friend and brother, Bob. Keep ’em coming! All the best, Steve.
You know, I gotta tell you, I truly savour this webpage and the useful insight. I find it to be refreshing and quite clarifying. I wish there were more blogs like it. Anyhow, I felt it was about time I posted a comment on The Real Purpose of Grammar | Bob Burg – I just wanna tell you that you did a good job on this. Cheers mate!
Totally AGREE!!!!!
How communication are recieved depends on what you send “with” your spoken communication. Everything is messurable energy! AND looks a certain way on a occiliscope (I think it is called) and also if you know a little about sound, there can be “noise” that has to be removed to get the clean message.
What I’m trying to say with all this is, a message in correct grammar, might be a message with a lot of “noise” included, because it is not “fit for your tongue” or fit for the recipient!
SAY it from your HEART and your communication will be recieved without any “noice” on your part, and you know you’ve done the best to deliver a heartfelt and truthfull message to the person, you want to get through to!!! And most time it will be recieved VERY WELL.
If the reciepient has too much noise on his/her reciever – WELL – then I think you’d do better without, and it will be no great loss, and propably just create trouble for you, using a lot of valuable time, ending up feeling you have failed, wich couldn’t be more wrong. NO can be a very positive steppingstone, I’ve learned from YOU and other JEDIMASTERS – LOL
THANK’S for a GREAT article! –
Hugs and Love from Denmark