Grammar rules you can’t break in fundraising copy and some you can

Grammar rules? For fundraising copy?

Yes.

Hold on a minute. Shouldn’t fundraising copy be all informal and conversational? And doesn’t “conversational” mean that we routinely break so-called grammar rules and begin sentences with “and” or “but,” use contractions, end sentences with prepositions, and more?

Yes to that too.

But still, there are some grammar rules you can’t break, simply because breaking them causes confusion for readers – and that we definitely don’t want. Here are three of those unbreakable rules (from my article in NonProfitPRO: https://tinyurl.com/4pnwtpx8).

The dangling modifier. Take this example: “It’s so easy to forget that plants are quiet miracles. Often small, underfoot, and seemingly plentiful, we overlook their clever design and chemical superpowers.” In the second sentence, the phrase “Often small, underfoot, and seemingly plentiful” modifies “we” when it should modify “plants.” It’s not we who are often small, underfoot, and seemingly plentiful. It’s plants. This error is really common, but it causes a lot of confusion for readers.

Subject-verb agreement. You wouldn’t say “Children in Darfur is starving,” you’d say, “Children in Darfur are starving.” That’s pretty obvious subject-verb agreement. The problem comes in when other phrases get in the way. Take this example: “A shipment of lifesaving vaccines are being unloaded now in Africa.” The problem is that the subject of the sentence is “shipment,” not “vaccines.” The verb has to agree with “shipment.” That sentence should be “A shipment of lifesaving vaccines is being unloaded…” not “are being unloaded.”

Run-on sentence. This is when two sentences are jammed together without the right punctuation, as in: “Too many seniors are struggling with hunger and isolation, they need the help that your gift provides.” That comma is linking those two separate ideas. It’s an error called a comma splice. They should really be linked with a semicolon, or better yet, they should be two separate sentences.

A grammatical error in fundraising copy isn’t the end of the world, of course. Still, errors like these can cause confusion and distract donors from the fundraising message. And when that happens, you’re more likely to lose the donation instead of winning it.