The Well-Punctuated Resume

In honor of National Punctuation Day, I invite you to proofread your resume! That sounds fun, right? Keep an eye out for these five common punctuation errors:

Misplaced apostrophes: I suspect that this error is the most common one--and it's an error that some persnickety types find especially irritating. Take a look at your resume now, and find the apostrophes. Each should indicate possession or a contraction. Here are some examples:

• Increased profits [this is just a plural word, so no apostrophe is needed] by 70% in six months.
• Led the company's [this is a possessive word, so the apostrophe is needed] first green initiative, which brought a 40% reduction in use of paper.
• "It's" is short for "it is"; "its" isn't. "You're" is short for "You are"; "your" isn't.

Misused quotation marks: Quotation marks are often used to indicate irony--a writer will put a word inside quotation marks to indicate that he or she means the word's opposite or is merely repeating someone. (Think of how people use so-called "air quotes" when they're talking with their hands.) So don't use quotation marks for emphasis. Doing so can give a sentence an unintended comic effect:

• Increased profits by "70%" [hmmm--what accounting tricks might be involved here?] in six months.

Improper comma use: The punctuation rules governing proper comma use are complex. For a full but succinct primer, check out this guide from Purdue University.

Exclamation points: They should be used sparingly (if at all) on a resume. (And unless you're confident that you know the proper way to use semicolons, they, too, should probably be avoided.)

Special characters: Because the first reader of your resume will often be a resume-reading software program, it's likely a good idea to keep dashes (hyphens are OK), symbols for foreign currency, indentations, italic or bold type, and even formatted bullets out of your resume--some programs turn those characters into a garbled mess. If you're copying and pasting your resume into an online form, save a copy of your resume as a plain-text file and make any adjustments in that file before you paste the text into the form (plain text is offered as an option when you save a file in almost all word processing programs).

Happy National Punctuation Day! If you have any grammar tips for resume writers, share them in the comments section.

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