Punctuation and Professionalism

0:06 i often teach punctuation to my law 0:08 students 0:09 by asking them to imagine me arguing a 0:12 case 0:12 in court my evidence is solid i tell 0:15 them 0:16 my analysis is sound i speak fluidly and 0:19 persuasively 0:20 the only problem i'm wearing bright 0:22 orange running shoes 0:24 i then ask the students to write down 0:26 some words that they think 0:28 might be going through the judge's head 0:29 as my orange shoes and i 0:31 make our case to make the exercise more 0:34 concrete 0:34 i'll actually wear a pair of orange 0:36 running shoes to class 0:37 to go along with my otherwise normal 0:39 business attire of a suit 0:41 and tie sometimes i'll even jump up on 0:43 the table 0:45 the response from students is always the 0:47 same you look ridiculous 0:49 your shoes are distracting i can't take 0:51 you seriously 0:53 nobody thinks i look professional 0:56 i then put on the board the following 0:58 sentence taken from a brief written by a 1:00 student working on employment law case 1:02 the record never established what 1:04 exactly the employer's reporting 1:06 requirements are 1:07 therefore it is impossible to say 1:09 objectively whether or not miss lin has 1:11 violated them 1:13 unfortunately not everyone notices that 1:15 this sentence like my orange shoes 1:17 also looks ridiculous is distracting and 1:20 makes it hard to take the person who 1:22 wrote it seriously 1:24 at least if you know how punctuation in 1:25 english generally works 1:27 the culprit is the comma commas are 1:30 generally not strong enough to hold 1:32 together 1:33 but are essentially two separate 1:35 sentences 1:36 but if you didn't know that or if you 1:38 think as the student perhaps did 1:41 well if i throw in a therefore i'll be 1:43 okay then you're going to look 1:45 pretty foolish not just in that sentence 1:48 but in a lot of other things you write 1:50 as well 1:50 it's hard to fix mistakes you don't see 1:54 i'm of course not really worried about 1:56 my students wearing orange running shoes 1:58 to court 1:59 or some other place where that footwear 2:01 is not appropriate 2:03 they all have mirrors they can all 2:04 notice or at least have someone tell 2:06 them 2:06 when their outfit might damage their 2:08 credibility but what they don't have or 2:11 at least could always use help 2:12 better developing are mirrors for their 2:15 writing 2:16 some way to evaluate if what they're 2:18 sending out into the world 2:19 is sufficiently professional and 2:22 polished 2:23 so that is what we will use these 2:25 punctuation and professionalism segments 2:27 to do 2:28 we'll give you the vocabulary to 2:29 recognize when your writing looks 2:32 like it's wearing orange shoes we'll 2:34 start 2:35 in the next video with the term for the 2:37 main error in the sentence from the 2:39 employment law case 2:40 commas place