I've recently become interested in writing and grammar, not least because I must maintain this blog. I will begin by saying I am a (mediocre) student of English as evidenced by my amateurish writing. (I once received a lvl 5 in IB English and had it remarked to a slightly more desirable lvl 6.) One recently developed hobby is to read the Economist style guide http://www.economist.com/styleguide/introduction. It corrects some commonplace mistakes as well as warns against stylistic ones. (Note that the previous sentence has one such commonplace mistake, i.e. using warn as an intransitive verb. The writer must always specify who is being warned. Indeed, the Economist warns writers.)

There are a few reasons why this is a relevant pursuit. First, our language is becoming increasingly meaningless. Expressions such as "to beg the question" are being bastardized. It used to describe an argument that pre-supposes a conclusion, a useful phrase in intellectual discourse. Now it is just a fancy way of saying 'raises the question'.

Second, grammatical writing shows thought was put into the work. In a recently blog post, the singular company "Progressive" continuously flip-flopped from being plural to singular and back. (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/08/corporations-are-not-people.html). It really does not give the reader much confidence in the writer's arguments (the arguments were, as expected, weak as well).

After reading many broker reports (mostly in FIG), there are a few errors that stand out. First, research analysts love using the word "impact" as a verb. Nothing is ever caused, created, influenced or made anymore. It's simply "impacted". The other one is the difference between due to and because of. Due to describes a noun whereas because of describes a verb. I first heard Mr. Jim Cramer speak of this distinction. It is important. How many times have you heard "We modestly reduce Q3/F12 EPS estimates due to noted headwinds"? Well you reduced it because of headwinds. However, this is okay: "We continue to project solid loan growth of over 10% due to acquisitions, with 6-7% loan growth projected in Canada." Here, the loan growth is attributable to acquisitions.

With that said, the people who write these research reports are extremely intelligent and I respect them wholeheartedly. These mistakes certainly do not detract from their eternal wisdom.