By the time you get to college, professors generally assume you learned all you need to know about grammar in high school.

You would probably be surprised by the amount of basic grammar skills that either aren't absorbed or are forgotten. I'm not.

Obviously print journalists rely heavily on their grammar skills as they're tasked with telling stories using only words. But broadcast journalists aren't exempt from having good grammar ... or at least they shouldn't be.

Speaking conversationally doesn't mean you can dip into street slang or local dialect. In fact, both of those things detract from your credibility. Why should someone listen to and/or trust a person who doesn't speak correctly?

Unfortunately, most colleges don't require or even offer a grammar class for journalism students. The closest thing I got was an advanced editing and reporting class I took for my print major. Broadcast students weren't required to take those because they focused mostly on print-related things. However, in this day and age, can we truly separate ourselves that way? Yes, I work in broadcast, but I still have to know how to write, and I post stories to our website in PRINT format. And more and more print journalists are being required to turn broadcast-type stories for their online versions.

Is there a difference in the writing styles? Absolutely. But the same rules of grammar apply to both.

In the four years I've been working in this field, I've seen a lot of grammatical issues -- some over and over again. Here are the three I correct on a daily basis: Which versus That; Then versus Than; and Affect versus Effect. It's also not uncommon for me to correct misused apostrophes and commas; hyphens seem to be either not used at all or in all the wrong places; and, unfortunately, I still see subject-verb disagreement on occasion.

Probably the biggest concept for aspiring journalists to learn, whether they want to work for a newspaper or in television, is to write in active voice over passive voice. Using passive voice is not grammatically wrong, but it lends a slower pace to the story. Things are acted upon instead of your characters, if you will, performing some type of action. To put it bluntly, passive voice is boring and doesn't invite your readers or viewers to finish the story.

There is no easy way to overcome the grammar learning curve. I've actually considered putting together a pocket guide for grammar or launching a series on here. Honestly, though, who has the time? It would be a never-ending, miles-long project that would surely drive me insane.

So I guess the best advice I can offer you is to get an AP Stylebook if you don't already have one. It covers most of the common grammatical issues as well as some not-so-common ones. If you want to go the extra mile, pick up a copy of Working With Words.

In this business, words are your business. To make it, you've got to be well-equipped.