Better Business Writing
Good writing isn’t an inborn gift. It’s a skill you cultivate like so many others.
If you are in business, and you’re writing anything to get results – e-mails, proposals, reports, you name – then you’re a professional writer.
To express yourself clearly and persuasively, you’ll need to develop several qualities:
- An intense focus on your reason for writing – and on your readers’ needs.
- A decided preference for the simplest words possible to express and idea accurately.
- A feel for natural idioms.
- An aversion to jargon and business-speak.
- An appreciation for the right words in the right places.
- An ear for tone.
Delivering the Goods Quickly and Clearly
Know why you’re writing
Say clearly and convincingly what the issue is and what you want to accomplish. With every sentence, ask yourself whether you’re advancing the cause.
Understand your readers
The most important things to realize about all business audiences are these:
- Your readers are busy.
- They have little if any sense of duty to read.
- If you don’t get to your point pretty quickly, they’ll ignore you.
- At the slightest need to struggle to understand you, they’ll stop trying.
- If they don’t buy your message, you may as well have stayed in bed that day.
Your job as a writer is to:
- Prove quickly that you have something valuable to say – valuable to your readers.
- Waste no time in saying it.
- Write with such clarity and efficiency that reading your material is easy.
- Use a tone that makes you likable.
Divide the writing process into four separate tasks
Think of writing not as one huge task but as a series of smaller tasks. The poet, writer, and teacher Betty Sue Flowers has envisioned them as belonging to different characters in your brain: MACJ. That stands for Madman-Architect-Carpenter-Judge.
- The Madman gathers material and generate ideas.
- The Architect organizes information by drawing up an outline, however simple.
- The Carpenter puts your thoughts into words, laying out sentences and paragraphs by following the Architect’s plan.
- The Judge is your quality-control character, polishing the expression throughout.
How do you keep track of all this preliminary material? Create a rough spreadsheet that contains the following:
- Labels indicating the points you’re trying to support.
- The data, facts, and opinions you’re recording under each point.
- Your sources.
As you’re taking notes, distinguish facts from opinions.
You want to arrive at the point of writing down three sentences – complete proposition – that convey your ideas. Then arrange them in the most logical order from the reader’s point of view.
Before writing in earnest, jot down your three main points – in complete sentences
A mathematician once told me that there are really only four numbers in the world: one, two, three, any many. Four items just seem to be one too many for most people to hold in their memory.
- Find your focus by first generating a list of topics to cover.
- Develop these raw ideas into full sentences and categorize your main points in sets of three.
- Arrange these sets in a logical order, keeping your reader’s needs in mind.
Write in full – rapidly
Once you’ve written your three main points, you’re in Carpenter mode. Now write as quickly as possible. Your sentences will be shorter than they otherwise would be, your idioms will be more natural, and your draft should start taking shape before you know it.
To prevent premature fussing, write against the clock. Allow yourself 5 or 10 minutes to draft each section – the opener, the body, and the closer.
It’s counterproductive to allow the Judge and the Carpenter to work side by side.
Write your first draft as quickly as you can. Don’t get stuck waiting for inspiration. Resist the urge to perfect as your write. If you find yourself stumped, move on to a different section.
Improve what you’ve written
Revise first and then edit. Revising is a reconsideration of what you’ve saying as a whole. Editing is more a matter of fine-tuning sentences and paragraphs.
As reviser, you’re asking several questions:
- Have I been utterly truthful?
- Have I said all that I need to say?
- Have I been appropriately diplomatic and fair?
- Do I have three parts to the piece – an opener, a middle, and a closer?
- In ma opener, have I made my points quickly and clearly? And concretely?
- Have I avoided a slow wind-up that unnecessarily postpones the message?
- In the middle, have I proved my points with specifics?
- Is the structure immediately apparent to my readers? Have I used informative headings?
- Is my closer consistent with the rest – yet expressed freshly? Have I avoided lame repetition?
When it comes to editing, you’re asking different questions:
- Can I save some words here?
- Is there a better way of phrasing this idea?
- Is my meaning unmistakable?
- Can I make it more interesting?
- Is the expression relaxed but refined?
- Does one sentence glide into the next, without discontinuities?
The main question is: have you said everything you need to – and in the most effective way?
Use graphics to illustrate and clarify
A few crucial principles:
- Make sure your graphics illustrate something discussed in the text.
- Place them near the text they illustrate, preferably on the same page or on a facing page.
- Use legends and key that readers can easily grasp.
The Who-Why-What-When-How chart.
- Whoa are you writing for? Consider your audience’s concerns, motivations, and backgrounds.
- Why are you writing? Keep your purpose firmly in mind. Every sentence should advance it.
- What needs saying? Include only the main points and details that will get your message across.
- When you’re are expecting actions to be taken? State your time frame.
- How will your communication benefit your readers? Make it clear to readers how you’re meeting their needs.
Developing Your Skills
Be relentlessly clear
Clarity can be a doubled-edged sword. When you’re forthright enough to take a position or recommend a course of action, you’re sticking your neck out.
Always judge clarity from the reader’s standpoint.
Simplicity breeds clarity. Strive to use short words and sentences. The optimal average for readable sentences is no more than 20 words.
Sometimes you’ll need a new sentence or even a new paragraph to explain a term or concept in simple, straightforward English.
Pave your readers’ way with concrete details. Don’t try to push them there with abstract assertions.
Learn to summarize accurately
A good summary is focused and specific – and it’s at the beginning of your document so readers don’t have to dig.
People often assume that shorter is better when it comes to summaries. But brevity without substance is worthless.
Provide only the information the reader needs to understand the issue – no more and no less.
Waste no words
Make every word count. When you mean before, don’t say or write prior to, much less prior to the time when. Remove all the words that aren’t performing a real function.
Replacing every -ion word with a verb if you can.
Replacing is, are, and were with stronger verbs where you can. More direct simple verbs.
Eliminate padding.
Be plain-spoken: Avoid bizspeak
Abstain from some of the bizspeak phrases if you can.
Bizspeak may seem like a convenient shorthand, but it suggests to readers that you’re on autopilot, thoughtlessly using boilerplate phrases that people have heard over and over. Brief, readable documents, by contrast, show care and thought.
Writing plainly means expressing ideas as straightforwardly as you can – without sacrificing meaning or tone.
The Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) scale – a test developed by readability expert Rudolf Flesch to measure the comprehensibility of written passages using word and sentence length. The higher the score, the easier the passage is to read and comprehend.
Use chronology when giving a factual account
Stories are inherently chronological.
Just the facts that matter, and in the right order.
Create a chronology of relevant events to organize the narrative
Be a stickler for continuity
Smooth writing consists of a sequence of well-joined sentences and paragraphs, not a mere collection of them.
Transitional phrases steer us from one idea to the next. These connections take readers forward in different ways. They can:
- Establish a time sequence.
- Establish place.
- Add a point.
- Underscore a point.
- Concede a point.
- Return to a point.
- Give an example.
- Provide a reason.
- Set up a contrast.
- Set up a conclusion.
Break up your documents (even e-mails that are longer than a paragraph) with some signposts to lead people from section to section and help them quickly locate the parts they’re particularly interested in.
Learn the basics of correct grammar
Why nitpick about grammar? Because readers may see your language – especially your use of your native language – as a reflection of your competence.
I, we, he, and she are subjects of clauses. Me, us, him, and her are objects of either verbs or proposition.
Besides pronoun problems, here are the main types of grammatical errors to watch out for.
Subject-verb disagreement. A verb must agree in person and number with its subject. Another troublesome area for subject-verb disagreement involves prepositional phrases that follow the subject. The object of a prepositional phrase is never the subject of a sentence. Disagreements can also arise with compound subjects connected by or, either … or, or neither … nor. The number of the verb must match the number of the noun that follows the or or nor. Strictly speaking, a pronoun must have the same gender and number as the subject. When the subject of a sentence is a singular pronoun such as either, neither, each, or every, other nouns that accompany it have no effect on the number of the verb.
Double negative. Watch for the word not plus another word with a negative sense.
Nonstandard vocabulary. In business writing always use standard English – unless you’re writing specifically for a niche audience of non-standard speakers. Irregular verbs are also fertile ground for nonstandard language.
Get feedback on your drafts from colleagues
A good writer welcomes good edits – yearns for them, in fact.
When it comes to writing, you want a culture of un-neurotic helpfulness.
Avoiding the Quirks That Turn Readers Off
Don’t anesthetize your readers
The best conversationalists use strong, simple words. Effective writers use the same techniques.
Don’t overuse I. always write directly to you, the person you’re trying to reach with your message.
Use contractions.
If you develop a strong habit of using active voice, you’ll largely prevent convoluted, backward-sounding sentences in your writing. How do you identify passive voice? It’s invariably a be-verb (typically is, are, was, were) or get, plus a past-tense verb.
Readers find acronyms tiresome, especially ones they’re not familiar with. People don’t want to master your arcane vocabulary to get what you’re saying. Stick to words when you can. Acronyms make writing easier but reading harder.
Watch your tone
Keep your writing down to earth to achieve a personal touch by:
- Writing your message more or less as you’d say it, but without all the causalisms.
- Including courtesies such as thank you, we’re happy to, and we appreciate.
- Using the names of the people you’re writing about.
- Using personal pronouns.
Never try to make your readers admit that they’re in the wrong.
Sarcasm express contempt and superiority. It doesn’t shame people into compliance. Rather, it’s a surefire way of irritating and alienating them.
Common Forms of Business Writing
E-mails
Here’s how to write e-mails that people will actually read, answer, and act on:
- Get straight to the point – politely, of course – in your first few sentences.
- Copy people judiciously. Include only those who will immediately grasp why they’re on the thread.
- Keep your message brief.
- Write a short but informative subject line. If you are asking someone to take action, highlight that in the subject line.
- Stick to standard capitalization and punctuation.
- Use a signature that displays your title and contact information.
Business Letters
Focus on the reader.
Say something that matters.
Avoid hedging and equivocating.
Start fast, and say what you need to say in the simplest way you can. Think of Olympic diving: neatly in, no splash, soon out.
Business letters get results when they meet readers’ needs. To get people to do something, give them reasons they’ll care about. Marketers often cite seven ‘fundamental motivators’ to explain responses – fear, guilt, exclusivity, greed, anger, salvation, and flattery.
Memos and Reports
Memos and reports are often used to get people up to speed on an issue, to induce action, or both. So make it immediately clear in each element – your title, summary, body, and conclusion – what you want readers to learn about or do.
Figure out how many main issues you’re addressing – preferably no more than three – and then for each one state: the issue in a way that anyone can understand, your solution, and the reason for your solution.
You should do enough research to understand the problem. Then you state the problem so clearly that anyone could understand why it’s worth solving. If you’re making a recommendation, say: what needs to be done, who should do it, when and where should it be done, why it should be done, and how it should be done.
Performance Appraisals
Writing performance appraisals, sometimes called employee reviews, needn’t be a dreaded responsibility.
Appendices
A Dozen Grammatical Rules You Absolutely Need to Know
- It is perfectly acceptable to start a sentence with And or But.
- It is perfectly acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition.
- The adverb corresponding to the adjective good is well.
- The subject of the sentence determines the number of the verb.
- Both either and neither, as subjects, take singular verbs.
- With neither/nor and either/or in the subject position, the second element controls the number of the verb.
- A flat adverb like thus or doubtless takes no -ly ending.
- The words however, therefore, and otherwise cannot join independent clauses without additional punctuation.
- With a verb phrase, the adverb usually goes after the first auxiliary verb.
- Relative pronoun (that, which, and who) must appear alongside their antecedents.
- An appositive is set off by commas when it is not essential to the sentence (when it is nonestrictive), but is not set off by commas when it is essential (restrictive).
- Correlative conjunctions (those used in pairs) require parallel phrasing.
A Dozen Punctuation Rules You Absolutely Need to Know
- Hyphenate your phrasal adjectives.
- Use a comma before and or or when listing three or more items.
- Don’t use a comma to separate two compound predicates. Do use punctuation – usually a comma but a semicolon if needed for clarity – to separate a series of three or more compound predicates.
- Don’t use an apostrophe to form plural nouns.
- Don’t separate the grammatical subject from the verb, unless there’s a set-off intervening phrase.
- Use bullets as attention-getting devices, but don’t overuse them.
- Avoid quotations marks as a way of emphasizing words.
- Don’t hyphenate most prefixed terms.
- Use a colon or a comma – never a semicolon – after a salutation.
- Long dashes have two defensible – and valuable – uses: to frame and to emphasize.
- Don’t use a comma when writing a month and year.
- For singular possessives, add ‘s even if the word ends with an -s, -z, -x, or -ss.
