Tips for Success in Business Writing
Business affects everyone! If you don't end up in a business-oriented occupation, you will certainly have to engage in business as a client or customer. Skill in business writing is also a valuable asset for job-seekers.
We're bombarded with words all day every day from emails, reports, letters, speeches and much more. You can't afford to let your business communications get lost in the crowd. Not if you want to inspire your customers to buy, encourage your employees to work harder, or simply invite associates to a business luncheon.
Writing allows time to think things through and present information in the clearest, most concise manner. Writing provides a record that can be filed for future reference. In many cases, written communication carries more weight and is taken more seriously than a spoken conversation. For these reasons and more it is important to become familiar with basic business writing skills.
How do you write clearly and effectively? If you want to write well, this includes the most effective ways to business writing.
#1. Know your audience
It's an old saying in the advertising business: A message aimed at everyone often appeals to no one. To communicate effectively, you have to know your readers. Are they familiar with your subject? Are they likely to resist your message? Are they old or young, urban or rural, highly educated or not? Knowing your audience makes it easier for you to answer everyone's most pressing question..."what's in it for me?"
#2. Appropriate Tone
One tricky aspect of writing is that tone. The attitude of the writer toward his subject or audience can easily be misinterpreted. Avoid sarcasm. Be aware that a letter can sound colder and more severe than you may intend. Pay attention not only to what is said, but how your words may be interpreted. Do not be overly informal or familiar.
#3. Communication
The social purpose of language is communication. To inform, misinform or otherwise influence our fellows. Communication is more difficult than we may think. We are all serving life sentences of solitary confinement within our bodies. Like prisoners, we have as it were to tap in awkward code to our fellow men in their neighboring cells. In some modern literature there has appeared a tendency to replace communication by a private maundering to oneself which shall inspire one's audience to maunder privately to themselves.
#4. Junk the jargon
Every field has its acronyms and technical terms. They're useful shorthand when every reader knows the lingo. But if you're writing for people outside your field- which will often include your customers- get rid of the inside slang or you may create confusion. If you absolutely can't avoid using jargon, at least explain it. On a webpage for instance you can insert a hyperlink to the definition.
#5. Clarity and conciseness
There is a time and place for creative figures of speech and poetic turns of phrase, but rarely is a business letter that time or place. The priority in business writing is the effective communication of specific information. Avoid wasting words and be precise with the ones you choose. It is bad manners to give readers needless trouble. Therefore clarity. And how is clarity achieved? Mainly by taking trouble and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them.
#6. Simplicity is the key
People often skim documents for key information before deciding to read the whole thing. Make it easy for them. Write a clear subject line or a clear headline. Put deadlines and other vital points in bold. Break up messages with descriptive subheads. Make sure the most important information is at the top. Avoid using gigantic words when the simpler ones will do. Instead of "facilitating ameliorations to our customer service environment," simply say "improve customer service." Try to write the way you speak.
#7. Honesty
As the police put it, anything you say may be used as evidence against you. If handwriting reveals character, writing reveals more. You cannot fool all your judges all the time. Most style is not honest enough. Easy to say, but hard to practice. A writer may take to long words, as young men to beards- to impress. Or a writer may cultivate the obscure, to seem profound. Or he may cultivate eccentricity to seem original. But really original people do not have to think about being original-they can no more help it than they can help breathing. They do not need to dye their hair green.
Conclusion
In many ways writing in a business setting is less demanding than other kinds of writing. There is a little pressure to be creative or particularly original. You are not creating art after all. You are using the written word for its most basic purpose: to communicate information. This, however is not always as simple as you may think. Good business writing, like every skill, requires practice.
Feel free to drop your comments on the additional points you feel should be added. Also make some extra cash as a writer here...
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Written by: Antony Moturi
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