8 Tips To Better Business Writing
 By Alex R. Merriman

Can’t think of the right word? Do you cringe at the thought of anyone reading what you’ve written? Does your mind go blank and your courage go south when you must write to a client?

Getting your message read (to say nothing of understood and retained) by the reader you’ve targeted is tough enough. You compete with a barrage of messages, ads, commercials, e-mails, magazines, newspapers, Web sites . . . You get the idea.

With all the competition, it’s easy enough for readers to ignore or lose interest. Don’t make it any easier by writing like an illiterate bumpkin. There are two ways to fix the problem: Pay someone else to do your writing or sharpen your own skills.

Save the money you’d pay a professional writer, and use these tips instead to make your own writing more professional.

Rule 1
Communicate. What you write is intended first and most importantly to communicate something to another person. If it fails, it doesn’t matter how scholarly or dumb your writing appears. If you don’t communicate, you literally write only to yourself. Let this rule dominate everything you write.

Rule 2
Spell it right. As long as dictionaries have existed, there has been no excuse for misspelling. Since word processors provide automated spelling checks, there’s less than no excuse. If you don’t use these tools, repent and begin using them. Religiously.

Rule 3
Don’t insult your readers. One of the best ways to alienate readers is to try to sound more important than you are. Or more intelligent. Or more expensive. Or more exclusive. The only people fooled by puffed up verbiage are the people who use it. They think others can’t see through phony, self-important language. If you write this way, you’re telling readers you don’t think they’re too bright. Write in the same language and tone that your readers use and prefer.

Rule 4
Don’t be pretentious or too cute. Write clearly and plainly. Use the everyday word over the haughty. Choose to communicate rather than to sound hip.

Avoid unprofessional, shorthand Internet lingo. Write “use” rather than “utilize” (a word coined by people desperate to sound more important than they are). Write “now” instead of “at this point in time” (a phrase used by people with little to say and a lot of room to say it).

Rule 5
Keep it short. Don’t say in 10 words what you can say in four. Don’t use a five-syllable word when two syllables will do. Fewer words can communicate more information. More words can result in less information being retained by the reader. Every word you use should advance your message toward your goal. If it doesn’t, delete it.

Rule 6
Talk straight. Don’t use colloquialisms or jargon unless they are universally understood by your target readers. It’s perfectly proper to speak in the insider language you and your readers share. But don’t assume every reader knows the secret handshake. Should you use that trendy term or that industry-specific idiom? When in doubt, don’t. No one is ever insulted or confused by understanding every word in your message.

Rule 7
Use declarative sentences. Stick to the basics. You’re more likely to communicate. You won’t insult or confuse your readers. Build your sentences around a subject and a verb, in that order. Shakespeare knew how. Madison Avenue knows how. You should know too, and do it. Declarative sentences make your communications straightforward and easily understood.

Rule 8
Reel in your thesaurus. The common use of a thesaurus is to find a highfalutin word to replace the natural word you were thinking of. The best use of a thesaurus is to find a better word than the word you were thinking of. Again, the goal is to communicate, not to be snooty.

(Posted August 2006)

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