MAP Group Member, Tom Rizzo, author of Last Stand at Bitter Creek, submitted the following article with helpful tips for business writing, but these suggestions apply to any type of writing.
Commonsense Tips For Business Writing
By Tom Rizzo
Business writing ranks as one of your most important communication tools—especially when it involves online commerce. But, for some obscure reason, online written communication often produces careless or sloppy results. Business writers on the Internet tend to fall into one of two categories:
1. Those who write with clarity and precision.
2. Those who approach writing projects with lazy or inattentive attitudes.
The main goal of a sales and marketing message is to capture attention. The only way to keep attention is to provide something of interest and value and beneficial. However, it’s easy to lose the attention of your target market.
Readers tend to drift away for many reasons. In order to keep your audience focused, avoid the following:
- Slow or delayed openings. Start your message with a bang. Don’t dilly-dally. Get straight to the point.
- Wordy sentences. Long, repetitive and rambling sentences promote confusion. Limit sentences to one idea each. Periods and commas serve as rest stops that allow readers to grasp and understand one idea at a time. Too many qualifiers. A qualifier is a word that is tacked onto another word to modify its meaning. It’s often used as a way to “hedge” a point of view or soften the impact of a particular work. But qualifiers (such as seems, perhaps, suggests, indicates, may, might, possibly, probably and so on) make you sound unsure of what you’re saying. Being unsure has no place in business writing.
- Misspellings. There is absolutely no reason for misspellings. Especially in the age of spell-check. Granted, spell-check can miss a few things, but that is why another pair of eyes should review your writing.
- Proofreading. A fail-safe way of avoiding misspellings and other errors in writing is to proofread each document. Proofreading is essential to clean, crisp, clear writing. As mentioned in the previous point, get someone else to read and review what you’ve written. Not only for misspellings and grammatical errors, but for sense and clarity, as well.
- Slang and jargon. Relying on business jargon or slang to communicate is plain lazy. To your audience, the words are meaningless. Jargon obscures the intent of your message. If you lose just one reader because he or she doesn’t understand one of the words or expressions you used, the message had failed. (click here for examples of over-used jargon).
- Incorrect word usage. Details are important when it comes to business writing, or any kind of writing for that matter. Be aware of how you use certain words. For example, the words it’s and its are often used interchangeably–which is incorrect. It’s—with an apostrophe—means it is. Its, on the other hand, is a passive form for conveying ownership. Two dramatic differences. Using the incorrect one classifies you as unreliable—or an amateur.
- Too many typefaces. Designing and writing are two separate skills. Don’t mix one with the other—unless you are proficient in each. in many cases, writers go overboard injecting color here and there and mixing in a broad variety of typefaces. Keep it simple. One typeface for headlines, and another typeface for the body copy. Your goal is to get the reader to understand your message and take some kind of action. The message gets muddy when a reader stops to admire the design elements.
- Consistent tense. Keep verb tense consistent. Present tense is a more powerful way to communicate. Avoid switching from one tense to another.
The goal of all writing is clarity. If you avoid these nine trouble spots, you'll keep your target audience engaged and focused on your message.
If you would like to submit helpful tips about writing, publishing, or marketing to the MAP Group blog, send them to Gloria Lyons: gloria@gloriahanderlyons.com
If you would like to submit helpful tips about writing, publishing, or marketing to the MAP Group blog, send them to Gloria Lyons: gloria@gloriahanderlyons.com
