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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Business writing isn’t the same as good writing. They overlap, but they aren’t congruent. For example: Were Strunk and White to read that a business function is repetitive, duplicative, and redundant, they would express dismay, and perhaps lose their most recent meal. In a memo, making the point triply like this increases its impact, offending only English Lit majors who never made the adaptations necessary to achieve a corner office.

Continuing from last week’s column, which provided some guidelines for good business writing (which overlaps but isn’t identical with graceful prose):

  • Be specific. Compare “This report is awful,” with “This report contains no facts or evidence, is filled with unstated assumptions, argues by assertion, and makes false inferences.” Information is that which reduces uncertainty. Which criticism makes you less uncertain the report was awful?
  • Hopefully vs I hope: Use “I hope.” While grammarians lost this battle a long time ago (“hopefully” once meant and should still mean “in a hopeful fashion”), you’ll sound more accurate if you say “I hope” or “we hope.” The effect will be subliminal, but still worth the effort.
  • Use “I” sparingly. You aren’t writing about you. So, “I carefully analyzed the data,” might be accurate, but “Careful analysis of the data shows,” is better. Even in your resume, place the focus on your roles and accomplishments. If necessary, use sentence fragments: “Reduced process waste by 15% per year for three years.”
  • Contractions: Use them more sparingly than when speaking, but don’t eliminate them. A fully conversational style usually isn’t appropriate — business writing is more formal than, for example, this column. Neither, though, is stiltedness.
  • “We,” “you,” and “other people.” For some reason, many in business believe they can only use third-person construction. They’re wrong. “We” and “you” are wonderful pronouns. Use them frequently, but not interchangeably.”We” is better when recommending a difficult choice, “you” when describing positive behavior, and “other people,” “some,” or some other third-party term when describing behavior to revile. To illustrate: “We need to reduce costs.” “I’m sure you have already taken the first steps.” “There are those who haven’t yet accepted the overwhelming evidence.”
  • Surrounding words with quotation marks: Do this only when referring to a word as a word — not to create emphasis. The previous bullet provides valid examples. Italics are often better: “In this document, prestidigitation refers to our new application development methodology.””Penn Jillette is masterful at ‘prestidigitation,'” is, in contrast, wrong (in its use of quotations marks — Penn Jillette prestidigitates phenomenally well).
  • Don’t get fancy with vocabulary. Earlier in this column I used “chronicled” instead of “was about.” That’s the right choice … for a column, or an essay. In a memo, “chronicled” would sound pretentious.
  • Jargon. Use it freely if you’re certain your audience shares it. Otherwise, define your terms.
  • Use “assume” carefully. It’s usually an insult, as in, “You’re assuming we’ll make a profit on this.” If the insult isn’t clear, contrast it with the (I hope) more accurate, “It appears you’ve concluded we’ll make a profit on this.” One says you’re too lazy to gather facts and draw logical inferences, the other gives you credit for both.
  • Minimize weasel words. Don’t say, “In general, it’s fair to say that the department’s employees are competent, although there are exceptions.” Half of this sentence is disclaimer. “Most of the department’s employees are competent,” weasels enough. You’re writing a report or memo, not a legally binding document that requires escape clauses, loopholes and deniability.
  • Gender: Use Ms. as the honorific for women if an honorific is needed. For role names, “man” is wrong and “person” is generally unnecessary, as “sales representative,” “server,” and “fire fighter” demonstrate. There is no graceful solution for a singular gender-neutral pronoun. “He/she” is, by now, widely used and good enough, and “they,” while ungrammatical, is unobtrusive and acceptable.
  • Sentence-ending prepositions. If the result isn’t contorted, write around the problem. But as Churchill once said, in defense of terminal prepositions, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.”

Which reminds me of an old joke: A college student from New York City spends a semester at Harvard. Her first day on campus she asks a passerby, “Can you tell me where the library’s at?”

“I can,” he sniffs, “but I must point out that at Harvard one never finishes a sentence with a preposition.”

“Oh,” she says. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Let me rephrase my question. Can you tell me where the library’s at, moron?”

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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

Most business writing is bloated, boring, and pointless. It doesn’t have to be this way. Here’s a grab-bag of mostly easy techniques that can help poor writers improve.

  • Avoid the passive voice. Of all the egregious sins of business writing, the passive voice is the most pervasive, and the most damaging. Sentences like, “A project will be chartered,” are common, and awful.Beyond their utility in inserting dullness, they compound the damage by preventing accountability: Everyone knows someone must charter the aforementioned project; use of the passive voice allows all readers to leave the doing of it to others.

    This characteristic of the passive voice is, undoubtedly, what makes it so popular.

  • Support your statements. Follow assertions with at least three supporting facts or arguments, because: (1) doing so provides a compelling reason to agree; (2) even for those who disagree, three supporting statements demonstrates that those who agree aren’t simply sheep; and (3) your ability to provide three separate reasons to accept the proposition demonstrates your clear-headedness.See?
  • Avoid etc. When following an assertion with three supporting facts or arguments, don’t make “etc.” one of them, because “etc.” doesn’t support anything. It’s equivalent to saying, “trust me” — the favored phrase of those who sell used cars. Every time a writer uses “etc.” to end a list, readers have every right to infer that he or she is intellectually lazy. If you find yourself tempted and can’t simply stop the comma-separated list with its last concrete entry, replace “etc.” with something more informative, like “… and other bits too numerous to mention.”
  • Differentiate “less” and “fewer.” Few among us really care if you say, “Less people use good grammar than bad,” instead of “Fewer people use good grammar than bad.” Nonetheless, getting this right makes you appear to be a clear thinker to just about every listener or reader, and with very little effort. The choice is easy: If the items are countable, use “fewer,” otherwise use “less.”It’s a minor point, (another is to never modify “unique” — if you do, you should have said “rare” in the first place) whose primary value is what it helps you say about yourself.
  • Use your vocabulary. “Thing” appears far too often in the average business report, and only because the writer was too lazy to think of a more specific noun. The same can be said of “do” as a verb, and “good” and “bad” as adjectives. Careful word choice gives you the opportunity to make careful distinctions. Take a new application for example: Designing it is different from either describing it or engineering it.So take the time to find the right word. It’s an easy thing to do.
  • Avoid superfluous modifiers. Whenever possible, choose nouns and verbs that require no adjective or adverb to clarify them. When you do use a modifier, ask yourself if it adds information, or just length.
  • Keep paragraphs short. It’s easy to get lost in a long paragraph. The blank space that separates paragraphs provides a visual marker that helps readers keep their place. The practical result: Readers only read the first few sentences of a long paragraph.
  • Order your thoughts. Streams of consciousness are self-indulgent. They give readers the impression that you’re either unable to think clearly, too lazy to organize your thoughts so as to make them clear to others, or simply indifferent as to whether anyone else should care what you think. They say, “Here are a bunch of random notions I’ve had. It’s up to you to make sense of them, although the only reason you should assume there’s sense to be made of them is your personal affection for me.”No matter what you’re trying to say, presenting your ideas in a logical order makes them credible. Failing to do so makes you, not incredible, but non-credible.
  • Organize your presentation. And use formatting to help readers follow the organization. Bullets keep separate, parallel thoughts separate and parallel. Headings and sub-headings help readers find what they’re looking for. Boldface and italics isolate the most important ideas.

Every communication you produce serves two purposes. The first is its overt reason for existence — to inform, persuade, or both. The second is to present yourself. This is more than exhibiting your talents in the best light. Each e-mail, memo or report is an opportunity to project whatever image you wish others to have of you. Creative, analytical, informed, imaginative, bold, careful … the way you write conveys an image.

Take control of it.

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