5 Strategies to Improve Your Business Writing

Guest post by Greg Fowler 

Even if your career isn’t focused on writing, the ability to write well can strongly influence your business opportunities. A poorly-executed email, or a resume filled with mistakes, can damage your reputation. To advance your career and impress your boss, develop your writing skills by employing the following five strategies.

Keep Your Writing Concise Brevity is important. An editor once told me that if there’s a way to say something with two words instead of three, do it. People want the information they’re seeking instantaneously, without having to wade through fluff. For instance, you can almost always remove the word “that” from sentences, and instead of saying “in order to,” saying “to” is sufficient.

There’s a distinction between brevity and content length. If the topic you’re covering is broad, there’s nothing wrong with banging out a 1,500 word piece as long as every word provides value to the reader.

Focus on Timely Content If you write about healthcare, focus your content on recent news to help generate more buzz and improve your results. For instance, you could focus on recent Affordable Care Act updates.

Are veterans your niche? Work recent VA problems into your next article, or provide information on new updates to veteran benefits. The more you can tailor your content to run in lockstep with current events, the better off you’ll be.

Be Accurate The Internet is filled with misinformation. I’ve often told friends I can get the Internet to say just about anything I want it to. When doing research, look for the latest statistics, and only pull quotes from reliable sources. Google Scholar is a great resource for searching recent studies, and you can also search for data from government or educational websites by adding “site:.gov” or “site:.edu” in front of your Google search term.

Inject Humor When Appropriate When it’s appropriate, go ahead and show your sense of humor in your writing. By injecting your voice and point of view into your writing, readers are more likely to form an attachment to you and your content. Just be careful – not everyone has the same sense of humor – think carefully about what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. If there’s a chance it could be misinterpreted, think it through before you put it out there.

Offer Extra Details Generic content is a dime a dozen. If you want to bore your readers to tears, offer the same information they can find anywhere else.  But if you want to catch your readers’ attention and keep them coming back, offer details and tips they can’t find anywhere else. Provide personal examples, add quotes from experts, and offer images that tell the story – these are the types of details that set good content apart from bad content.

It’s one thing to develop high-quality content, but it’s another to write it well. Spelling “effectively” correctly is only worthwhile if you also use it correctly. Spell checkers and basic grammar programs aren’t 100% accurate. If your grammar is rusty, consider trying Grammarly. The program corrects more than 250 grammatical mistakes, many of which aren’t caught by other services. There’s a free trial available, and paid plans start at $29.95 per month.

Do you regularly use business writing? How have you improved the content you develop?

About the Author

Greg Fowler writes about small business, blogging and writing, and online marketing. He lives in Atlanta with his young son and is always looking for new tools to explore and help improve his productivity.

Apologise or Apologize?

• Apologize is the standard American English spelling.
• Apologise is the standard British English spelling.

Wouldn’t it be embarrassing to have a spelling error in a letter of apology? And it’s even more cringe-worthy if the word you spell wrong is one of the key elements of your message! So before you say you’re sorry, find out whether apologize or apologise is the right word.

To understand the issue better, let’s break down apology into its parts. According to Dictionary.com, the prefix apo- comes to English via Greek, where it appeared with nouns that “denote a response or defense.” The -logy suffix comes from the Greek logos, meaning “speech.”

The Meaning of Suffixes -ize and -ise

When you add -ize, it means “to cause to become like something.” It can also mean to treat like a certain thing or to talk or refer to someone or something in a specific way. For example, to alphabetize is to cause a list of words to become like the alphabet—i.e., in ABC order. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines -ise as -ize with the same set of definitions. Therefore, apologize and apologise mean the same thing. The difference between the two words isn’t in the definition. So, what is the difference?

The Real Difference between Apologize and Apologise

The real difference between the two terms is about 4,200 miles. Well, the United States (where apologize is the most common spelling) is about that far from the United Kingdom (where apologise is the most prevalent spelling.) British English often favors an -ise ending where American English uses -ize. To find out why, check out this article about realize versus realise.

Other British and American Spelling Differences

Honour vs. Honor Queue vs. Cue Learned vs. Learnt Judgement vs. Judgment Spelled vs. Spelt

Apologize and Apologise in Print

Here are some examples of these two words from books. Can you guess the nationality of the writer based on how they spell the term under discussion? The answers are below the quotes.

1. When a lady condescends to apologise, there is no keeping one’s anger.

2. Reflect on your relationship and apologize.

3. I apologise if you all know this, but the point is many, many people do not. Why else would they open a large play area for children, hang up a sign saying “Giant Kid’s Playground”, and then wonder why everyone stays away from it? (Answer: everyone is scared of the Giant Kid.)

4. There were times when an apology was best, she thought, even when one really had nothing to apologise for. If only people would say sorry sooner rather than later, Mma Ramotswe believed, much discord and unhappiness could be avoided. But that was not the way people were. So often pride stood in the way of apology, and then, when somebody was ready to say sorry, it was already too late.

1. English Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 2. American Philip D. Lukens, Seven Ways to Heal a Relationship (Bonus: Look at the quote in its entirety here.) 3. English Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation 4. British Alexander McCall Smith, No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (Alexander McCall Smith was born in a British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in Africa)

If you live in Britain or you are writing to someone who does, you might choose to apologise. However, if you are writing from the United States or to an American, apologize is what you want to do! You no longer have to worry about embarrassing yourself by mixing up apologize and apologise. The only task left is to find the right words to express how sorry you are.

All romance, no grammar: lessons we can learn from great works of literature

Some of the greatest works of literature contain beautifully written declarations of love. But if you want to learn the rules of grammar, don’t look to these novels for help. Here are some of the most romantic quotes from literature and explanations of the grammar rules they bend and break.

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald ‘To-night’ is possibly confused with the correctly spelled word, ‘tonight.’ In the past, this hyphenated spelling of ‘tonight’ was common, but it’s best to use the modern spelling in your writing to keep the meaning clear.

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak When ‘earth’ is used as a proper noun (as it is in this quote) it should be capitalized. If you’re using earth as a common noun (for example: Dinosaurs used to roam the earth.), it needs to be preceded by the article ‘the.’

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen The issue here is the overuse of commas and the conjunction, ‘or.’ There is a beautiful poetry to this style of writing, but if you’re writing for work or school, we suggest keeping things a little simpler.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway This is another example of a poetically worded sentence that could be restructured for practicality and clarity. While the combination of compound phrases is compelling in a novel, if you’re writing in a professional setting, it’s best to separate this many clauses with commas or periods. Adding a comma after ‘books’ would help differentiate these related thoughts.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë The colon in the middle of this sentence emphasizes the lover’s declaration. However, because this sentence contains two separate but related clauses, it would be more grammatically correct to use a semicolon instead of a colon.

The language of love can be beautifully poetic, but it isn’t always the most grammatically correct. When you’re writing professional or formal documents, stick to the rules and save the poetry for your valentines.

Concrete Nouns vs. Abstract Nouns

All nouns fall into one of two categories: concrete nouns and abstract nouns.

What Is a Concrete Noun?

A concrete noun is a noun that can be identified through one of the five senses (taste, touch, sight, hearing, or smell). Consider the examples below:

Would someone please answer the phone?

In the sentence above, the noun phone is a concrete noun: you can touch it, see it, hear it, and maybe even smell it or taste it.

What is that noise?

Even though noise can’t be touched—and the noise may even be coming from several places—you can hear the noise, so it’s a concrete noun.

After his retirement, Mr. Bond pursued his dream of photographing rainbows.

Rainbows is a concrete noun: they can be seen. Mr. Bond is also a concrete noun, but dream and retirement are not. These nouns are considered abstract nouns. We’ll discuss abstract nouns in more detail below.

What Is an Abstract Noun?

An abstract noun is a noun that cannot be perceived using one of the five senses (i.e., taste, touch, sight, hearing, smelling). Look at the examples below:

We can’t imagine the courage it took to do that.

Courage is an abstract noun because it cannot be seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled.

Below are two more examples of abstract nouns in context.

Early paleontologists assumed that the small brains of some dinosaurs indicated stupidity of the species.

Higher education is strongly recommended.

How much grammar should educators know? Let us know!

What is your opinion of this controversial topic? What role do you think educators play in grammar and writing education?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.

Work Jargon We Wish Would Disappear

Every office has its own sort of language—vocabulary that people frequently use when they’re at work but probably wouldn’t use that often otherwise. We’re used to office jargon, but we’d like to take a minute to review some of the business-y words that do the job while kind of driving us crazy at the same time. Jargon varies from office to office, but here are five of the words and phrases that make us cringe.

Goal-oriented: At work, it’s important to be goal-oriented. After all, if you aren’t working toward a goal, how the heck are you spending your time? But there is one issue with this term: it has become meaningless in its overuse. After seeing this term on multiple resumés and in countless slideshows, we think it’s time to find a new word.

Optimize: To optimize means to make the best or most effective use of—to improve efficiency. The way some people speak at work, it seems like nearly everything can be optimized, from workflows to team structures to refrigerator organization. If you can think of a relationship or process in your office, you can probably optimize it. Optimization is great—who doesn’t love efficiency?—but the term can become annoying. Optimize your vocabulary by cutting back on your use of this term.

Synergy: The definition of synergy is “the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.” But when people use the term synergy in the office, it seems to imply something mystical, almost magical, about working together. We would prefer to keep things simple and more concrete by using terms like “cooperation” or “collaboration” to describe the process of working together.

Impact (used as a verb): While impact is often used as a verb (meaning to affect or influence something), this word is so overused and misused that we vote for stopping its usage completely. People want to “impact sales,” “impact the community,” and even “impact the future.” Make an impact in your office by using other synonyms instead of impact.

Disrupt: This word has gained popularity in the startup and technology world, but its use has started to become a bit—ahem—disruptive. Most people use the term to mean something akin to “upsetting the old balance of power” or “bucking expectations and completely changing the way things are done.” There’s even a conference, Techcrunch Disrupt, which underscores the use and importance of the word. Do you know what would be truly disruptive? Finding a new term to describe this action.

Which work-related words or jargon drives you crazy? What are your preferred replacements? Share your pet peeves in the comments!

Navigating Email Etiquette at Work

Even though email takes up well over a quarter of the average working person’s day, many people still don’t have a knack for email etiquette. Often, the issue lies in separating personal email preferences from professional communication policies. Follow these tips for maintaining email etiquette at work, and you’ll develop a more effective communication strategy in no time.

Use a Clear Subject Line

The subject line of your email is your first and only chance to make a good impression on your recipient. When you draw your subject out into a rambling prologue, you’ll give the recipient the sense that your message is similarly lengthy and poorly structured. When you opt for short, single word subject lines, however, you run the risk of being too vague and not offering enough information.

In a professional setting, it’s best to keep your subject lines clear and concise. Tell your recipients what they can expect to read in your email without crossing the line into needless detail or flowery language.

CC or BCC for Organization and Confidentiality

Carbon copy (CC) and blind carbon copy (BCC) features offer helpful options for keeping your emails organized and confidential. Though you often carry on email-based conversations with a few key coworkers, you may find that you need to bring other colleagues into the picture, too. Opt for CC when including a colleague on an email for informational purposes only, with no expectation of a reply.

Since a BCC essentially makes its recipient’s email address invisible to everyone except the sender and the BCC recipient, this feature is best used for confidentiality purposes. When you need to include a colleague or a client in a conversation without alerting the other “To” recipients, opt for BCC. This feature is also helpful when emailing a list of business contacts whose email addresses must remain confidential.

Reply as Quickly as Possible

Have you ever read an email and set it aside, only to reply a week or more later? Always reply to emails as quickly as you can, and never make your recipient wait for a reply for more than 48 hours. Remember that time is money, so when you delay your replies, you’re only costing yourself and your recipient.

Choose Appropriate Language

As a general rule, your professional emails should not read the same way that your personal ones do. In professional emails, avoid trendy language, overly casual phrases, and emoticons.

Don’t take it so far, however, that your messages come across as stuffy or too lofty. Also, when you choose your wording, consider your office culture. If your coworkers keep things casual, you can probably feel free to tone down your overly professional email.

Choose an Appropriate Signoff

Email users and experts eternally debate about the best words and phrases to use when closing an email. A friendly “cheers” may work in personal emails, but it comes across as too casual in most professional settings. Signing off with a simple “thanks” may work in many situations, but it’s not suitable when your message doesn’t actually suggest gratitude. Make sure your signoff fits the occasion, given your message and your audience.

Call When Necessary

Sometimes email just isn’t the right mode of communication, and it’s best to tackle the business at hand with a phone call or an in-person meeting instead. When your communication gets too complex or personal, eliminating email may be helpful.

This rule of thumb is particularly true when issues with coworkers arise. Since miscommunication can happen with email despite your best efforts, know when to take your conversations offline.

Maintaining email etiquette at work can mean the difference between miscommunicating and getting the job done efficiently. What’s your email pet peeve?”