Business writing

Plenty of good stuff here about how to write clearly. The emphasis on rewriting makes a lot of sense, but sometimes it's better to get the task done rather than spend ages perfecting the wording.

Of course, if I had internalized everything in the course, that paragraph would have been shorter. My main issue is overusing qualifiers. I'm not yet fully cured.

Building great business writing

The basis of good writing

• Good writing is easy to read

• Like a windowpane, writing works best when you don't notice it

• Don't waste readers' time

• Don't try to sound smart

• Don't qualify everything

  • It makes things wordier and makes you seem less confident

• Everyone needs an editor

Doing well to write well

• Format your document carefully

  • People see the document before they read the content

• Leave plenty of whitespace

• Make good use of space

• Keep paragraphs short

• Use bullet points and headings to make things skimmable

• Consider highlighting (e.g., through bold text), but don't overdo it

• The typeface should match the message

  • Don't use a cheery font for an obituary column

• Uppercase text is hard to read because it obscures the shape of words

The formula for writing success

Creating the scaffold

• Try starting the first draft of your introduction with "the purpose of this document is" to force yourself to get to the point

• The rest of the introduction can be written after the body

• Try starting each body paragraph with a topic sentence

• The conclusion should restate the introduction rather than introduce new ideas

Crafting powerful writing

Let's write

• Try reading what you've written out loud

• Or using text to speech

• Cut ruthlessly

Grammar matters

• Apparently, the Oxford comma is more common in American usage than in British usage, but the suggestion to use it seems sensible regardless

• Avoid pronouns in topic sentences

Activate your voice

Elevating your sentences

• The passive voice: just say no

  • Claude Sonnet auditioning for the role of Sir Humphrey: "It must necessarily have been having been generally acknowledged and duly noted in the appropriate records, by those individuals who would have been having been officially positioned and authorized to have been making such determinations at the institutional level, that the passive voice construction should have been being considered to have been necessarily required to have been being mandatorily and systematically cut and eliminated by those persons who might previously have been having been thought to have been potentially engaged in the process of having been writing at the time period in question, as had been being determined and subsequently documented by the relevant authorities who had been tasked with having been making such assessments, in accordance with protocols that had been being established by committees that had been being formed for the purpose of having been creating standards that were to have been being implemented by those who had been being designated as having been being responsible for having been ensuring compliance with what had been being mandated."

• Try cutting "to be" and "to have" (and their conjugations)