Five business writing lessons

Teaching or critiquing business writing is tricky.

Given ‘I know it when I see it’ is woefully inadequate, I’ve compiled the following list of advice, inspired by sources ranging from the long-dead (George Orwell), to the very much alive (Rose Beauchamp):

1. Message clarity:

   1. Remove ambiguity. Imagine the least informed, or most malign, member of your audience - how might they interpret each clause?
      

   2. Use everyday language. Read your material aloud - if you can’t say it with a straight face, it’s probably too formal!
      

2. Sentence construction:

   1. Put subjects and verbs together: “The company has launched a new product line despite the crisis” not “The company, despite the crisis, has launched a new product line”.
      

   2. Place subjects and verbs at the start of sentences: “The team won the championship despite many injuries” not “Despite many injuries, the team won the championship”.
      

   3. Put the longest clause at the end of a list: “She likes to play chess, badminton, and video games with her friends” not “She likes to play video games, chess and badminton with her friends”.
      

3. Writing style:

   1. Use the active tense, not the passive tense: “We must….” not “It is vital that initiative is taken to…”
      

   2. Make every word ‘sweat’. Cut words that add little value, leaving only essentials.

   3. Cull clichés such as overused metaphors and similes.
      

   4. Choose strong nouns and verbs to limit the use of adjectives and adverbs: ‘A din’ not ‘a loud sound’, or ‘sprinting’ not ‘running fast’.
      

4. Structural design:

   1. Break up long sentences. If you’re running out of breath when reading a sentence aloud, it’s too long!

   2. Artfully design the layout, experimenting with line spacing, typographical emphasis (e.g. bold font) and paragraph length variation.
      

   3. Avoid using the same subject or verb in two consecutive sentences, unless it’s blatantly deliberate.
      

5. Editing process:

   1. Do not confuse writing with editing. Focus on generating momentum and volume before raising the quality bar. Arianna Huffington combated her early struggles to create a first draft of her book by having a member of her staff follow her at work. They write up notes as she spoke, leaving Huffington to edit the text later herself. Generative AI is a much cheaper antidote to writer’s block, as this TED podcast points out.
      

   2. Consider using analogue elements in your approach. You may find reviewing a printed report with a pen allows you to examine your work with a fresh perspective.

   3. Conduct multiple reviews, with a different objective each time. Earlier edits tackle substance. These primarily deal with content, structure and tone, followed by clarity and stylistic elements e.g. rhythm. Tightening the language comes next, cutting excess words. Finish with a proof-read, removing any lingering typos, double-spaces, or grammatical errors.

Conclusion While the advice above is largely for professional writing, non-fiction prose demands another level and type of mastery entirely - storytelling.

This is the craft of painting vivid characters, of unexpected connections, of counterintuitive insights. This is the skill of injecting drama by withholding crucial details until the last possible moment.

None of these skills is covered in this article, and none are strictly necessary for this task.

However, perhaps our written work would be a little more compelling if we were able to channel the techniques of Malcolm Gladwell or Tim Harford for the humdrum requirements of emails, reports and newsletters!