We’ve been discussing strategies for better business writing: Reach out, be efficient, be professional, and make sure you’re up-to-date. Today’s topic: Make sure you’re up-to-date. This means getting rid of words and expressions that make you sound like a 19th-century business writer: “Thanking you in advance,” “the above-referenced,” “take cognizance of.” In the last hundred years, successful [...]

We’ve been discussing strategies for better business writing: Reach out, be efficient, be professional, and make sure you’re up-to-date. Today’s topic: Be professional. How do you do that? In two ways: By creating the impression that you have plenty of time to devote to whatever task you’re doing (even if you’re huffing and puffing to [...]

Today’s business writing tip (#2) is be efficient. (Click here to read #1, “reach out.”) “Be efficient” means making every word count so that you don’t waste your (or your reader’s) precious time. Get rid of needless words and get to the point quickly. Take a look at these phrases: blue in color, respective offices, [...]

Reach out, be efficient, be professional, and make sure you’re up-to-date. Follow these four guidelines, and you’ll be an effective business writer. (Click on the links to read Part II, Part III, and Part IV.) Today’s post – about reaching out – will be the first of four about business writing. What does “reaching out” mean, [...]

I just finished reading a fascinating history of Facebook (David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect – highly recommended). According to Kirkpatrick, Facebook has a number of carefully designed features that have contributed to its colossal success. One is founder Mark Zuckerberg’s insistence that nothing should be allowed to interrupt users’ experiences with Facebook. For this reason, [...]