The Art of Business Writing
BUSINESS WRITING, for the most part, involves putting together a report or presentation that explains why you’re doing what you’ve been doing.
There are four things that business writing should be but seldom is:
1. Brief and to the point.
2. Organized.
3. Accurate.
4. Conclusive.
Before you put finger to keyboard, get some background information. What’s the personality of the people you’ll be addressing? You must know how they take in data or you’ll be doomed before you start.
Today, most people have less time to listen to or read your presentation than you have to write it. So they’ll want the whole picture – not just disjointed pieces of it – in succinct, easy-to-understand, grammatically correct language. Though you may hear that readers often want the whole story on a single sheet of paper, I have yet to find someone who means this literally. All they really want is a quick and complete read.
Other writers think no presentation should exist unless it’s at least the size of, say, the Manhattan telephone directory. But nobody intends to read every word. List the key points in a summary, usually placed in the front of the document. This should distill exactly what’s in the report. Fill the rest of it with well-organized elaboration, footnotes, charts and graphs.
If you’re creating a huge report-type project, invest in some simple organizational systems offered by catalog houses catering to those who make presentations. They’ll restructure your massive document into smaller, less intimidating sections. These systems also provide a highly useful index for easy referencing.
Within sections, use headlines, subheads and type-font changes to help readers follow the flow of information in the order you wish it to be seen and understood.
Whether it’s a long or short presentation, make it pretty. Consider using 1.5-line spacing in a type size no smaller than 12-point. Take the time to format a document to make it appealing to read. Also, charts and graphs are almost always good tools if they’re useful.
Most business writers tend to ramble. Long paragraphs are deadly. Nobody asked you for a book; they just want a quick summary of what’s happened.
List the program attributes that first come to mind, then corral them later into meaningful subcategories of the major elements. Keep similar ideas and topics together.
More often than not, the best approach is to start with an outline. There are no generic formats that work for all cases, but one of the most successful is straight out of Business School 101: objective, strategy, implementation. This method lets you organize and explain each aspect of your program, and detail what you plan to do and how you’re going to do it. For other examples, a quick Web search will give you loads of options.
No matter what format you choose, think logically and linearly. People don’t want every particular of how your project runs. Descriptions of your daily battles and triumphs – or even worse, missteps – are deadly. They’re guaranteed to lull the listener into a sound sleep. These details will do anything but ensure that you’ll walk out of your meeting with an enthusiastic supporter.
Don’t make the report sound personal. Skip words like “I” or “you.” Instead of “We think our customer wants…” it should be “Based on research done by ABC Co., the core market will be provided with the following benefits and services.” Friendly writing doesn’t belong here; you want it to sound positive but somewhat detached. It should be clear that the conclusions you’ve come to are based on facts, figures and experience.
Here are some questions that most speakers want answered, listed in logical order:
– What exactly is the project?
– Why was this project necessary?
– What are its goals, financial and otherwise? The “goals” section is a good place for simple charts.
– What was right or wrong about it up until this point and what improvements has your team made?
– How does it positively and negatively affect the company’s overall operation?
– How will the goals be achieved?
– What are the next steps?
When you think the report is perfectly written, go back and edit it again. Cut as much as you can. I can almost guarantee you’ll need to trim fluffy writing more than once.
Check grammar, spelling and punctuation, including the correct use and spelling of names, titles and numbers. These may seem like old-fashioned attributes, but errors not only make you look bad, they distract from the document and take the reader’s mind off the point you’re trying to make. Start with grammar- and spell-check tools; then go to “The Elements of Style,” by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.
Try to avoid one of the most common writing distractions: parentheses. Most of us think faster than we can write. Using parentheses allows us to sneak in those quick thoughts that don’t fit into the sentence we originally composed in our minds. Go back and rewrite the statement so that the point of the information within the parentheses remains but sounds more coherent.
Although it’s easy to repeat your points within sections, try not to be redundant. To make sure the audience understands your key ideas, always conclude the report with some major recommendations.
