10 Tips For Better Business Writing
by Tim North
Published
on this site: February 8th, 2004
As
a proofreader of business writing, I see many of the same errors made again and
again. Errors in your writing (be they in advertising copy, correspondence, or
a web site) are more serious, I believe, than most people realize.
Why? Well, the standard of your writing has always been
important. Today, though, more than ever before, FIRST IMPRESSIONS
COUNT. We are bombarded by the written word in its many forms
-- books, pamphlets, magazines, signs, e-mail, web sites and
many other media.
We are all suffering from information overload and are
forced to find ways of screening out as much as we can. We thus tend to make quick
decisions on what to read and what not to. First impressions increasingly determine
what we read and what we don't, and poor writing leads to a poor first impression.
The following list of tips should help you to avoid some of the most common slip-ups.
- Capitals: Avoid the temptation to capitalize words in the middle of a sentence
Just To Provide Emphasis Like This. If you want to be more emphatic, consider
using bold face, italics, color or larger text.
- Commas:
The most common use of the comma is to join together short sentences to make a
single longer sentence. We do this with one of the following small joining words:
and, or, but, yet, for, nor, or so. For example:
We have finished the work,
and we are looking forward to the weekend.
Notice that the two halves of
this sentence could each be sentences in their own right. They thus need to be
separated with a comma and joining word. In the next example, though, we don't
need a comma:
We have finished the work and are looking forward to the
weekend.
The halves of that sentence could not stand alone, so no comma
was used.
- Ellipsis: The ellipsis is a series of three
-- and ONLY THREE -- full stops used to mark missing words, an uncertain pause,
or an abrupt interruption. Avoid the temptation to use six or seven dots -- it
looks amateurish. For example, we write:
Niles: But Miss Fine's age is
only ...
Fran: Young! Miss Fine's age is only young!
- Excessive
punctuation: Only one exclamation mark or question mark should be used at
a time. Consider the following over-punctuated examples:
Buy now!!!
Great bargains!!!!!!!!!!
Excessive punctuation looks too much like hysteria
and detracts from your credibility. Avoid it.
- Headings:
For long works, establish a clear hierarchy of headings. Microsoft Word's heading
styles are great for this. (They also allow you to automatically create a table
of contents.)
- Hyphenating prefixes: Most prefixes don't
need a hyphen; i.e. we write "coexist", not "co-exist". There
are exceptions, though. The prefixes "self-" and "ex-" are
almost always hyphenated.
- Numbers: Numbers of ten or less
are normally written as words.
- Quotation marks: Users
of American English should use double quotes (" "). Users of British
English should choose either single quotes (' ') or double quotes and stick with
them for the whole document. Incidentally, British English usage is increasingly
moving towards single quotes.
- Spaces: Modern style is
to use a single space at the end of a sentence, not two. Also, most punctuation
marks (e.g. commas, full stops, question marks) are not preceded by a space.
- Tables:
Set table text one or two points smaller than the main body text and in a sans-serif
font such as Arial or Verdana. Avoid vertical lines as they tend to add unnecessary
clutter.
Armed with these simple guidelines, your writing should be
well received every time.
Good luck!
You'll find many more helpful tips like these in the SAMPLE CHAPTERS from
Tim North's much applauded range of e-books:
http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com.
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