At work, you are representing your business when you write any form of text-based correspondence. If you do this incorrectly it affects your personal credibility as a business person, and that of the business as a whole. It is, therefore, extremely important that you get it right before sending it out…once it has gone it is in the public domain forever.
There are far too many idiosyncrasies to detail them all, but here are a few guidelines you should be following on which is true about effective business writing.
Be Clear and Concise
Most people are in business to make money. When they receive correspondence they tend to scan read to get to the point. The flowery narrative is all well and good, but at the end of the day, it is not required. That said, sometimes, without some sort of frivolity on the page they can be misconstrued (particularly in emails), therefore, a simple light-hearted sign off helps.
If you want someone to do something, tell them, in a professional manner (e.g.‘Would you be able to change the setting on the dial please?’, should be ‘Please change the setting on the dial’. The fact that there is a pleasantry there should allay any fears that the recipient is in trouble, as well as giving them a clear instruction).
If you practice the above you will avoid ambiguity.
Don’t Use Jargon
The worst offenders are probably those in the Information Technology industry. By using terminology and acronyms you are assuming that the reader knows what you are talking about. Unless they are a close colleague in the same department, the chances are that they don’t.
Using unknown jargon causes the recipient to have two reactions; firstly, ‘I don’t have a clue what that means, I won’t bother to read the rest’ and secondly; ‘Are they doing this deliberately to catch me out?’. Either of these reactions are not good for the sender as they indicate a lack of respect or, even worse, that the sender cannot be bothered to explain in layman’s terms.
Check The Tone Before Sending
This is so important. The way you meant it may not have come across in your writing. It happens frequently when a Manager sends an email to one of their staff. They don’t have to worry about how it will be conceived so they don’t take the care they would take if sending out to their Manager.
This undermines the recipient and makes them feel demoralized. Hardly a good advert for the management skills of the sender. Remember, once it has been received it can be shared and, more worryingly, used as evidence.
Know Your Subject
If you are going to write something, be it a letter, an email, or a proposal, you need to know your subject for it to flow. If you don’t know your subject you could end up stating a fact that isn’t true, which reflects badly against you as a person and the business as a whole.
Do your research. Make sure you are factual and not guessing at anything…if you don’t know something, be honest and state that you don’t know but would be happy to find out if it is relevant. The recipient is going to trust you more than they would if you bluffed and they could tell that you had bluffed.
Engage
As well as being concise and succinct, you should make sure that your correspondence looks inviting and engaging.
If you have a lot to say, make sure you break it down into easily digestible morsels using either bullets or numbering.
If you imagine a long email with no indication of subject change, it would be really difficult to read. The same goes for a letter or business document (although a business document would usually follow a theme with headings and sub-headings, etc).
Make use of the myriad of ways you can format your text to indicate a change in topic direction. Having said this. If you are using emails, it’s probably better to send individual emails for each subject rather than put it all in one email as there is a tendency for something to get lost in the ‘list’ otherwise.
Use Templates
These days, most businesses use templates to ensure that all correspondence is streamlined. It is important that a new document is created from a template (rather than saving an old one and overtyping) as there are ‘wizards’ within templates which often connect to the firm CRM…this ensures that no errors will appear in the address and salutation of the correspondence.
A wizard also ensures that information automatically appears where it should, thus keeping all outgoing correspondence uniform in appearance.
With business documents which use numbering, it is imperative that these are created as new, from a template. The reason being that paragraph numbering is well known to cause problems, especially when using multi-level numbering.
Check Your Spelling
Spell checker has been around long enough for everyone to have heard of it and know how it works. However, it’s those ‘quick’ emails that get forgotten. Even if your message is brief, you are intimating that the recipient is not important enough to warrant a quick spell check before sending.
Most email applications have an automatic facility to check your spelling every time you send an email…turn it on!
Proof-Read Everything!
It is so important to proof-read before sending anything out, especially external to the business. If you don’t have time, give it to someone else to proof-read. As previously stated, once it has gone it has gone. If there were inconsistencies, mistakes or any other errors, it’s too late.
Revise and edit until you are happy with what you are sending.
