Excellence in Business Communication, 13th Edition
Chapter 6. Writing Business Messages
'Word meanings can shift radically, just like pronunciation,' writes Christina Sterbenz.
The team at The Write Life have prepared an infographic - 25 Editing Tips for Tightening Your Copy.
"The following is an excerpt from The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead [Crown Business, $17.
"Each of the wordy phrases below can be replaced by one word.
"Fundamentally, poor business writing is costly and leads to disastrous events.
"Understandably, for many students, email is a venue of freedom and distance from academic considerations.
Claire Fallon (photo, left) covers the topic in a piece at HuffingtonPost.
"Whether we are writing for business or pleasure, we may encounter “writer’s block” — the phrase that indicates we just can’t get started or we just can’t keep going.
"There is an old adage: "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
"A compilation of 25 basic styles of blogging from award winning blogger and author of Personality Not Included, Rohit Bhargava (photo, left).
"I was walking around Seattle's Sea-Tac International Airport yesterday, waiting for my flight to Maui, when I admired a T-shirt with a clever slogan: Washington Rain Festival, Jan.
"Why should we avoid well-worn phrases and clichés?
"If my marketer misses a typo while writing about a product, I want my packaging staff to catch it before the design gets sent to print.
"I took many writing classes in college but perhaps the most useful was one focused on business writing.
"According to our internal reports, here — in no particular order — are the ten most frequent catches by our editors in your press releases: .
According to Dean Evans (photo, left), "Poorly written or edited copy will adversely affect how people view your content.
"I don’t know about you, but nothing irks me more than reading and editing a document riddled with mistakes apparently made by a seven-year-old, only to find the author is a well accomplished executive.
The Writer's Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, features an article on the topic of writing clean, concise sentences.
"Pronunciation is the ugly sister of language teaching, coming way behind vocabulary and grammar.
"Words are everywhere, and many are strung together recklessly.
Andrea Wenger (photo, left) is the membership manager with the Carolina chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC).
"Writing with numbers and figures is an overlooked skill despite the fact that we often include them in our communications.
"We reached out to the Global Language Monitor, which publishes an annual list of the year's top English words, to compile a ranking of the most popular business terms.
In this Business English Pod .