Better Business Writing: Avoid Common Mistakes

No one expects your PowerPoint documents or your emails to read like Shakespeare. However, no one wants to read a report laden with mistakes either. Errors can make a communication confusing or, even worse, unreadable.

Mistakes in business writing are common because very few people are trained in writing skills. To make matters worse, a lot of the advice out there about business writing is conflicting. For example, good writers should be direct and to the point, but they should also make sure they sound knowledgeable and back up their message with evidence. So, based on this guidance, is it more important to be brief or clear?

Time pressures also complicate things. Employees write most communications under tight deadlines with little opportunity for preparation or editing. If you don’t know the basic rules, the time crunch will only make your writing worse. To stay clear of mistakes, even under stress, understand what the common ones are. Below we’ve outlined some of the most frequent gaffes made in business writing today, and tips for how to avoid them.

1. Passive voice. You’ve heard it before and you’ll likely hear it again: whenever possible, use the active voice. In today’s business world, where it can be taboo to assign accountability, the passive voice reigns supreme. Yet, it can cause confusion about who’s doing what and make sentences difficult to read. To get rid of the passive voice, be sure that every verb has an actor. This makes your sentence shorter and more direct. For example, change “The reports were rewritten using the new numbers,” to “Using the new numbers, Finance rewrote the reports.”
2. Run-on sentences. Run-on sentences are simply two (or more!) sentences crammed into one. These are common because many people like to write the way they talk. To get rid of run-ons, scan your writing and count your subject and verbs. If there are two sentences, connect them with a conjunction such as “and” or “but”. Or even better, make them two separate sentences.
3. Jargon. It’s tempting to use jargon, especially for internal communications. Using jargon assumes your audience knows what the word means; if they don’t, it can be alienating. Even if your audience is “in the know”, jargon can often have subtle variations in meaning and could therefore be misunderstood. Instead, choose words that are commonly understood. If you can’t think of a replacement, try using an online thesaurus to un-jargon yourself.
4. Too much or too little information. We’ve all read a report that is about 100 pages too long or a curt email that leaves us wondering what the sender really meant to say. It can be difficult to gauge what exactly the audience knows or wants to know. Instead of making assumptions about your readers’ level of knowledge or interest, structure your communications so they can get what they want or need. Put your main points at the beginning, then use the remainder of your report or email to provide additional information. Utilize appendices or attachments to include detailed analysis or background. This way you give them the option of skipping over what’s not useful.
5. Tone. It can be particularly difficult to get tone right. We assume that things that will be printed out (such as a report) should be formal, and emails should generally be casual. However, the tone is really dependent on the audience. To nail the tenor of your writing, know your audience well. Look at other communications that have gone out to them and try to adapt a similar tone. Be especially careful with tone over email. It is tempting to joke but the medium conveys tone very poorly and even innocent jokes can easily be misunderstood.
6. Failure to edit. All of the above mistakes can seem minor when a communication is littered with typos or grammatical errors. Time is always tight, but it’s critical to look over your writing before finalizing it. This includes emails too. Your review should focus on removing unnecessary words, sentences or phrases; eliminating jargon; clarifying meaning; and restructuring for readability. The more you edit, the easier it becomes, so make it a habit.

See the first part of the series on finding and expressing your point, and the third part on writing an e-mail that gets read.