Business Writing

Sometimes at work you will need to write a summary. You may need to create an executive summary for a report, or to summarise a meeting. You may need to summarise some of your reading material to present to colleagues.

In the last tip I talked about using style guidelines to help make your documents look professional.

Organisations often like documents that they create to have a similar look and fell. Such organisations have style guidelines designed to make sure documents look clean and professional, and to make sure that their ‘brand’ is consistent.

When you’re writing it may be important to state an opinion and to make it clear whose opinion you are giving. Is it your own? Perhaps it’s the opinion of an author, or a colleague?

There are many words in English. Some of them formal, some informal. Some polite, some impolite. Some old-fashioned, some current. Each time you write you will be facing decisions about which words to use.

With correspondence in English the way that you sign off depends on whether you are writing a letter or an email, and whether you know the person’s name or not.

Use headings and subheadings to make your content easy to scan.

Long sentences are not incorrect. The thing is, with long sentences the grammar and syntax often become complex, which may lead to confusion.

Know who your audience is and write for it.

Make sure you have included all the information you need to convey