Business Writing

Do Your Readers Want the Dish or the Recipe?

Many people who attend my business writing courses want to be more concise. Often their problem is too many words. Sometimes it's long sentences, and sometimes it's repetition. Occasionally the problem is that they use a chunk of thick text when a chart could convey their meaning instantly. Eric, a... Read more →

Capitalization Matters

A friend sent me an excerpt from a brief professional bio she had read online. The bio said the individual is a consultant for a china inspection service. What do you think the consultant actually does? Inspect china for defects or cracks? Appraise the value of old china? Are you... Read more →

"Hopefully" Gets Upgrade at AP

The adverb hopefully, meaning "it is hoped," was just upgraded to acceptable at The Associated Press Stylebook (AP), according to Monica Hesse writing in yesterday's Washington Post online. I recommend her article, "AP’s Approval of ‘Hopefully’ Symbolizes Larger Debate Over Language," and its colorful background on the significance of AP's... Read more →

Correcting With Kindness

Last Thursday I published a blog post in which I had missed a silly error. I typed reader's instead of readers. Of course, I know where apostrophes belong, but I typed the apostrophe and then overlooked it during several rounds of proofreading. You will not find that error in last... Read more →

Re-Elect or Reelect? Pre-Existing or Preexisting?

Have you ever wondered whether to put a hyphen after a prefix that ends with a vowel, when the same vowel follows the prefix? For example, do you wonder which choices are correct in the title of this blog post? The question came up today as I was teaching an... Read more →

A Few Silly Email Errors

I share these recent email errors to make you smile. Can you figure out what the writer intended? Explanations follow the four items. A business friend ended a message to me this way: "I hope you and the fan are doing well." A writing class participant forgot to include an... Read more →

Executives Are Just Another Audience

Last week at the end of a business writing class in California, one of the attendees mentioned something he had learned in class: Executives are just another audience. Earlier he had been concerned about how to impress executives. He was using sophisticated language and long, complex sentences to come across... Read more →