A to Z of Plain Text

The business world is notorious for ignoring one of the best ways to keep writing readable: short sentences. Take this fictional, yet typical, opening sentence of a press release: “Anycompany, a leading developer of best-in-class hardware solutions for business-to-business supply-chain optimisation, today announced a strategic partnership with leading retail systems integration consultancy Anyconsultancy to provide […]

There are no writing topics of any substance that begin with the letter ‘Y’. So under the colloquial title of ‘yanks’, let’s discuss the two variants of English most commonly used in business writing. Although many think it so, there is no qualitative difference between American English and British English. There are, however, big differences […]

Okay, it doesn’t begin with X. But exactitude, or accuracy, is a crucial aspect of business writing: Spelling mistakes — Although spellcheckers should never be relied on as the sole way of checking documents, their ubiquity means there is really no excuse for basic spelling errors. Despite this, at the time of writing Google produces […]

The world wide web is a fantastic publishing medium. Anyone, anywhere, with a web browser can access it; it’s easy to update materials; quick and cheap to publish; and adding links to other pages enhances the value of your own. But the web was not designed to be an all-purpose display medium. Computer screens are […]

If your reader has to guess what you mean, you’ve failed as a communicator. “Pedestrians are requested to proceed with caution on these steps during inclement weather” Perhaps the council’s signwriters, who crafted this example, are paid by the letter. “Slippery when wet” or “These steps may be hazardous in the rain” would be a […]

“I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter”. (Seventeenth century philosopher Blaise Pascal) Concise writing is hard to produce. The trouble with some words is that they are, basically, overused and unnecessary. To all intents and purposes, they are redundant. The end result […]

Much writing in business assumes that readers are more interested in a lengthy explanation of, say, a product’s features than an interesting narrative explaining why it is good. So we get sentences like this: ‘X’s core product suite delivers an open, robust, cross-platform scalable solution for the indexing, categorisation and integration of disparate information feeds.’ […]

Business people spend a great deal of energy and time preparing, delivering and listening to speeches and presentations. This is not always enjoyable: presenters struggle to get complex slides and notes together and audiences fight to stay awake. However, if you follow some simple rules, giving and receiving presentations can be a happier experience for […]