A Few Notes on Writing For Business

I've put together a few tips for business people to use when writing their own material. It's just as relevant for professional writers who are being paid to do it for them, so here's an extract:

Except in highly specialised fields, language should always be as simple as possible, so long as it conveys meaning accurately and unambiguously.

Don't fall into the trap of 'near enough' synonyms, however - like using 'less' for 'fewer', for example. If in doubt, look it up - some of your customers at least will know if you get it wrong, and they won't be impressed if you do.

Keep punctuation simple. If you're unsure how to use them, avoid colons and semi-colons. Stick to full stops (periods) and commas. Dashes are okay these days, too, but never use a colon and a dash together, like this:- or this : -

Take great care with apostrophes! An apostrophe either indicates possession - David's shoes, for example, or indicates missing letters when a word is shortened or two words are combined and shortened, as in don't, wouldn't, etc. It should never be used for a plural (the famous greengrocers' apostrophe - Apple's 50p, for example).

For a plural possessive, the apostrophe comes after the 's', as with greengrocers' just then (more than one greengrocer, all of them guilty...). There are exceptions though - its, whose, yours, for example. Who's means who is or sometimes who has, it's means it is or it has. Yours is just yours to use as you like.

Sentences should be of varying length and rhythm, with at least some of them short and comma-free. Read your work aloud and see if you need to breathe halfway through a sentence. If you do, break it up. Don't worry about starting sentences with 'and' or 'but' - these actually add urgency and energy.

Keep paragraphs short. Four or five lines are ideal, though you should vary it, as with sentence length. Large blocks of text will intimidate many readers enough to put them off reading your piece at all. Only academics seem to want to plough through yards of unbroken text, though goodness knows why!

Unless you are very good at it, and very sure of your audience, generally avoid humour and never be offensive or insulting. Try to pitch your writing at the readership by reading other (successful) people's literature. Try to work out why some of it works for you and some doesn't, and copy the one that works. Generally, be chatty but not over-familiar and always concentrate on accuracy.

Always use a spellchecker, set to the correct form of English - UK for over here, US for over there, etc.

Oh, and keep exclamation marks to a minimum!

Roy