Posted in: business writing

Bad writing costs the U.S. as much as $396 billion annually, in part because “America is spending 6% of total wages on time wasted attempting to get meaning out of poorly written material,” writes Josh Bernoff for The Harvard Business Review. At the top of the list of time-wasters are overly long content that takes too much time to read and even longer to understand. Yet, “overwriting” is one...
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Posted Feb. 6, 2018 Here’s a hard truth: even very smart people – those who are expert and accomplished in their respective fields – can struggle to write well. That’s because writing deficiencies, particularly in business environments, are rarely about knowledgeability or talent. Rather, writing demands a set of specialized skills that most people never formally develop. According to Josh...
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Posted Jan. 16, 2018 If you’ve taken a writing course, you know that good writing involves many different skills and principles that must be learned, practiced, and exercised. Taken a step further, really good writing will even incorporate an understanding of human psychology. In fact, aspects of human psychology can profoundly impact how your readers receive and react to your writing. Here are three examples...
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What do you want to make happen with your writing? Whether we’re talking about an email, sales materials, internal reports, training materials, or anything else, you must always ask yourself: what do you want the reader(s) to do after they’ve read the material? All too often, writers fail to think about what they're trying to accomplish. Lack of clarity on this point increases the risk that your...
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Details, specifics, and granularity can take otherwise generic writing and instantly make it shine. Let’s clarify what we mean by “specificity.” Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab provides the following examples of generic versus specific writing: General termMore specific termVery specific termYoung studentsMiddle school studentsStudents 12 to 15Night timeAfter 7 PMBetween 7PM and 10PM...
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