Posted in: tone

In professional writing, tone is as essential as content. Because how you approach a topic impacts the reader, maintaining an appropriate and professional tone in writing is vital. Dana Driscoll , author of “ Tone in Business Writing ,” says, “The tone of a message is a reflection of the writer and it does affect how the reader will perceive the message.” The article asks writers to develop the...
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Writers often overlook the importance of creating goodwill in their documents. In other words, ensuring that when your readers finish reading your document, they are satisfied with the content of the document and that it’s met their needs. The goal for most readers is to quickly and easily get through the document with a minimum amount of stress and hassle. So, as writers, how do we ensure a readable, usable document...
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I read an interesting post this morning about using active and passive voice; the dilemma the technical writer was having was that she was writing SOPs and wanted to use active voice, but the engineer (the subject matter expert) was vehemently opposed. Why? Seems that, for some reason, this engineer had it in his head that passive voice is preferable to active. So, instead of writing "Perform the maintenance"...
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