“Company culture” is a phrase we hear a lot these days, most often in relation to either a company having one that is “toxic” or striving to create a “positive” one. We hear about companies redesigning their office layout to be more open and community-based, or allowing employees to pursue creative projects alongside their usual tasks, or offering flexible hours
Read MoreI recently held a workshop with a great group of professionals there to learn about better business writing strategies. They were kind, energetic, and good-humored about spending a day in a professional development seminar. As the day went on, though, it became clear to me that some people were going to benefit from this seminar and some were not at all. It made me realize something.
Read MoreYesterday, a student came into my office to ask for help with an assignment. While reviewing his work, I spotted this sentence:
Bluetooth was removed from consideration since all the cars evaluated had this feature.
The context for this assignment is that students are writing a report to an imaginary boss explaining how they chose a particular vehicle to purchase for the company. In this sentence, the student was pointing out that bluetooth capability wasn’t a factor in his decision since all the cars had it. But what stood out to me was that he had framed that as a negative
Read MoreLast week, my main sewer line collapsed and backed up into my basement. It was disgusting, and infuriating, and resulted in lots of men tromping through my house doing expensive things to help.
When a few of the contractors nicely asked what I did, and I said that I teach business writing, the responses were a lot of throat-clearing and awkward requests not to judge their communication with me.
Read MoreOur language has two main branches, Latin and German. English is a mutt language, so we’ve integrated words from numerous other cultures, but these are the main two that came together in the massive conglomerate of English. For the most part, Latinate words stayed in our most elevated speech, particularly the disciplines of math and science. Germanic words were the main body of our everyday speech.
While this diversity led to an exceptional language mash-up, it also left us with a few redundancies. The most atrocious of these redundancies are the words “use,” Germanic, and “utilize,” Latinate. These words have the exact same meaning. The difference between them is the number of syllables it takes to express that meaning. There may be a few occasions on which the word “utilize” serves best, but I cannot think of any.
For everyday speech, for professional writing, even for academic writing, “utilize” is a redundancy, the use of which only demonstrates the exceptional overreaching of the speaker or writer’s vocabulary. Unless the writer or speaker is involved in science or math where the frequency of Latinate words may lend itself rhymically or stylistically to “utilize,” use works perfectly well in all other cases.
I write a lot about grammar: how to use punctuation marks, the importance of spelling, the challenges of sentence structure. But I realized I haven't talked a lot about proofreading. Proofreading, editing, revising, copyediting: these are all terms that we use to talk about what we do to our writing after we have written it. "Editing" tends to be the broadest concept and can refer to changes from content and ideas, to structure and organization, to grammar and punctuation. Editing means taking something that has already been written and making it better.
"Revising" has a similarly broad conceptual scope. The word broken down is re: again + vise: to see. So, "revision" is actually about just that, looking at your work again. Ideally, this second look will give you clearer insight into what you are trying to say and how best to say it.
"Copyediting" is a more professional term that basically points to the details. When we "copyedit" we check references and facts, make sure that citations are accurate, that the writing follows a particular style guide, and that its grammar is correct.
"Proofreading", at least for my students, is the more focused and deliberate review of work solely to find grammar errors. While I try to differentiate between this correction-minded review and more substantial revision and editing, students cling to the idea that if they can just make everything grammatically correct, they won't need any other revision. For some, that may be true, but for most of us, it just isn't.
In any event, people tend to struggle with all kinds of editing/revising/proofreading because they know what they want to say. When they read their work, they understand it because they know what it means; they know what the words intend. So, people aren't reading the work on the page; they are "seeing" what their minds already know. This is the challenge of revision: to see the work with new eyes.
What follows are some techniques for proofreading that can help us see our work with new eyes.
1. Use another set of eyes, literally. Get a friend, relative, role model, person-who-you-perceive-as-a better-writer-than-you, anyone to read over your work. They will find errors you miss. They will point out things they don't understand. But you have to ask them to help you. It doesn't work if you ask them things like "Is this ok?" or "Do you think this is good?" Those questions will lead them to pay more attention to your ego than your writing. Ask them to help you improve your writing by helping you look for grammar errors and things that don't make sense or feel clear to them.
2. Try reading your work backwards, one sentence at a time. This strategy prevents your mind from making sense of whatever is on the page. You are just focusing on the sentence itself and whether it functions grammatically.
3. Read out loud. When we read our work out loud to ourselves or someone else, we engage a whole additional area of the brain through our auditory processing centers. Our eyes are easily deceived--in fact, our eyes are already making up (as in inventing) a substantial part of our reality. We think we see one whole, coherent picture, but our eyes are actually bouncing around, filling in a blind spot, and taking independent pictures of our surroundings. Our brains put together a clear picture of what we "see". So, we cannot trust our eyes/brains because our brains are used to filling in details from our eyes--we trick ourselves. Our ears are not so easily deceived. If you read out loud, your ears will pick up mistakes that your eyes simply "auto-correct" for you.
Apart from these three basic techniques for proofreading, another key is to allow yourself time to proofread and to expect proofreading to be part of your writing process. Correctness matters, as I have discussed before, so we need to make sure to review our own work to make our ideas as clear to our audience as possible.
I've had a few questions in seminars lately about appropriate closings. The standard professional closing is "Sincerely" but most people feel uncomfortable with that, which has led to the overuse of "Thanks".
I've seen "Respectfully," "Best wishes," "All the best," "Best," and "Cheers" (which seems to be a particular favorite of older men with a propensity for daytime drinking). Some old school closings that have certainly fallen out of fashion are things like "Yours" or "Yours truly," which I would reserve for personal relationships. I have a former student who has elected to use "With enthusiasm," which I like, but he is truly an exceptionally enthusiastic person, so it has veracity for him.
What prompted me to respond to this topic were some recent international emails, particularly with Spanish speakers in various countries. Here are some of the (translated) closings they have used:
Without further details, I say goodbye to you
Receive a cordial greeting
Keep in touch
With respect
Attentively
Greetings
These are a bit more formal, but convey a variety that I don't think we have and a real attention to the purpose of the closing, which is to describe how you are feeling toward your audience. I think the more we consider closing as part of the tone, the better our closing words and phrases will be. For the most part, they are used to describe your attitude (usually using an adverb like an -ly word or a phrase using "with") about the content of the message or the audience.
Play around with some closing words or phrases and see what feels the most comfortable for you.
When communicating a message to an audience, you have two choices: tell the what you want first and explain later or give an explanation that leads to the ultimate purpose of the message.
Most messages are best conveyed directly: stating the message and giving the reasons after if necessary. The direct approach works because we are frequently communicating messages that make sense within the context. When you pick up your dry cleaning, you don’t start by explaining that you had brought some clothes there to be cleaned because that is what the dry cleaner does. Your request is exactly in line with the context. Same when you make an appointment with a doctor or order food at a restaurant. When your message is appropriate and reasonably expected, there’s no reason to explain. You might provide more information to continue the conversation, like how many items you dropped off at the dry cleaner or what you would like addressed in your doctor’s appointment, but you can add those later because they are still within the context of the message.
When your message is unexpected or disappointing, it’s best to use the indirect approach: start with the explanation and lead the reader to the purpose. This is probably familiar to us from our childhood. You break something and have to tell your mother about it, but when you approach her, you realize that she is going to be very upset. So you don’t just blurt out, “I broke your pearl necklace playing dress up!” You start with the scene, “Alice and I were playing dress up and we wanted to add something to our fancy gowns for the ball, so we went into your room to get some jewelry and Alice insisted on wearing your pearl necklace. She started twirling it and I told her to stop, but she didn’t, so I grabbed it, and, um, well, it broke.” The hope is that if the audience understands the situation, they will be more understanding of the result.
Frequently, this approach is used for bad news, but it may also be employed in any situation where the message doesn’t match the context. For example, you might arrive at the dry cleaners not to pick up clothes, but to ask for an iron. Instead of saying, “Do you have an iron?” which would be odd, you might explain that you have a dress that you just picked up from there but left in the car and so it became wrinkled. Since you so rarely need to iron your clothes, because the dry cleaner does such a nice job with them, you don’t own an iron, but would they have one you could borrow?
Any time you are communicating with an audience, you decide whether to use a direct or an indirect approach. We do this instinctually in conversation because it is a natural reaction to the other party’s situation and expression. However, it is just as important to consider your approach in writing, maybe even more important, since you won’t be there to react to how your message is received.
Generally, if your message is expected, you can be direct. If it isn’t, try writing about the why first, so that by the time you get to the central message, the audience understands where you are coming from.
The greeting of an email or letter doesn't seem all that important. It's just a little thing next to the actual content of the message, but how one begins has a significant impact on how one ends and what result one gets.
In business writing, the standard greeting to an unknown person is
Dear Mr. White or Dear Ms. White
depending on the person's gender, obviously.
If the gender is unknown, then you may use the full name without a title, as in
Dear Alex White
However, some people find "dear" too familiar. By "some people" I mean my students, who perhaps are not accustomed to the standard business language that has desensitized all of us from thinking at our bank things we are sweet or that our amazon notifications think we have a close, personal relationship. "Dear" doesn't really mean dear in that way at the beginning of a message.
But, for people dead set against the standard, "Good morning/afternoon/evening" may sound better. I don't particularly like this one because I am not reading the message whenever you send it, so 66% of the time, you're wrong.
Either of these greetings work, even a "Hi" or "Hello" can be appropriate in some circumstances. But if you are using "Good afternoon" or "Hello" you are using a greeting word, so there must be a comma between the greeting word or phrase and the person's name:
Good afternoon, Ms. White
Hello, Mr. White
AND greetings signal the opening of a message with either a comma or a colon after the greeting. For example
Dear Alex White:
Dear Mr. White,
Good afternoon, Ms. White,
Good afternoon, Alex White:
The comma is more familiar, gentler, while the colon is more formal, distancing. Both choices are correct, and you may use them in any circumstances. Generally, I use commas after all greetings. I have only used colons after a few very angry emails that were seeking remuneration, but others may find them more useful on a regular basis.
Whether you are putting together blog posts, newsletters, website content, social media updates, or presentations, you are going to run into the tricky task of writing titles and headers. We all know that it can be difficult to come up with a catchy title, but then you inevitably face trying to figure out which words of the title should be capitalized and which ones should not.
Read MoreOne of the major things we focus on in business writing is conciseness. In business, like many other industries, people value their time. They want communication to be efficient so they can get to the action. So, one of the challenges for written communication is effectively transferring a message in as few words as possible.
Most sentences in English operate with the Subject first, who the sentence is about, then the Verb, what the subject does, and then potentially the Object, what the Subject acts upon:
S-V-O
Additionally, so that we don’t have to keep repeating subjects in each sentence, we use pronouns to refer back to something we have already talked about: Katie is my sister. She is blonde.
or
My car is a Jeep. It is blue.
In both of these examples, the pronoun, “she” or “it,” refers back to the subject of the previous sentence, “Katie, my sister” and “My car, the Jeep.”
With indefinite starters like “It is” and “There are” we use pronouns to take the grammatical subject position instead of whatever the sentence is actually about.
It is a pleasure to meet with you really means I am pleased to meet with you.
The sentence is about how nice it is for the speaker to meet with the other person, but the grammatical structure of “it is” makes that idea the object of the sentence. It transposes it to the less important position in the sentence. Something this technique can be used for important effects, but most of the time, our language is much more effective if we eliminate these indefinite starters that just hold the place of the subject and verb that we actually care about.
Check your writing. If you are starting sentences with “It is” see if the “It” refers to something in the previous sentence. If it doesn’t, if “it” doesn’t seem to refer to anything at all, see if you can get rid of it to make your writing tighter and more efficient.
This is the third post in the series about the appeal to ethos, which is the appeal that is often reduced to an over-simplification of “an appeal to credibility.” We all want to convey strong ethos in our business communication, but this simplistic definition of ethos may limit our thinking and reduce our ability to convey it in dynamic ways.
Read MoreIt's a new semester, so I've been sharing the wisdom of business writing with an entirely new set of undergrads. Once again, they want me to show them examples of what I am looking for in their writing. "Why don't you just show us what a good email looks like?" "Yeah, just post an example that we can all imitate." And you see the problem.
Read MoreSo we have a previous blog post that talks about ethos, particularly that simply calling it an appeal to “credibility” is an over-simplification, and that one of the aspects of ethos is demonstrating “good will” toward the audience (and how we could benefit from appealing to ethos in that way through our business writing). There’s another element of ethos to look at – actually, two. According to Aristotle, there are three elements of ethos; goodwill toward the audience, good sense, and good moral character.
Read MoreOften in business communication, we think about ethos, one of the three artistic proofs Aristotle talked about in his famous work On Rhetoric (quick refresher: the other two being logos and pathos). We hear people talk about a company’s ethos in the eyes of the public, or a manager’s ethos as part of being a strong leader.
Read MoreRecently, I've had a number of conversations that have been the result of serious miscommunications that occurred via email. I wrote an email and someone misinterpreted it, which led to that person writing something I didn't agree with and sending it to a lot of people, which led to me writing to an even bigger group of people, which led to the other person retaliating, which led to me retaliating. The spiral was out of control. And the problem? We were two people who had never met.
Read MoreRecently my students had an assignment to locate a job posting and craft the fitting letter to apply for it, then turn it in for feedback. Once I collected them, I saw one student do something kind of surprising from a rhetorical viewpoint in the opening of the letter, and I thought, “Huh, that is a strange choice,” then I wrote some feedback on it, and moved on.
Read MoreShort answer? Don't.
But we all have situations where we have to say that something isn't possible or we need more time or someone else would be better at that job. So what's the best way to communicate that to a boss?
Recently, I've been thinking about some of the challenges that professional writing presents, as in the fact that your professional writing should sound conversational, but should not sound like an actual conversation. If we wrote the way we actually speak, our writing would read something like this:
"When I get home, I mean when I get back to--where are we staying? ur..well..the whatever hotel, when we, when I get back, in like maybe five minutes, I mean at like maybe five, then, I can totally..."
It's practically nonsense without the intonation that tells us how all the words connect. What we mean is
"I'll take care of it as soon as I get back to my hotel."
So, our writing needs to be not exactly like our speech, but sound like something we would actually say. There are lots of words in English that we reserve almost entirely for writing. The same message could be written like this:
"I will resolve the matter upon returning to my lodgings."
It means the same thing, but it isn't conversational because I would never say this out loud.
Writing conversationally means walking a fine line between writing formally and informally. Mostly, it means using words precisely to convey your meaning without elevating your speech simply to elevate it.
Recently, my students were working on revising this sample sentence:
As a result an envelope with the paperwork for claims will be left at your hotel so that you can fill it out completely and additionally provide us with a copy of your passport.
As we discussed in class, there are a lot of things wrong with this sentence, and a lot of ways to improve on it. One of the most interesting aspects of their revision, though, had to do with how they conveyed the message about the passport copy. Some students said "please include a copy of your passport"; others left it as "provide us with a copy". Still others used "attach a copy," which reveals their technological background. I reminded them, however, that there is in fact a word that means specifically "to put inside of something else," which brought them almost immediately to "enclose."
"Enclose" is the most precise word in this example because it conveys exactly what should be done with the copy of the passport without additional instruction. "Enclose" is also a word that we could imagine ourselves saying, no one needs to look it up because it is family, even if it's not a word that we actually regularly say.
What I'm getting at is that we tend to have two different vocabularies: the words we access quickly for speech and the words we access very slowly for special circumstances. Professional writing asks us to use an intermediary vocabulary, one that uses the full breadth of precision available to us in the thousands of words in our language while limiting that precision to words that reach only one step beyond our spoken language, not all the way into our let-me-show-you-how-well-I-can-use-a-thesaurus language. It's a fine distinction, but understanding it, and applying it to revision, will help make our professional writing clearer, more concise, and conversational.
Plural and Possessive Ss
English is challenging…
English is a challenging language for so many reasons. Admittedly, one of those reasons has to be the confusing and complicated rules about Ss (esses). Third person present tense verbs end with s: has, wants, goes, shops. Plural nouns, more than one something, end with s: shoes, books, tables, hats. And most possessive nouns get an s, usually accompanied by a silent apostrophe, to indicate ownership: car’s wheels, shop’s door, refrigerator’s light, phone’s ring. Finally, we often add an apostrophe s to words to contract a subject and the most common verb “is”: he’s going to be there; she’s looking for her mittens; what’s for dinner?
Spoken out loud, all of these Ss sound the same, but when we write them down, we realize that they are not. Each s tells us something different about the way the word is working with the words around it. In speech, we have the speaker’s inflection to guide us to the meaning, but in writing the wrong spelling of a word can throw us off since we don’t have the aural cues to guide us to the correct meaning.
In helping professionals work on their writing, mistakes with the plural and possessive s are often the most complained about, perhaps because most people can identify the problem and notice the mistake as a sign of carelessness or lack of education. In any event, working to use plural and possessive Ss correctly can only improve your credibility.
If you mean more than one, then you are using the plural s. In that case, just add an s to the end of the word.
If you mean that something belongs to something else, then add an apostrophe s to the end of the word.
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What messes most people up is the plural possessive: authors’ books, doctors’ appointments, computers’ hard drives. If you mean that more than one thing owns something else, then you need to add the plural s and follow that with an apostrophe to show the possession.
Just to confuse us, “its” is a possessive word that doesn’t get an apostrophe. It operates like hers, his, yours, theirs. These words are possessive pronouns, so they don’t need an apostrophe s since the only appearance of the word with an s is in this form. Instead “it’s” with an apostrophe is like she’s, he’s, what’s: a contraction of “it is.”
Problems with plural and possessive Ss happen to most of us because all of these Ss sound the same in our heads. But when you are revising your messages, go back and check your plural and possessive Ss, especially those tricky its and it’s to make sure that you are sending the best version of your message to your audience.
“The most memorable lesson is to use a comma in “Good afternoon, team” vs “Good afternoon team”. The second most useful lesson is to use a comma in front of “and” when making a list such as, 1, 2, and 3, unless 2 and 3 are supposed to be combined. These are the most useful because they are the two biggest mistakes I have been making and didn’t even realize it. I would recommend further classes be offered to our organization.”