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4 Chapter 4: Effective Business Writing

“However great…natural talent may be, the art of writing cannot be learned all at once.”

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Read, read, read…Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master.”

—William Faulkner

“You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.”

—Doris Lessing

Opening Case: Parts Per Million

Simrit Kaur-Gallegos stared at the mass spectrometer printout until the numbers stopped meaning anything. One point eight. Parts per million. Lead. In a 400-pound batch of the turmeric-ginger blend that Lighthouse Spice Co. had already shipped to eighty-three retail partners across New England.

She’d been at Lighthouse for eleven weeks. Eleven. Her business card said Compliance & Consumer Communications Specialist, which on paper meant she was the person who handled exactly this. In practice, it had mostly meant rewriting website copy, formatting ingredient statements, and learning the difference between FDA-regulated dietary supplements and foods sold for culinary use. She had an MPH in food safety from Tufts and three unpaid internship credits at the Maine Department of Health. That was it. That was her whole résumé for this moment.

Yewande Akerele had walked the printout over from the lab ten minutes ago. “Batch TG-0417,” she’d said, tapping the highlighted row with one unbitten fingernail. “Lot tested Monday. Result posted this morning.” Yewande was the QA microbiologist—Nigerian-trained, London-educated, precise in the way certain chemists are precise, which is to say she did not round anything, ever. “The action level for turmeric as an herb or spice is variable. For dietary supplements it’s one part per million. We sell this as a culinary ingredient, so technically there’s daylight between us and enforcement. But,” she said, and put a second sheet on the desk, “the Massachusetts Department of Public Health sent a bulletin in March. They’ve been flagging turmeric at anything over one-point-zero for any consumer use. They already forced two Boston-area importers to pull product.”

Massachusetts, Simrit thought. They had eleven accounts in Massachusetts. Including three Whole Foods pilot stores. Including Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, which had ordered thirty pounds of TG-0417 six weeks ago and had a coffee-and-pantry section where the blend was bagged up for walk-in customers.

“So we have to recall it.”

“That’s a business decision,” Yewande said, and looked at her, really looked at her, with the quiet expression of someone who had already made the call in her own head and was waiting to see if Simrit would catch up. “But if you’re asking whether I could defend leaving it on the shelf in a deposition—I could not.”

That had been Tuesday morning, 9:47 a.m.

It was now Tuesday afternoon, 3:15 p.m., and Simrit had five writing assignments open in five browser tabs. Each one was going to land in front of a different audience by Friday at 5:00 p.m., which was the deadline she had given herself, because if you didn’t give yourself a deadline on something like this, the deadline got given to you by someone in a blue jacket with federal credentials.

Tab one was the FDA Form 3911—Food and Cosmetic Recall Reporting. It was a government form with hard fields and hard consequences. Every word would be read by a district recall coordinator she had never met.

Tab two was a letter she was drafting to Lighthouse’s 220 retail partners. They would open it Wednesday morning, in the middle of restocking, while a dozen other vendor emails piled up beside it. She needed the subject line to signal urgency without causing panic, and the first sentence to tell them exactly what to pull off the shelf and how to get it back to Lighthouse for refund. She had to anticipate every objection before they asked it.

Tab three was a public notification for the Lighthouse website and the customer email list. Twenty-six thousand people who had bought turmeric-ginger blend online in the last eighteen months. These were home cooks who put the blend in their morning golden milk and in their lentil soup and, in at least one case she knew of, in a three-year-old’s scrambled eggs. They needed to know what to do with the jar in their cabinet. They needed not to feel betrayed, because the thing between Lighthouse and its customers had always been trust—trust in provenance, trust in the small-batch story. Simrit had spent eleven weeks writing that story. Now she had to write against it without demolishing it.

Tab four was an internal memo to the production team. Eight people on the packing floor who had literally bagged this turmeric with their own hands, and who would feel responsible even though none of this was their fault. The memo had to communicate facts, protect morale, and keep the wrong kind of hallway gossip from becoming the wrong kind of Facebook post.

Tab five was a draft statement for Ravi Chaudhuri, their turmeric supplier in Mumbai, who had responded to her 5:00 a.m. Skype call with immediate transparency—”Simrit, we are with you, whatever you need”—and who was waiting for Lighthouse to tell him how the U.S. side of this would be communicated. Ravi had six other U.S. clients. Anything Lighthouse said publicly about the supplier’s role would land in six inboxes by tomorrow morning.

Five audiences. Five purposes. Five levels of formality. One week in October that was going to define her first year in this job.

Simrit had been working on the retailer letter for twenty minutes when Deacon Ollivander opened her office door without knocking.

Deacon was fifty-two. His father had founded Lighthouse in 1998 with a single hand-blended curry powder and a stall at the Portland Farmers’ Market. Deacon had inherited the company, the brand mythology, and a defensiveness about both that came out sideways in stressful conversations. He was carrying a printed copy of her retailer-letter draft, and half of the sentences on it were red.

“Sim, we have to talk about the language.”

“Okay.”

He set the draft down on top of the FDA form. “We can’t use the word ‘recall’ anywhere in the customer-facing communication. I want you to call it a ‘voluntary quality notification.’ And here—” he pointed at the sentence where she had written Laboratory analysis indicated lead levels above Massachusetts’ recommended threshold for consumer spices, “—I want this to say Due to variations in raw material supplied by our overseas partner that fell below Lighthouse’s rigorous internal standards. We need people to know this is not our fault.”

Simrit felt her face go very still.

“Deacon.”

“What.”

“The FDA recall classification form in tab one—that’s a federal document. I have to use the word ‘recall’ on that form. That’s what the form is called.”

“Fine. On the federal form. But on the retailer letter and the customer letter and the website, I want ‘voluntary quality notification.'”

She thought about the Massachusetts DPH bulletin. She thought about the word bypassing from the communication textbook that had been sitting on her nightstand for eleven weeks. She thought about the sentence in her contracts-law elective about how a published statement that damages a reputation becomes libel the moment it is false in fact, even if it is convenient to believe it is true. Raw material supplied by our overseas partner that fell below Lighthouse’s rigorous internal standards. Ravi Chaudhuri would read that sentence by Thursday morning. Ravi’s six other clients would read it by Thursday afternoon. An attorney for any of them could read it by Friday, and Lighthouse Spice Co. would have a defamation letter on its doorstep by the following Monday.

And the customer letter. Voluntary quality notification. A grandmother in Vermont who put turmeric-ginger in her grandson’s scrambled eggs was going to open her email and see those words and think: everything is fine, I don’t have to do anything. And she would keep feeding her grandson lead.

Deacon was watching her.

“Sim. I hired you because you’re smart and you know the regulations. But I also hired you because you understand brand. I need you to write the version of this letter that protects both.”

Simrit opened her mouth. She closed it. She thought about what she would say to him in the next sixty seconds, and how the next sixty seconds were going to decide whether she still had this job next Monday.

Three options sat in front of her.

Option one: write Deacon’s version. Use “voluntary quality notification” in customer-facing communications. Blame the supplier by name. Keep the job. Sleep badly forever.

Option two: refuse. Tell Deacon that what he was asking for created regulatory risk and legal exposure, and if he insisted, she would put her objections in writing and flag it to outside counsel. Probably lose the job. Sleep fine.

Option three: she didn’t know what option three was yet, but she suspected it had something to do with the thing Yewande had said that morning—that’s a business decision—and the thing her graduate advisor had said her first week at Tufts: the facts will do the work if you let them do the work.

Simrit looked at her five browser tabs. She looked at Deacon, standing in her doorway with the red-inked draft in his hand. She took a breath.

“Deacon. Give me forty-five minutes. I want to show you something before you mark up anything else.”

He raised his eyebrows, but he nodded, and pulled her door shut behind him.

Simrit turned back to the screen. Forty-five minutes. Five tabs. One decision about words that was really a decision about whether words could hold a company up or pull a company under. She had eleven weeks of experience and a laptop and two hours before the legal-review meeting Yewande had already scheduled with Rochelle Trautmann, the outside counsel, over in South Portland.

She put her fingers on the keyboard and did not type anything yet.

She was about to find out what she actually knew about writing.

We’ll come back to Simrit at the end of the chapter. Keep her five tabs in mind as you read—every concept in this chapter will show up in at least one of them.

Before You Read: A Quick Diagnostic

Answer these four questions in a notebook or doc before you dive into the chapter. Don’t look anything up. Don’t overthink. Your job is to capture what you already believe about business writing so you can check those beliefs against the chapter—and against yourself—at the end.

  1. When you need to communicate something important, do you automatically reach for a phone call, a text, or a written message? Why that channel and not the others?
  2. In the last month, how many times have you revised a text or email before hitting send? What triggered the revision—fear of being misread, grammar, tone, audience, something else?
  3. If a supervisor asked you to describe a competitor’s product as “dangerous” in a marketing email, what would you do, and why?
  4. How do you know whether to write in a formal or a casual tone at work? Where did you learn the rule you’re using?

Save your answers. You’ll return to them in the Self-Assessment at the end of the chapter.

Getting Started

Introductory Exercises

  1. Take a moment to write three words that describe your success in writing.
  2. Make a list of words you associate with writing. Compare your list with those of your classmates.
  3. Briefly describe your experience writing and include one link to something you like to read in your post.

Something we often hear in business is, “Get it in writing.” This advice is meant to prevent misunderstandings based on what one person thought the other person said. But does written communication—getting it in writing—always prevent misunderstandings?

According to a Washington Post news story, a written agreement would have helped an airline customer named Mike. A victim of an airport mishap, Mike was given vouchers for $7,500 worth of free travel. However, in accordance with the airline’s standard policy, the vouchers were due to expire in twelve months. When Mike saw that he and his wife wouldn’t be able to do enough flying to use the entire amount before the expiration date, he called the airline and asked for an extension. He was told the airline would extend the deadline, but later discovered they were willing to do so at only 50 percent of the vouchers’ value. An airline spokesman told the newspaper, “If [Mike] can produce a letter stating that we would give the full value of the vouchers, he should produce it.”[1]

Yet, as we’ll see in this chapter, putting something in writing isn’t always a foolproof way to ensure accuracy and understanding. A written communication is only as accurate as the writer’s knowledge of the subject and audience, and understanding depends on how well the writer captures the reader’s attention.

This chapter addresses the written word in a business context. We’ll also briefly consider the symbols, design, font, timing, and related nonverbal expressions you make when composing a page or document. Our discussions will focus on effectively communicating your thoughts and ideas through clear, concise, and efficient writing.

4.1 Oral versus Written Communication

Learning Objectives

  1. Explain how written communication is similar to oral communication, and how it is different.
  2. Identify the eight essential elements of communication and show how each one appears in both an oral and a written exchange.
  3. Analyze how the asynchronous nature of writing changes a writer’s word choices.

The written word often stands in place of the spoken word. People often say “it was good to hear from you” when they receive an e-mail or a letter, when in fact they didn’t hear the message, they read it. Still, if they know you well, they may mentally “hear” your voice in your written words. Writing a message to friends or colleagues can feel as natural as talking to them. Yet when we’re asked to write something, we often feel anxious and view writing as a more effortful, exacting process than talking would be.

Oral and written forms of communication are similar in many ways. They both rely on the basic communication process, which consists of eight essential elements: source, receiver, message, channel, feedback, environment, context, and interference. Table 4.1 “Eight Essential Elements of Communication” summarizes these elements and provides examples of how each might be applied in oral and written communication.

Table 4.1 Eight Essential Elements of Communication
Element of Communication Definition Oral Application Written Application
1. Source A source creates and communicates a message. Jay makes a telephone call to Heather. Jay writes an e-mail to Heather.
2. Receiver A receiver receives the message from the source. Heather listens to Jay. Heather reads Jay’s e-mail.
3. Message The message is the stimulus or meaning produced by the source for the receiver. Jay asks Heather to participate in a conference call at 3:15. Jay’s e-mail asks Heather to participate in a conference call at 3:15.
4. Channel A channel is the way a message travels between source and receiver. The channel is the telephone. The channel is e-mail.
5. Feedback Feedback is the message the receiver sends in response to the source. Heather says yes. Heather replies with an e-mail saying yes.
6. Environment The environment is the physical atmosphere where the communication occurs. Heather is traveling by train on a business trip when she receives Jay’s phone call. Heather is at her desk when she receives Jay’s e-mail.
7. Context The context involves the psychological expectations of the source and receiver. Heather expects Jay to send an e-mail with the call-in information for the call. Jay expects to do so, and does. Heather expects Jay to dial and connect the call. Jay expects Heather to check her e-mail for the call-in information so that she can join the call.
8. Interference Also known as noise, interference is anything that blocks or distorts the communication process. Heather calls in at 3:15, but she has missed the call because she forgot that she is in a different time zone from Jay. Heather waits for a phone call from Jay at 3:15, but he doesn’t call.

As you can see from these applications, at least two different kinds of interference could ruin a conference call, and the interference can exist regardless of whether the communication to plan the call is oral or written. Try switching the “Context” and “Interference” examples from Oral to Written, and you’ll see that mismatched expectations and time zone confusion can happen by phone or by e-mail. While this example has an unfavorable outcome, it points out a way in which oral and written communication processes are similar.

Case Connection: Five Tabs, Five Audiences

Open Simrit’s five browser tabs in your mind and run each of the eight elements of communication across them. The source is the same in all five—Simrit, writing on behalf of Lighthouse. The message is technically the same fact in all five: lead levels in batch TG-0417 exceed Massachusetts’ threshold and the product must come back.

Everything else is different. The receiver changes from an FDA coordinator to a buyer at Formaggio Kitchen to a grandmother in Vermont to eight packers on the floor to a supplier in Mumbai. The channel changes from a federal form to an email to a web banner to a printed memo. The environment changes from an FDA office to a retailer’s backroom to a home kitchen. The context—each reader’s psychological expectation—is wildly different: the FDA coordinator expects dry regulatory language, the grandmother expects a company she trusts. And the interference is different in each tab: federal jargon in tab one, inbox clutter in tab two, email filters in tab three, shop-floor rumor in tab four, international time zone lag in tab five.

Same source, same underlying fact, five different messages. That’s why Simrit can’t write one letter and copy-paste it into five tabs. Keep this in mind as we work through the rest of 4.1.

Another way oral and written forms of communication are similar is that they can both be divided into verbal and nonverbal categories. Verbal communication involves the words you say, and nonverbal communication involves how you say them—your tone of voice, your facial expression, body language, and so forth. Written communication also has verbal and nonverbal dimensions. The words you choose are the verbal dimension. How you portray or display them is the nonverbal dimension, which can include the medium (e-mail or a printed document), the typeface or font, or the appearance of your signature on a letter. In this sense, oral and written communication are similar in their approach, even as they’re quite different in their application.

The written word allows for a dynamic communication process between source and receiver, but is often asynchronous—meaning it occurs at different times. When we communicate face-to-face, we get immediate feedback, but our written words stand in place of that interpersonal interaction and we lack that immediate response. Since we’re often not physically present when someone reads what we’ve written, we must anticipate the reader’s needs, interpretation, and likely response to our written messages.

Try It: The Element Inventory

Pick an email, text, or chat message you sent in the last twenty-four hours. In a notebook or doc, label all eight elements of communication as they appeared in that one message:

  1. Source — who were you being in that message? (Employee? Friend? Customer?)
  2. Receiver — who was on the other end, and what did they expect?
  3. Message — what were you actually trying to get across?
  4. Channel — why that channel and not another?
  5. Feedback — what response did you hope for, and what did you get?
  6. Environment — where were you physically when you sent it?
  7. Context — what were the unspoken expectations on each side?
  8. Interference — what made it harder for your message to land cleanly?

If you can’t answer one of the eight, you’ve just found the element you’re probably neglecting in your writing right now.

Suppose you’re asked to write a message telling clients about a new product or service your company is about to offer. If you were speaking to one of them in a relaxed setting over coffee, what would you say? What words would you choose to describe the product or service, and how it may fulfill the client’s needs? As a business communicator, you must focus on the words you use and how you use them. Short, simple sentences, themselves composed of words, also communicate a business style. In your previous English classes, you may have learned to write eloquently, but in a business context, your goal is clear, direct communication. One strategy to achieve this goal is to write the same way you speak. However, since written communication lacks the immediate feedback present in a conversation, you need to choose words and phrases even more carefully to promote accuracy, clarity, and understanding.

Pro Tip: Read It Back in the Reader’s Voice

Before you hit send on anything that matters, read your draft out loud in the voice of the person who will receive it. Not your voice. Theirs.

If you can, say it in the voice of someone who is having a bad day, is behind on their inbox, and thinks you might be asking them to do something that will cost them time. If your draft still sounds clear and fair in that voice, you’re close. If it doesn’t, you just found the sentences that need another pass. This two-minute exercise catches more tone problems than any grammar checker ever will, because it’s the one thing software can’t do: imagine a reader under stress.

The stakes of getting this right go up sharply when writing is the only record that exists. In a conversation, if something is unclear, the listener can ask a follow-up. In a written message, clarification has to travel back through the same channel—if it travels at all. That’s why Simrit couldn’t draft her retailer letter the way she’d brief the team over coffee. By the time a buyer in Cambridge read it Wednesday morning, Simrit wouldn’t be in the room to say “no, wait, I meant…” She had one shot at meaning exactly what she said.

Key Takeaways

Written communication involves the same eight basic elements as oral communication, but it is often asynchronous. Because the writer isn’t present when the reader reads, word choice has to anticipate what the spoken conversation would have negotiated in real time.

Exercises

  1. Review the oral and written applications in Table 4.1 “Eight Essential Elements of Communication” and construct a different scenario for each. What could Jay and Heather do differently to make the conference call a success?
  2. Visit a business website that has an “About Us” page. Read the “About Us” message and write a summary in your own words of what it tells you about the company. Compare your results with those of your classmates.
  3. You are your own company. What words describe you? Design a logo, create a name, and present your descriptive words in a way that gets attention. Share and compare with classmates.
  4. Pick any one of Simrit’s five tabs (FDA form, retailer letter, customer notification, internal memo, or supplier statement). Sketch a one-paragraph opening for that document. What words would you use that you wouldn’t use in any of the other four?
  5. Find an email you wish you could unsend. Without revising it, diagnose it: which of the eight elements of communication did you underestimate when you wrote it? Write a short paragraph explaining the misfire.

4.2 How Is Writing Learned?

Learning Objectives

  1. Explain how reading, writing, and critical thinking contribute to becoming a good writer.
  2. Identify at least three kinds of reading that strengthen business writing skills.
  3. Describe targeted practice and apply it to a specific writing weakness of your own.

You may think some people are born better writers than others, but in fact, writing reflects experience and effort. If you think about your successes as a writer, you may come up with a couple of favorite books, authors, or teachers that inspired you to express yourself. You may also recall a sense of frustration with your previous writing experiences. It’s normal and natural to feel frustrated at the perceived inability to express yourself. The emphasis here is on your perception of yourself as a writer as one aspect of how you communicate. Most people use oral communication for much of their self-expression, from daily interactions to formal business meetings. You have a lifetime of experience in that arena that you can bring to your writing. Reading out loud what you’ve written is a positive technique we’ll address later in more depth.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s statement, “Violence is the language of the unheard” emphasizes the importance of finding one’s voice—of being able to express one’s ideas. Violence comes in many forms, but is often associated with frustration born of the lack of opportunity to communicate. You may read King’s words and think of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, or perhaps of the violence of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or of wars happening in the world today. Public demonstrations and fighting are expressions of voice, from individual to collective. Finding your voice, and learning to listen to others, is part of learning to communicate.

You are your own best ally when it comes to your writing. Keeping a positive frame of mind about your journey as a writer isn’t a cliché or simple, hollow advice. Your attitude toward writing can and does influence your written products. Even if writing has been a challenge for you, the fact that you’re reading this sentence means you recognize the importance of this essential skill. This text and our discussions will help you improve your writing, and your positive attitude is part of your success strategy.

There’s no underestimating the power of effort when combined with inspiration and motivation. The catch, then, is to get inspired and motivated. That’s not all it takes, but it’s a great place to start. You weren’t born with a keyboard in front of you, but when you want to share something with friends and text them, the words (or abbreviations) come almost naturally. So you recognize you have the skills necessary to begin improving and harnessing your writing abilities for business success. It will take time and effort, and the proverbial journey starts with a single step, but don’t lose sight of the fact that your skillful ability to craft words will make a significant difference in your career.

Reading

You may love the A Court of Thorns and Roses series or be a fan of The Expanse, but if you want to write effectively in business, you need to read business-related documents. These include letters, reports, proposals, and plans. You may find them where you work or in your school’s business department, library, or online. Your reading should also include publications in your industry—such as Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, or MIT Sloan Management Review—and in fields outside your own to broaden your perspective. Reading is one of the most useful lifelong habits you can practice to strengthen your business communication skills.

In the “real world,” when you’re under a deadline and production is paramount, you’ll be rushed and may lack time for adequate background reading for a particular assignment. For now, take advantage of your business communication course by exploring common business documents you may be called on to write, contribute to, or help draft. Some documents have a degree of formula to them, and your familiarity with them will reduce your preparation and production time while increasing your effectiveness. As you read similar documents, take notes on what you notice. As you read several sales letters, you may see patterns that can serve you well later when it’s your turn. These patterns are often called conventions, or conventional language patterns for a specific genre.

Case Connection: What Simrit Read Before She Wrote

Between 10:00 a.m. and noon on Tuesday, Simrit did not draft a single sentence of the retailer letter. She read. She pulled up the FDA’s public archive of Class II food recalls from the last three years and read fourteen of them. She looked at the one Food52 issued when a chocolate-coating partner had a labeling error. She looked at how Trader Joe’s phrased the Green Goddess recall announcement. She looked at the Massachusetts DPH bulletin from March—word for word, because that was the exact document her own letter would be compared against if anything went wrong.

By the time she opened a blank retailer letter at noon, she had a mental template: subject line that names the product and lot number, opening sentence that gives the action the reader must take, second paragraph that gives the why in plain language, third paragraph that gives the return and refund process, contact information, signature. She hadn’t written anything yet. But she knew the shape of the thing she had to build.

That’s what reading before writing buys you. Not copying—patterning. Conventions.

Writing

Never lose sight of one key measure of your writing’s effectiveness: how well it fulfills readers’ expectations. If you’re in a law office, you know a court brief’s purpose is to convince the judge that certain points of law apply to the given case. If you’re at a newspaper, you know that an editorial opinion article is supposed to convince readers of the merits of a certain viewpoint, whereas a news article is supposed to report facts without bias. If you’re writing ad copy, the goal is to motivate consumers to make a purchase decision. In each case, you’re writing for a specific purpose, and a great place to start when considering what to write is to answer this question: What does the reader expect?

When you’re a junior member of the team, you may be given clerical tasks like filling in forms, populating a database, or coordinating appointments. Or you may be assigned research that involves reading, interviewing, and note-taking. Don’t underestimate these facets of the writing process; instead, embrace the fact that writing for business often involves tasks a novelist might not even recognize as “writing.” Your contribution is quite important and is itself an on-the-job learning opportunity that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

When given a writing assignment, make sure you understand what you’re being asked to do. You may read the directions and try to put them in your own words to make sense of the assignment. Be careful, however, not to lose sight of what the directions say versus what you think they say. Just as an audience’s expectations should be part of your consideration of how, what, and why to write, the instructions given by your instructor—or in a work situation, by your supervisor—establish expectations. Just as you might ask a mentor more about a business writing assignment at work, use the resources available to you to maximize your learning opportunity. Ask the professor to clarify any points you find confusing, or perceive more than one way to interpret, so you can better meet the expectations.

Before you write an opening paragraph, or even the first sentence, consider the overall goal of the assignment. The word assignment applies equally to a written product for class or for your employer. You might make a list of the main points and see how those points could become the topic sentences in a series of paragraphs. You may also give considerable thought to whether your word choice, your tone, your language, and what you want to say aligns with your understanding of your audience. We briefly introduced the writing process earlier, and will visit it in depth later in our discussion, but for now, writing is about exploring your options. Authors rarely have a finished product in mind when they start, but once you know what your goal is and how to reach it, your writing process will become easier and more effective.

Constructive Criticism and Targeted Practice

Mentors can also be important in your growth as a writer. Your instructor can serve as a mentor, offering constructive criticism, insights on what they’ve written, and life lessons about writing for a purpose. Never underestimate the mentors that surround you in the workplace, even if you’re currently working in a position unrelated to your desired career. They can read your rough draft and spot errors, as well as provide useful insights. Friends and family can also be helpful mentors—if your document’s meaning is clear to someone not working in your business, it will likely also be clear to your audience.

The key is to be open to criticism, keeping in mind that no one ever improved by repeating bad habits over and over. Only when you know what your errors are—errors of grammar or sentence structure, logic, format, and so on—can you correct your document and do a better job next time. Writing can be a solitary activity, but more often in business settings it’s a collective, group, or team effort. Keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to seek outside assistance before you finalize your document.

Learning to be a successful business writer comes with practice. Targeted practice, which involves identifying your weak areas and specifically working to improve them, is especially valuable. In addition to reading, make it a habit to write, even if it’s not a specific assignment. The more you practice writing the kinds of materials used in your line of work, the more writing will come naturally and become an easier task, even when you need to work under pressure.

Reflection Write: Your Writing Origin Story

Spend ten quiet minutes and write a one-page origin story of yourself as a writer. Don’t worry about polish. Try to answer three questions:

  1. Who was the first person who told you that you could write? Who was the first person who told you that you couldn’t? Which one did you believe, and why?
  2. What kind of writing do you reach for when no one is grading you—text messages, fan fiction, journals, emails to your family, captions, code comments? That thing you already do easily—what rules have you figured out about it without being taught?
  3. What’s the one writing weakness you’d be embarrassed to admit in class? Name it on the page, because naming it is the first move in targeted practice.

You won’t turn this in. But keep it somewhere you can find it. The weakness you name here is the one you’re going to attack, deliberately, for the rest of the semester.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking means becoming aware of your thinking process. It’s a human trait that allows us to step outside what we read or write and ask ourselves, “Does this really make sense?” “Are there other, perhaps better, ways to explain this idea?” Sometimes our thinking is very abstract and becomes clear only through the process of getting thoughts down in words. As a character in E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel said, “How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?”[2] Did you really write what you meant to, and will it be easily understood by the reader? Successful writing forms a relationship with the audience, reaching the reader on a deep level that can be dynamic and motivating. In contrast, when writing fails to meet the audience’s expectations, you already know the consequences: they’ll move on.

Learning to write effectively involves reading, writing, critical thinking, and hard work. You may have seen The Wizard of Oz and recall the scene when Dorothy discovers what’s behind the curtain. Up until that moment, she believed the Wizard’s powers were needed to change her situation, but now she discovers that the power is her own. Like Dorothy, you can discover that the power to write successfully rests in your hands. Excellent business writing can be inspiring, and it’s important not to lose that sense of inspiration as we deconstruct the process of writing to its elemental components.

You may be amazed by the performance of Tony Hawk on a skateboard ramp, Mia Hamm on the soccer field, or Michael Phelps in the water. Those who demonstrate excellence often make it look easy, but nothing could be further from the truth. Effort, targeted practice, and persistence will win the day every time. When it comes to writing, you need to learn to recognize clear and concise writing while looking behind the curtain at how it’s created. This isn’t to say we’re going to lose the magic associated with the best writers in the field. Instead, we’ll appreciate what we’re reading as we examine how it was written and how the writer achieved success.

Pro Tip: Build a Similar-Documents Library

Start a folder—cloud, desktop, whatever you’ll actually open—called SDL: Similar-Documents Library. Every time you see a piece of business writing you admire (a cover letter, a product launch email, a press release, a bid proposal, a denial letter that somehow doesn’t feel insulting), drop it in the folder. Rename the file so you can find it: Cover-letter_Software-Engineer_GoodOpening.pdf.

When you’re asked to write something new, open the folder first, not the blank page. You’re not plagiarizing; you’re studying conventions. Every professional writer does some version of this. The ones who say they don’t are the ones who’ve already absorbed so many models that the library lives in their head.

Key Takeaways

Success in writing comes from good habits: reading widely in your field (especially the exact kinds of documents you’ll be asked to produce), writing often (especially targeted practice on your weak spots), and thinking critically about what the reader will actually take from your words.

Exercises

  1. Interview one person whose job involves writing. This can include writing e-mails, reports, proposals, invoices, or any other form of business document. Where did this person learn to write? What would they include as essential steps to learning to write for success in business? Share your results with a classmate.
  2. For five consecutive days, read the business section of your local newspaper or another daily paper. Write a one-page summary of the news that makes the most impression on you. Review your summaries and compare them with those of your classmates.
  3. Practice filling out an online form that requires writing sentences, such as a job application for a company that receives applications online. How does this kind of writing compare with the writing you’ve done for other courses in the past? Discuss your thoughts with your classmates.
  4. Build the first five entries in your own Similar-Documents Library. At least three of them should be from industries you don’t currently work in. Write a one-paragraph note on each one describing what convention or technique you want to steal.
  5. Identify one specific writing weakness in yourself (wordiness, passive voice, burying the lede, run-on sentences, tone, subject lines—pick one). Write a 250-word paragraph on any topic, deliberately trying to fix that one weakness. Exchange with a classmate for feedback.

4.3 Good Writing

Learning Objectives

  1. Identify six basic qualities that characterize good business writing.
  2. Identify and explain the rhetorical elements and cognate strategies that contribute to good writing.
  3. Distinguish among Aristotle’s three rhetorical appeals and provide a business writing example of each.
  4. Apply at least two cognate strategies to a draft document and explain why you chose them.

One common concern is simply addressing the question, What is good writing? As we progress through our study of written business communication, we’ll try to answer it. But recognize that while the question may be simple, the answer is complex. Edward P. Bailey offers several key points to remember.[3]

Good business writing

  • follows the rules,
  • is easy to read, and
  • attracts the reader.

Let’s look at these qualities in more depth.

Bailey’s first point generates a fair amount of debate. What are the rules? Do “the rules” depend on audience expectations or industry standards, what your English teacher taught you, or are they reflected in the amazing writing of authors you might point to as positive examples? The answer is “all of the above,” with a point of clarification. You may find it necessary to balance audience expectations with industry standards for a document, and may need to find a balance or compromise. Bailey points to common sense as one basic criterion of good writing, but common sense is a product of experience. When searching for balance, reader understanding is the deciding factor. The correct use of a semicolon may not be what’s needed to make a sentence work. Your reading audience should carry extra weight in everything you write because, without them, you won’t have many more writing assignments.

When we say that good writing follows the rules, we don’t mean that a writer can’t be creative. Just as an art student needs to know how to draw a scene in correct perspective before they can “break the rules” by “bending” perspective, a writer needs to know the rules of language. Knowing how to use words correctly, form sentences with proper grammar, and build logical paragraphs are skills the writer can use no matter what the assignment. Even though some business settings may call for conservative writing, there are other areas where creativity is not only allowed but mandated. Imagine working for an advertising agency or a software development firm; in such situations, success comes from expressing new, untried ideas. By following the rules of language and correct writing, a writer can express those creative ideas in a form that is clear and promotes understanding.

Common Mistake: Confusing “Formal” with “Stuffy”

New writers often assume that “professional” writing has to sound like an insurance contract read aloud by a robot. It doesn’t. Formal does not mean padded with Latin phrases, three-clause sentences, and the passive voice on every line. It means intentional. Every word is earned. Every sentence has a job.

The Bailey test for “easy to read” is not about dumbing anything down. It’s about respecting the reader’s time enough to take the extra pass yourself. The sentence “We hereby wish to inform you that utilization of the premises shall cease at 5:00 p.m.” is stuffy, not formal. The sentence “The building closes at 5:00 p.m.” is formal and easy to read. It’s also shorter. That’s not a coincidence.

Similarly, writing that’s easy to read isn’t the same as “dumbed down” or simplistic writing. What makes writing easy to read? For a young audience, you may need straightforward, simple terms, but ignoring how they use language creates an artificial and unnecessary barrier. An example referring to Miley Cyrus may work with one reading audience and fall flat with another. Profession-specific terms can serve a valuable purpose when we write about precise concepts. Not everyone will understand all the terms in a profession, but if your audience is familiar with the field’s terminology, using industry terms will help you establish a relationship with your readers.

The truly excellent writer can explain complex ideas in a way the reader can understand. Sometimes, ease of reading comes from the writer’s choice of a brilliant illustrative example to get a point across. In other situations, it comes from incorporating definitions into the text so that unfamiliar words are clear. It may also be a matter of choosing dynamic, specific verbs that make it clear what’s happening and who’s carrying out the action.

Bailey’s third point concerns the interest of the reader. Will they want to read it? This question should guide much of what you write. We increasingly gain information from our environment through visual, auditory, and multimedia channels—from YouTube to streaming audio to watching the news online. Some argue that this has led to a decreased attention span for reading, meaning that writers need to appeal to readers with short, punchy sentences and catchy phrases. However, there are still plenty of people who love to immerse themselves in reading an interesting article, proposal, or marketing piece.

Perhaps the most universally useful strategy for capturing your reader’s attention is to state how your writing can meet the reader’s needs. If your document provides information to answer a question, solve a problem, or explain how to increase profits or cut costs, you may want to state this in the beginning. By opening with a “what’s in it for me” strategy, you give your audience a reason to be interested in what you’ve written.

More Qualities of Good Writing

To Bailey’s list, let’s add some additional qualities that define good writing. Good writing

  • meets the reader’s expectations,
  • is clear and concise,
  • is efficient and effective.

To meet the reader’s expectations, the writer needs to understand the intended reader. In some business situations, you’re writing just to one person: your boss, a coworker in another department, or an individual customer or vendor. If you know the person well, writing to them may be as easy as writing a note to your parent or roommate. If you don’t know the person, you can at least make some reasonable assumptions about their expectations, based on the position they hold and its relation to your job.

In other situations, you may be writing a document to be read by a group or team, an entire department, or even a large number of total strangers. How can you anticipate their expectations and tailor your writing accordingly? Naturally, you want to learn as much as you can about your likely audience. How much you can learn and what kinds of information will vary with the situation. If you’re writing website content, for example, you may never meet the people who will visit the site, but you can predict why they’d be drawn to the site and what they’d expect to read there. Beyond learning about your audience, your clear understanding of the writing assignment and its purpose will help you meet reader expectations.

Our addition of the fifth point concerning clear and concise writing reflects the increasing tendency in business writing to eliminate errors. Errors can include those associated with production, from writing to editing, and reader response. Your twin goals of clear and concise writing point to a central goal across communication: fidelity. This concept involves accurately communicating all the intended information with minimal signal or message breakdown or misinterpretation. Designing your documents, including writing and presentation, to reduce message breakdown is an important part of effective business communication.

This leads our discussion to efficiency. There are only twenty-four hours in a day, and we’re increasingly asked to do more with less, with shorter deadlines almost guaranteed. As a writer, how do you meet ever-increasing expectations? Each writing assignment requires a clear understanding of the goals and desired results, and when either of these is unclear, the efficiency of your writing can be compromised. Rewrites require time you may not have, but will have to make if the assignment wasn’t done correctly the first time.

As we’ve discussed, making a habit of reading similar documents before writing can help establish a mental template of your desired product. If you can see in your mind’s eye what you want to write, and have the perspective of similar documents combined with the audience’s needs, you can write more efficiently. Your written documents are products and will be required on a schedule that impacts your coworkers and business. Your ability to produce effective documents efficiently is a skill set that will contribute to your success.

Our sixth point reinforces this idea with an emphasis on effectiveness. What is effective writing? It’s writing that succeeds in accomplishing its purpose. Understanding the purpose, goals, and desired results of your writing assignment will help you achieve this success. Your employer may want an introductory sales letter to result in more sales leads, or potential contacts for follow-up leading to sales. Your audience may not see the document from that perspective, but will instead read with the mindset of, “How does this help me solve X problem?” If you meet both goals, your writing is approaching effectiveness. Here, effectiveness is qualified with the word “approaching” because writing is both a process and a product, and your writing will continually require effort and attention to revision and improvement.

Rhetorical Elements and Cognate Strategies

Another approach to defining good writing is to look at how it fulfills the goals of two well-known systems in communication. One system comprises the three classical elements of rhetoric, or the art of presenting an argument. These elements are logos (logic), ethos (ethics and credibility), and pathos (emotional appeal), first proposed by the ancient Greek teacher Aristotle. Although rhetoric is often applied to oral communication, especially public speaking, it’s also fundamental to good writing.

Historical Context: Aristotle’s Rhetoric, 2,400 Years Later

Aristotle wrote Rhetoric around 350 BCE as a practical manual for Athenian citizens who needed to argue cases in court, debate in the assembly, or deliver ceremonial speeches. He named three ways a speaker persuades an audience: logos (appeal through logic), ethos (appeal through the speaker’s character and credibility), and pathos (appeal through the audience’s emotions).

Aristotle was writing for speakers, not writers, and for audiences who would hear the words once, in a crowded public space, with no way to rewind. But every claim he made about persuasion survived the jump to print, then to email, then to the next medium after that. When Simrit has to write a retailer letter that buyers will actually act on, she is making the same three choices an Athenian lawyer made in 350 BCE: Does the argument hold up? Is the speaker trustworthy? Will the audience care? Two and a half millennia later, the answers still have to be yes, yes, and yes.

A second set of goals involves what are called cognate strategies, or ways of promoting understanding, developed in recent decades by Charles Kostelnick and David Rogers.[4] Like rhetorical elements, cognate strategies can be applied to public speaking, but they’re also useful in developing good writing. Table 4.2 “Rhetorical Elements and Cognate Strategies” describes these goals, their purposes, and examples of how they may be carried out in business writing.

Table 4.2 Rhetorical Elements and Cognate Strategies
Aristotle’s Rhetorical Elements Cognate Strategies Focus Example in Business Writing
Logos Clarity Clear understanding An announcement will be made to the company later in the week, but I wanted to tell you personally that as of the first of next month, I will be leaving my position to accept a three-year assignment in our Singapore office. As soon as further details about the management of your account are available, I will share them with you.
Conciseness Key points In tomorrow’s conference call Sean wants to introduce the new team members, outline the schedule and budget for the project, and clarify each person’s responsibilities in meeting our goals.
Arrangement Order, hierarchy, placement Our department has a matrix structure. We have three product development groups, one for each category of product. We also have a manufacturing group, a finance group, and a sales group; different group members are assigned to each of the three product categories. Within the matrix, our structure is flat, meaning that we have no group leaders. Everyone reports to Beth, the department manager.
Ethos Credibility Character, trust Having known and worked with Jesse for more than five years, I can highly recommend him to take my place as your advisor. In addition to having superb qualifications, Jesse is known for his dedication, honesty, and caring attitude. He will always go the extra mile for his clients.
Expectation Norms and anticipated outcomes As is typical in our industry, we ship all merchandise FOB our warehouse. Prices are exclusive of any federal, state, or local taxes. Payment terms are net 30 days from date of invoice.
Reference Sources and frames of reference According to an article in Business Week dated October 15, 2009, Doosan is one of the largest business conglomerates in South Korea.
Pathos Tone Expression I really don’t have words to express how grateful I am for all the support you’ve extended to me and my family in this hour of need. You guys are the best.
Emphasis Relevance It was unconscionable for a member of our organization to shout an interruption while the president was speaking. What needs to happen now—and let me be clear about this—is an immediate apology.
Engagement Relationship Faithful soldiers pledge never to leave a fallen comrade on the battlefield.

Case Connection: Credibility Is the Whole Ball Game

Look again at Simrit’s retailer letter problem through the lens of Aristotle’s three appeals.

Logos. The facts are on her side—lab results, DPH bulletin, action threshold, specific lot number. If she lets the facts speak plainly, the logos of the letter is already intact.

Ethos. This is where Deacon’s requested edits would destroy her. If she writes “voluntary quality notification” instead of “recall” in a letter that any attorney, regulator, or journalist could later compare against the FDA Form 3911 she filed the same week, Lighthouse’s credibility detonates on contact. The retailer who reads the softened version and later sees the federal filing will never trust Lighthouse again.

Pathos. She can acknowledge inconvenience and express care for the retailer’s customers without manipulation. A sentence as simple as “We know this lands in the middle of a Wednesday restock and we are sorry for that” does more emotional work than three paragraphs of corporate condolence.

Deacon is asking for a letter that protects the brand. Simrit is about to argue that the only letter that protects the brand is the one that keeps its ethos intact. The rhetorical elements are not abstract. They’re the exact instruments she’s reaching for.

Try It: Cognate Strategy Hunt

Find a business document you can actually hold in your hands right now—a syllabus, a company memo, an apology email from a brand, a product return policy, a scholarship notification. Anything. Print it or open it on screen.

Read it through once. Then take a pen (or a highlighter, or a comment column in Google Docs) and label each sentence with the cognate strategy it’s trying to pull off: clarity, conciseness, arrangement, credibility, expectation, reference, tone, emphasis, engagement. Some sentences will be doing two or three jobs at once. Label them all.

When you’re done, two things will be visible that weren’t before. First: which strategies the writer is leaning on. Second: which ones they forgot. The forgotten ones are almost always where the document is failing.

Key Takeaways

Good writing is characterized by correctness, ease of reading, and attractiveness; it also meets reader expectations and is clear, concise, efficient, and effective. Rhetorical elements (logos, ethos, and pathos) and cognate strategies (clarity, conciseness, arrangement, credibility, expectation, reference, tone, emphasis, and engagement) are goals that are achieved in good business writing.

Exercises

  1. Choose a piece of business writing that attracts your interest. What made you want to read it? Share your thoughts with your classmates.
  2. Choose a piece of business writing and evaluate it according to the qualities of good writing presented in this section. Do you think the writing qualifies as “good”? Why or why not? Discuss your opinion with your classmates.
  3. Identify the ethos, pathos, and logos in a document. Share and compare with classmates.
  4. Pick a brand you trust and find a public apology statement they’ve issued. Diagnose it across all nine cognate strategies. Which one do they lean on hardest? Which one is missing?
  5. Rewrite one paragraph from a textbook (any textbook) using the cognate strategy of conciseness as ruthlessly as you can. Compare word counts before and after. What did you lose, if anything?

4.4 Style in Written Communication

Learning Objectives

  1. Describe and identify three styles of writing.
  2. Demonstrate the appropriate use of colloquial, casual, and formal writing in at least one document of each style.
  3. Choose an appropriate register given an audience, purpose, and organizational context.

One way to examine written communication is from a structural perspective. Words are a series of symbols that communicate meaning, strung together in specific patterns that combine to communicate complex and compound meanings. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and articles are the building blocks you’ll use when composing written documents. Misspellings of individual words or grammatical errors involving misplacement or incorrect word choices in a sentence can create confusion, lose meaning, and have a negative impact on how your document is received. Errors themselves aren’t inherently bad, but failure to recognize and fix them will reflect on you, your company, and limit your success. Self-correction is part of the writing process.

Another way to examine written communication is from a goals perspective, where specific documents address stated (or unstated) goals and have rules, customs, and formats that are anticipated and expected. Violations of these rules, customs, or formats—whether intentional or unintentional—can also have a negative impact on the way your document is received.

Colloquial, casual, and formal writing are three common styles that carry their own particular sets of expectations. Which style you use will depend on your audience, and often on whether your communication is going to be read only by those in your company (internal communications) or by those outside the organization, such as vendors, customers, or clients (external communications). As a general rule, external communications tend to be more formal, just as corporate letterhead and business cards—designed for presentation to the “outside world”—are more formal than the e-mail and text messages used for everyday writing within the organization.

Style also depends on the purpose of the document and its audience. If your writing assignment is for web page content, clear and concise use of the written word is essential. Suppose your writing assignment is a feature interest article for an online magazine. In that case, you may have the luxury of additional space and word count combined with graphics, pictures, embedded video or audio clips, and links to related topics. Suppose your writing assignment involves an introductory letter printed on paper and delivered in an envelope to a potential customer. In that case, you won’t have the interactivity to enhance your writing, placing an additional burden on your writing and how you represent it.

Pro Tip: The Register Matrix

Before you write anything at work that goes beyond a one-line reply, spend sixty seconds drawing a two-by-two grid in your head. Label the columns Internal and External. Label the rows Routine and High Stakes. Drop your document into the correct quadrant.

A Slack message to a teammate about lunch? Internal / Routine — colloquial is fine. A Slack message to your whole team announcing a layoff? Internal / High Stakes — formal, even though you’re still on Slack. An email to a customer acknowledging their recurring order? External / Routine — casual-to-formal. An email to a customer notifying them of a product recall? External / High Stakes — formal, every sentence vetted, and you probably have a lawyer read it first.

The channel does not set the register. The quadrant does.

Colloquial

Colloquial language is an informal, conversational style of writing. It differs from standard business English in that it often makes use of colorful expressions, slang, and regional phrases. As a result, it can be difficult to understand for an English learner or a person from a different region of the country. Sometimes colloquialism takes the form of a word difference; for example, the difference between a “Coke,” a “tonic,” a “pop,” and a “soda pop” primarily depends on where you live. It can also take the form of a saying, as Roy Wilder Jr. discusses in his book You All Spoken Here: Southern Talk at Its Down-Home Best.[5] Colloquial sayings like “He could mess up a rainstorm” or “He couldn’t hit the ground if he fell” communicate that a person is inept in a colorful, but not universal way. In the Pacific Northwest, someone might “mosey,” or walk slowly, over to the “café,” or bakery, to pick up a “maple bar”—a confection known as a “Long John doughnut” to people in other parts of the United States.

Colloquial language can be reflected in texting:

“ok fwiw i did my part n put it in where you asked but my ? is if the group does not participate do i still get credit for my part of what i did n also how much do we all have to do i mean i put in my opinion of the items in order do i also have to reply to the other team members or what? Thxs”

We may be able to grasp the meaning of the message and understand some of the abbreviations and codes, but when it comes to business, this style of colloquial text writing is generally suitable only for one-on-one internal communications between coworkers who know each other well (and who don’t judge each other on spelling or grammar). For external communications, and even for group communications within the organization, it’s not normally suitable, as some of the codes are not standard and may even be unfamiliar to the larger audience. Similar informality can appear in workplace chat tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams, where shorthand and emojis often replace full sentences. While this may be acceptable for quick internal check-ins, it’s rarely appropriate for client-facing or formal communications.

Colloquial writing may be permissible, and even preferable, in some business contexts. For example, a marketing letter describing a folksy product, such as a wood stove or an old-fashioned popcorn popper, might use a colloquial style to create a feeling of relaxing at home with loved ones. Still, consider how colloquial language will appear to the audience. Will the meaning of your chosen words be clear to a reader who is from a different part of the country? Will a folksy tone sound like you’re “talking down” to your audience, assuming they’re not intelligent or educated enough to appreciate standard English? A final point: colloquial style is not an excuse for using expressions that are sexist, racist, profane, or otherwise offensive.

Casual

Casual language involves everyday words and expressions in a familiar group context, such as conversations with family or close friends. The emphasis is on the communication interaction itself, rather than the hierarchy, power, control, or social rank of the individuals communicating. When you’re at home, at times you probably dress in casual clothing that you wouldn’t wear in public—pajamas or underwear, for example. Casual communication is the written equivalent of this kind of casual attire. Have you ever had a family member say something to you that a stranger or coworker would never say? Or have you said something to a family member that you would never say in front of your boss? In both cases, casual language is being used. When you write for business, a casual style is usually out of place. Instead, a respectful, professional tone represents you well in your absence.

Ethical Consideration: When Casual Tone Hides a Serious Message

Register is also an ethical choice. When a company softens a serious message by dressing it in casual language, the tone itself becomes a kind of misdirection. A friendly, upbeat email that announces “some exciting changes to our team!” can turn out to be a layoff notice three paragraphs in. A “fun little reminder” from a landlord can be the first step in an eviction. A “just a heads-up” from a pharmacy can be the disclosure of a data breach.

This is exactly what Deacon is asking Simrit to do when he tells her to call the recall a “voluntary quality notification.” He’s not asking her to write unclearly. He’s asking her to choose a register that mutes the facts. The grandmother in Vermont who reads that phrase and keeps feeding her grandson turmeric-ginger every morning is the person the register choice harms.

When stakes are high, casual tone is not always the friendly option. Sometimes it’s the unsafe one. The test is simple: if the tone would leave the reader less likely to take the action the facts require, the register is wrong—no matter how warm it sounds.

Formal

In business writing, the appropriate style will have a degree of formality. Formal language is communication that focuses on professional expression with attention to roles, protocol, and appearance. It’s characterized by its vocabulary and syntax, or the grammatical arrangement of words in a sentence. Writers using a formal style tend to use a more sophisticated vocabulary—a greater variety of words, and more words with multiple syllables—not to throw big words around, but to enhance the formal mood of the document. They also tend to use more complex syntax, resulting in sentences that are longer and contain more subordinate clauses.

The appropriate style for a particular business document may be very formal, or less so. If your supervisor writes you an e-mail and you reply, the exchange may be informal in that it’s fluid and relaxed, without much forethought or fanfare. However, it will still reflect the formality of the business environment. Chances are you’ll be careful to use an informative subject line, a salutation (“Hi [supervisor’s name]” is typical in e-mails), a word of thanks for whatever information or suggestion they provided, and an indication that you stand ready to help further if needed. You’ll probably also check your grammar and spelling before you click “send.”

A formal document, such as a proposal or an annual report, will involve a great deal of planning and preparation, and its style may not be fluid or relaxed. Instead, it may use distinct language to emphasize the prestige and professionalism of your company. Let’s say you’re going to write a marketing letter that will be printed on company letterhead and mailed to a hundred sales prospects. Naturally, you want to represent your company in a positive light. In a letter of this nature you might write a sentence like “The Widget 300 is our premium offering in the line; we have designed it for ease of movement and efficiency of use, with your success foremost in our mind.” But in an e-mail or a tweet, you might use an informal sentence instead, reading “W300—good stapler.”

Writing for business often involves choosing the appropriate level of formality for the company and industry, the particular document and situation, and the audience.

Case Connection: Five Registers Before Five O’Clock

By 4:00 p.m. Tuesday, Simrit had one of every register sitting in her drafts folder.

Colloquial: The Slack message to Yewande — “ok got the lab report, heading to draft the FDA form now, gonna need your sign-off on wording by 5”. Two people who trust each other, trading shorthand. Nothing wrong with this register here.

Casual: The internal memo to the eight packers. Not colloquial—this is a company document and people will keep it—but warm, direct, first-name, plainspoken. “Here’s what happened, here’s what we’re doing, here’s what we’re asking of you, and no, none of this is your fault.”

Semi-formal: The customer notification. Warm but careful. Uses the word recall because that word triggers the right action. Does not use “dear valued customer,” because that phrase has been so cheapened it now means “you are about to be lied to.”

Formal: The retailer letter. Printed on letterhead, PDF attached to email, cc to Lighthouse’s outside counsel. Every paragraph vetted. Subject line: URGENT: Product Recall — Turmeric-Ginger Blend, Lot TG-0417.

Highly formal: FDA Form 3911. This is not a register Simrit gets to pick. The federal form picks it for her. She fills in the fields and uses the words the form demands: recall, reason for recall, hazard classification, distribution pattern, corrective action.

Same writer. Same week. Same underlying fact. Five different registers, each one chosen because of who’s reading and what they need to do next. That’s what register means when you stop treating it as a decoration and start treating it as a tool.

Key Takeaways

The best style for a document may be colloquial, casual, informal, or formal, depending on the audience and the situation. The channel does not set the register; the audience, purpose, and stakes do.

Exercises

  1. Refer back to the e-mail or text message example in this section. Would you send that message to your professor? Why or why not? What normative expectations concerning professor-student communication are there and where did you learn them? Discuss your thoughts with your classmates.
  2. Select a business document and describe its style. Is it formal, informal, or colloquial? Can you rewrite it in a different style? Share your results with a classmate.
  3. List three words or phrases that you would say to your friends. List three words or phrases that communicate similar meanings that you would say to an authority figure. Share and compare with classmates.
  4. When is it appropriate to write in a casual tone? In a formal tone? Write a one- to two-page essay on this topic and discuss it with a classmate.
  5. How does the intended audience influence the choice of words and use of language in a document? Think of a specific topic and two specific kinds of audiences. Then write a short example (250–500 words) of how this topic might be presented to each of the two audiences.
  6. Take a single piece of news—any news, serious or silly—and write it up three times: once as a Slack message to your closest friend, once as a LinkedIn post, once as a formal press release. What do you keep in all three? What do you only say in one?

4.5 Principles of Written Communication

Learning Objectives

  1. Understand the rules that govern written language.
  2. Understand the legal implications of business writing.
  3. Distinguish concrete from abstract terms and explain the trade-offs of each in business contexts.
  4. Identify plagiarism, libel, and defamation and describe how to avoid each in workplace writing.

You may not recall when or where you learned all about nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, articles, and phrases, but if you understand this sentence, we’ll take for granted that you have a firm grasp of the basics. But even professional writers and editors, who’ve spent a lifetime navigating the ins and outs of crafting correct sentences, have to use reference books to look up answers to questions of grammar and usage that arise in the course of their work. Let’s look at how the simple collection of symbols called a word can be such a puzzle.

Words Are Inherently Abstract

There’s no universally accepted definition for love, there are many ways to describe desire, and there are countless ways to draw patience. Each of these terms is a noun, but it’s an abstract noun, referring to an intangible concept.

While there are many ways to define a chair, describe a table, or draw a window, they each have a few common characteristics. A chair may be made from wood, crafted in a Mission style, or made from plastic resin in one solid piece in a nondescript style, but each has four legs and serves a common function. A table and a window also have common characteristics that, in themselves, form a basis for understanding between source and receiver. The words “chair,” “table,” and “window” are concrete terms, as they describe something we can see and touch.

Concrete terms are often easier to agree on, understand, or at least define the common characteristics of. Abstract terms can easily become even more abstract with extended discussions, and the conversational partners may never agree on a common definition or even a range of understanding.

In business communication, where the goal is to be clear and concise while limiting the range of misinterpretation, which type of word do you think is preferred? Concrete terms clarify your writing and more accurately communicate your intended meaning to the receiver. While all words are abstractions, some are more so than others. To promote effective communication, choose words that are clear and concise.

Try It: The Abstract-to-Concrete Swap

Here are five vague sentences from real business writing. In your notebook, rewrite each one by replacing any abstract noun or adjective with a concrete, specific term. You do not need to know the facts—make them up if you have to, as long as they are the kind of fact that would appear there.

  1. “We take the customer experience very seriously.”
  2. “Our team is committed to operational excellence.”
  3. “The product has been well received by key stakeholders.”
  4. “There have been some concerns raised about the rollout.”
  5. “We are leveraging synergies across our portfolio.”

Compare your rewrites to a classmate’s. You’ll almost certainly produce different concrete versions—because the originals were vague enough to mean almost anything, which is exactly the problem.

Words Are Governed by Rules

Perhaps you like to think of yourself as a free spirit, but did you know that all your communication is governed by rules? You weren’t born knowing how to talk, but learned to form words and sentences as you developed from infancy. As you learned language, you learned rules. You learned not only what a word means in a given context and how to pronounce it; you also learned the social protocol of when to use it and when not to. When you write, your words represent you in your absence. The context may change from reader to reader, and your goal as an effective business communicator is to get your message across (and some feedback) regardless of the situation.

The better you know your audience and context, the better you can anticipate and incorporate the rules of how, what, and when to use specific words and terms. And here lies a paradox. You may think that, ideally, the best writing is writing that’s universally appealing and understood. Yet the more you design a specific message for a specific audience or context, the less universal the message becomes. Actually, this is neither a good or bad thing in itself. In fact, if you didn’t target your messages, they wouldn’t be nearly as effective. By understanding this relationship of a universal or specific appeal to an audience or context, you can look beyond vocabulary and syntax and focus on the reader. When considering a communication assignment like a sales letter, knowing the intended audience gives you insight into the explicit and implicit rules.

All words are governed by rules, and the rules are vastly different from one language and culture to another. A famous example is Chevrolet’s decision to name one of its cars “Nova.” In English, nova is recognized as coming from Latin meaning “new”; for those who’ve studied astronomy, it also refers to a type of star. When the Chevy Nova was introduced in Latin America, however, it was immediately ridiculed as the “car that doesn’t go.” Why? Because “no va” literally means “doesn’t go” in Spanish.

Historical Context: The Chevy Nova Legend (and Why It Sticks)

Linguists and automotive historians have pointed out that the Nova story is exaggerated: Chevrolet actually sold plenty of Novas in Mexico and Venezuela in the 1970s, and native Spanish speakers generally heard the name as one word, “Nova,” not as the phrase “no va.” The legend endures anyway, and it endures for a good reason: it captures a truth about business writing that happens to be more important than whether this particular example is accurate.

The truth is that words carry unintended weight in contexts the writer didn’t anticipate. Every writer who moves a message across a region, a generation, a language, a subculture, or an industry is working with that risk. The Nova story survives because it’s a convenient warning label for something that genuinely goes wrong all the time: the sentence you wrote means one thing in your head and something else in your reader’s.

Keep the warning. Keep a healthy skepticism about the legend. And do your market research.

By investigating sample names in a range of markets, you can quickly learn the rules surrounding words and their multiple meanings, much as you learned about subjects and objects, verbs and nouns, adjectives and adverbs when you were learning language. Long before you knew formal grammar terms, you observed how others communicate and learned by trial and error. In business, error equals inefficiency, loss of resources, and is to be avoided. For Chevrolet, a little market research in Latin America would have gone a long way.

Words Shape Our Reality

Aristotle is famous for many things, including his questioning of whether the table you can see, feel, or use is real.[6] This may strike you as strange, but imagine that we’re looking at a collection of antique hand tools. What are they? They’re made of metal and wood, but what are they used for? The words we use help us make sense of our reality, and we often use what we know to figure out what we don’t know. Perhaps we have a hard time describing the color of the tool, or the table, as we walk around it. The light itself may influence our perception of its color. We may lack the vocabulary to accurately describe the color, and instead say it is “like a” color, but not directly describe the color itself.[7]

The color, or use of the tool, or style of the table are all independent of the person perceiving them, but also a reflection of the person perceiving the object.

In business communication, our goal of clear and concise communication involves anticipating this inability to label a color or describe the function of an antique tool by constructing meaning. Anticipating the language that the reader may reasonably be expected to know, as well as unfamiliar terms, enables the writer to communicate in a way that describes with common reference points while illustrating the new, interesting, or unusual. Promoting understanding and limiting misinterpretations are key goals of the effective business communicator.

Your letter introducing a new product or service relies, to an extent, on your preconceived notions of the intended audience and their preconceived notions of your organization and its products or services. By referencing common ground, you form a connection between the known and the unknown, the familiar and the new. People are more likely to be open to a new product or service if they can reasonably relate it to one they’re familiar with, or with which they’ve had good experience in the past. Your initial measure of success is effective communication, and your long-term success may be measured in the sale or a new contract for services.

Case Connection: The Word Was Always “Recall”

Think about the phrase Deacon wanted Simrit to use: voluntary quality notification. On its face, the words are not dishonest. Lighthouse is voluntarily notifying people of a quality issue. Every word in the phrase is technically true.

But the word recall carries a reality the phrase doesn’t. Americans have been trained by decades of consumer-protection news to hear “recall” as: stop using this, return it, we’ll make it right. “Voluntary quality notification” doesn’t activate any of that. It sounds like a newsletter.

This is what it means to say words shape reality. Two phrases that point to the same fact produce two completely different behaviors in a reader. If Simrit chooses the softer phrase, the grandmother in Vermont reads the email, puts the jar back in the cabinet, and keeps cooking with it. If Simrit chooses the word recall, the grandmother reads the email, walks to the cabinet, and takes the jar out. The reality the reader walks into next is manufactured by the word the writer chose.

For Simrit, the ethical decision and the effectiveness decision are the same decision. The word “recall” is the word that makes the letter do its job.

Words and Your Legal Responsibility

Your writing in a business context means that you represent yourself and your company. What you write and how you write it can be part of your company’s success, but can also expose it to unintended consequences and legal responsibility. When you write, keep in mind that your words will keep on existing long after you’ve moved on to other projects. They can become an issue if they exaggerate, state false claims, or defame a person or legal entity such as a competing company. Another issue is plagiarism, using someone else’s writing without giving credit to the source. Whether the “cribbed” material is taken from a printed book, a website, or a blog, plagiarism is a violation of copyright law and may also violate your company policies. Industry standards often have legal aspects that must be respected and can’t be ignored. For the writer this can be a challenge, but it can be a rewarding challenge with positive results.

The rapid pace of technology means that the law often struggles to keep up. For example, while the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 was the first major U.S. law to address digital media, new questions now arise around AI-generated content, influencer endorsements, and ownership of social media accounts. In 2023, the U.S. Copyright Office issued updated guidance on registering works containing AI-generated material, clarifying that only the human-authored portions are eligible for protection.[8]

Real-World Application: AI-Generated Copy and the Copyright Office

The 2023 U.S. Copyright Office guidance matters to you now, not in some future where you’re writing for a living. Any student who uses a large language model to generate a marketing email, a product description, or a LinkedIn post is working inside a legal gray zone the courts are still mapping out.

Three things you should know:

  1. If an AI produced the sentences and you just cleaned them up, the AI-generated portions are not protected by U.S. copyright. Anyone can copy them.
  2. If you hand an AI a draft and use it as a line editor, the human-authored portions remain protectable. The boundary is blurry, and you bear the burden of being able to show which was which.
  3. If you paste AI-generated text into a document you submit under your own name at work, many companies’ internal policies treat that as a disclosure obligation. You may not get in trouble for using the tool. You will get in trouble for hiding that you used it.

The rule of thumb: treat AI-generated language exactly the way you would treat language you pulled from another company’s website. Useful as a pattern. Never presentable as your own without transformation and disclosure.

For example, suppose your supervisor asks you to use your Facebook page or Twitter account to give an occasional “plug” to your company’s products. Are you obligated to comply? If you later change jobs, who owns your posts or tweets—are they yours, or does your now-former employer have a right to them? And what about your network of “friends”? Can your employer use their contact information to send marketing messages? These and many other questions remain to be answered as technology, industry practices, and legislation evolve.[9]

“Our product is better than X company’s product. Their product is dangerous and you would be a wise customer to choose us for your product solutions.”

What’s wrong with these two sentences? They may land you and your company in court. You made a generalized claim of one product being better than another, and you presented it as a fact. The next sentence claims that your competitor’s product is dangerous. Even if this is true, your ability to prove your claim beyond a reasonable doubt may be limited. Your claim is stated as fact again, and from the other company’s perspective, your sentences may be considered libel or defamation.

Libel is the written form of defamation, or a false statement that damages a reputation. If a false statement of fact that concerns and harms the person defamed is published—including publication in a digital or online environment—the author of that statement may be sued for libel. If the person defamed is a public figure, they must prove malice or the intention to do harm, but if the victim is a private person, libel applies even if the offense can’t be proven to be malicious. Under the First Amendment, you have a right to express your opinion. Still, the words you use and how you use them, including the context, are relevant to their interpretation as opinion versus fact. Always be careful to qualify what you write and to do no harm.

Common Mistake: Plagiarism by Panic

When deadlines compress, honest writers plagiarize. Not on purpose—by panic. The move looks like this: you open a similar document in another tab, tell yourself you’re just studying the structure, and start copying sentences over “as placeholders I’ll replace later.” Then the deadline hits, and you don’t replace them. And somewhere in the document that goes out under your name, a paragraph belongs to someone else.

This is how the overwhelming majority of real-world workplace plagiarism happens. Not malice. Workflow. The fix is one rule: never, ever paste another writer’s sentences into your draft file. Open a separate note. Summarize in your own words on the spot, right next to the quote. Let the quote live in the other document. Your draft file only gets your hands on the keys.

When Simrit was studying the fourteen FDA Class II recall letters Tuesday morning, she took notes in a separate doc labeled patterns_not_to_copy. She never once pasted anyone else’s sentence into her Lighthouse draft. That single habit is the difference between studying conventions and committing plagiarism.

Key Takeaways

Words are governed by rules, carry different meanings across contexts and cultures, and shape the reality readers act on. Writers have a legal responsibility to avoid plagiarism, libel, and defamation, and the word they choose can literally determine what the reader does next.

Exercises

  1. Define the word “chair.” Describe what a table is. Draw a window. Share, compare, and contrast results with classmates.
  2. Define love. Describe desire. Draw patience.
  3. Identify a target audience and indicate at least three words that you perceive would be appropriate and effective for that audience. Identify a second audience (distinct from the first) and indicate three words that you perceive would be appropriate and effective. How are the audiences and their words similar or different? Compare your results with those of your classmates.
  4. Create a sales letter for an audience from a culture different from your own. Identify the culture and articulate how your message is tailored to your perception of your intended audience. Share and compare with classmates.
  5. Do an online search on “online libel cases” and see what you find. Discuss your results with your classmates.
  6. In other examples beyond the grammar rules that guide our use of words, consider the online environment. Search for the word “netiquette” and share your findings.
  7. Find a product recall notice from the last twelve months (the FDA, CPSC, and NHTSA websites all archive them). Analyze the word choices in the opening paragraph. What concrete terms are used? What abstract terms are avoided? What verbs signal the action the reader is expected to take?

4.6 Overcoming Barriers to Effective Written Communication

Learning Objectives

  1. Describe some common barriers to written communication and how to overcome them.
  2. Define bypassing and explain why it is especially likely across regions, generations, and cultures.
  3. Apply a review-reflect-revise loop to a short business document of your own.

 

In almost any career or area of business, written communication is a key to success. Effective writing can prevent wasted time, wasted effort, aggravation, and frustration. The way we communicate with others, both internally and externally, goes a long way toward shaping the organization’s image. If people feel they’re listened to and able to get answers from the firm and its representatives, they’ll have a favorable opinion. Skillful writing and an understanding of how people respond to words are central to accomplishing this goal.

How do we display skillful writing and a good understanding of how people respond to words? Here are some suggestions.

Do Sweat the Small Stuff

Let’s begin with a college student’s e-mail to a professor:

“i am confused as to why they are not due intil 11/10 i mean the calender said that they was due then so thats i did them do i still get credit for them or do i need to due them over on one tape? please let me know thanks. also when are you grading the stuff that we have done?”

What’s wrong with this e-mail? What do you notice that may act as a barrier to communication? Let’s start with the lack of formality, including the fact that the student neglected to tell the professor their name, or which specific class the question referred to. Then there’s the lack of adherence to basic vocabulary and syntax rules. And how about the lower case “i’s” and the misspellings?

One significant barrier to effective written communication is failure to sweat the small stuff. Spelling errors and incorrect grammar may be considered details, but they reflect poorly on you and, in a business context, on your company. They imply either that you’re not educated enough to know you’ve made mistakes or that you’re too careless to bother correcting them. Making errors is human, but making a habit of producing error-filled written documents makes negative consequences far more likely. When you write, you have a responsibility to self-edit and pay attention to detail. In the long run, correcting your mistakes before others see them will take less time and effort than trying to make up for mistakes after the fact.

Get the Target Meaning

How would you interpret this message?

“You must not let inventory build up. You must monitor carrying costs and keep them under control. Ship any job lots of more than 25 to us at once.”

Bypassing involves the misunderstanding that occurs when the receiver completely misses the source’s intended meaning. Words mean different things to different people in different contexts. All that difference allows for both source and receiver to miss one another’s intended goal completely.

Did you understand the message in the example? Let’s find out. Jerry Sullivan and colleagues relate the story of Mr. Sato, a manager from Japan who is new to the United States.[10] The message came from his superiors at Kumitomo America, a firm involved with printing machinery for the publishing business in Japan. Mr. Sato delegated the instructions (in English as shown above) to Ms. Brady, who quickly identified that there were three lots in excess of twenty-five and arranged for prompt shipment.

Six weeks later, Mr. Sato received a second message:

“Why didn’t you do what we told you? Your quarterly inventory report indicates you are carrying 40 lots, which you were supposed to ship to Japan. You must not violate our instructions.”

What’s the problem? As Sullivan relates, it’s an example of one word, or set of words, having more than one meaning. According to Sullivan et al., in Japanese “more than x” includes the reference number twenty-five. In other words, Kumitomo wanted all lots with twenty-five or more to be shipped to Japan. Forty lots fit that description. Ms. Brady interpreted the words as written, but the cultural context had a direct impact on the meaning and outcome.

You might want to defend Ms. Brady and understand the interpretation, but the lesson remains clear. Cultural expectations differ not only internationally, but also on many different dimensions from regional to interpersonal.

Someone raised in a rural environment in the Pacific Northwest may have a very different interpretation of meaning from someone from New York City. Take, for example, the word “downtown.” To the rural resident, downtown refers to the center or urban area of any big city. To a New Yorker, however, downtown may be a direction, not a place. One can go uptown or downtown, but when asked, “Where are you from?” the answer may refer to a borough (“I grew up in Manhattan”) or a neighborhood (“I’m from the East Village”).

This example involves two individuals who differ by geography, but we can further subdivide between people raised in the same state from two regions, two people of different genders, or two people from different generations. The combinations are endless, as are the possibilities for bypassing. While you might think you understand, requesting feedback and asking for confirmation and clarification can help ensure that you get the target meaning.

Case Connection: Bypassing Across an Ocean

Simrit almost bypassed Ravi Chaudhuri in Mumbai, and she almost did it in the first thirty seconds of their 5:00 a.m. Skype call.

When Simrit said, “We may need to recall the batch,” Ravi said, “Of course, we will take it back.” Simrit heard a commitment to accept the returned product into Lighthouse’s warehouse for proper disposal. Ravi meant that his company would physically accept the 400 pounds of turmeric blend back at the Mumbai facility, at his expense, for testing in an Indian lab. He was offering to absorb the cost. She was hearing a logistics update.

Neither one of them was wrong about the words. Both of them were wrong about what the other one meant. Simrit caught it because Ravi added, thirty seconds later, “I will arrange the shipping manifest before end of day here.” That sentence did not fit the meaning Simrit had been holding in her head, and she stopped, asked, and confirmed.

This is exactly the Kumitomo/Sato problem from the textbook, twelve time zones away, unfolding in real time. The difference is that Simrit and Ravi were in a live channel that allowed for immediate clarification. If the same exchange had happened by email, with Simrit reading the message at 9:00 p.m. her time and Ravi not seeing her reply until the next morning his time, the bypassing could have run for a full day before anyone noticed. That day could have been the day a 400-pound pallet ended up at the wrong port.

Lesson: in writing, when stakes are high and you suspect bypassing is possible, build confirmation into the channel. Don’t wait to catch it later. Ask, in the same email, “So I can be sure I understand your plan—are you saying X or Y?”

Sullivan also notes that in stressful situations, we often think in terms of either/or relationships, failing to recognize the stress itself. This kind of thinking can contribute to source/receiver error. In business, he notes that managers often incorrectly assume communication is easier than it is, and fail to anticipate miscommunication.

As writers, we need to keep in mind that words are simply a means of communication, and that meanings are in people, not the words themselves. Knowing which words your audience understands and anticipating how they’ll interpret them will help you prevent bypassing.

Consider the Nonverbal Aspects of Your Message

Let’s return to the example at the beginning of this section of an e-mail from a student to an instructor. As we noted, the student neglected to identify themselves and tell the instructor which class the question referred to. Format matters, including headers, contact information, and an informative subject line.

This is just one example of how the nonverbal aspects of a message can get in the way of understanding. Other nonverbal expressions in your writing may include symbols, design, font, and the timing of delivering your message.

Suppose your supervisor has asked you to write to a group of clients announcing a new service or product that directly relates to a service or product these clients have used over the years. What kind of communication will your document be? Will it be sent as an email or will it be a formal letter printed on quality paper and sent by postal mail? Or will it be a tweet, or a targeted online ad that pops up when these particular clients access your company’s website? Each of these choices involves an aspect of written communication that is nonverbal. While the words may communicate a formal tone, the font may not. The paper chosen to represent your company influences the perception of it. An e-mail may indicate that it’s less than formal and may be easily deleted.

As another example, suppose you’re a small business owner and have hired a new worker named Bryan. You need to provide written documentation of asking Bryan to fill out the required forms. Should you send an email to Bryan’s home the night before he starts work, welcoming him aboard and attaching links to IRS form W-4 and Homeland Security form I-9? Or should you wait until he’s been at work for a couple of hours, then bring him the forms in hard copy along with a printed memo stating that he needs to fill them out? There are no right or wrong answers, but you’ll use your judgment, being aware that these nonverbal expressions are part of the message that gets communicated along with your words.

In a remote or hybrid workplace, the “nonverbal” aspects of a message can also include which communication tool you choose—email, Slack, project management software, or even a recorded video message. Each carries its own tone, level of formality, and expected response time, which can shape how your words are received.[11]

Review, Reflect, and Revise

Do you review what you write? Do you reflect on whether it serves its purpose? Where does it miss the mark? If you can recognize it, then you have the opportunity to revise.

Writers are often under deadlines, and that can mean a rush job where every detail isn’t thoroughly reviewed. This means more mistakes, and there’s always time to do it right the second time. Rather than go through the experience of seeing all the mistakes in your “final” product and rushing off to the next job, you may need to focus more on the task at hand and get it done correctly the first time. Go over each step in detail as you review.

A mental review of the task and your performance is often called reflection. Reflection isn’t procrastination. It involves looking at the available information and, as you review the key points in your mind, ensuring each detail is accurate and complete. Reflection also allows for another opportunity to consider the key elements and their relationship to each other.

When you revise your document, you change one word for another, make subtle changes, and improve it. Don’t revise to change the good work you’ve completed—instead look at it from the perspective of the reader. How could this be clearer to them? What would make it visually attractive while continuing to communicate the message? If you’re limited to words only, does each word serve the article or letter? No extras, but just about right.

Pro Tip: The 24-Hour Drawer

Whenever a deadline allows, finish a draft the night before you need to send it, and then put it in a drawer. Literal drawer, closed laptop, unopened tab—whatever works. Do not look at it for at least eight hours. Sleep if possible.

When you open it the next morning, you will read it with something close to a stranger’s eyes. The sentence that sounded clever at 11:00 p.m. will now sound strange. The sentence that sounded strange at 11:00 p.m. will now sound obviously wrong. You will see typos you looked at four times the night before and did not see.

This works because reviewing and reflecting require distance, and the easiest kind of distance to get is time. If eight hours isn’t possible, try forty-five minutes. If forty-five minutes isn’t possible, read it out loud slowly, which simulates a small fraction of the same effect.

Simrit would not have eight hours of distance before sending her retailer letter. She would have about ninety minutes, which was still ninety minutes more than Deacon wanted her to take. She would spend thirty of those minutes writing and sixty revising—because she had already figured out something most early-career writers have to learn the hard way: in high-stakes writing, the draft is the easy part. The revision is the work.

Key Takeaways

To overcome barriers to communication, pay attention to details; strive to understand the target meaning (and assume bypassing is possible, especially across cultures and generations); consider the nonverbal aspects of your message, including channel choice; and build review-reflect-revise time into every deadline you accept.

Exercises

  1. Review the example of a student’s e-mail to a professor in this section, and rewrite it to communicate the message more clearly.
  2. Write a paragraph of 150–200 words on a subject of your choice. Experiment with different formats and fonts to display it and, if you wish, print it. Compare your results with those of your classmates.
  3. How does the purpose of a document define its format and content? Think of a specific kind of document with a specific purpose and audience. Then create a format or template suitable to that document, purpose, and audience. Show your template to the class or post it on a class bulletin board.
  4. Write one message of at least three sentences with at least three descriptive terms and present it to at least three people. Record notes about how they understand the message, and to what degree their interpretations are the same or different. Share and compare with classmates.
  5. Think of a time you experienced bypassing—when you and another person used the same words but meant different things. What tipped you off that you were not on the same page? What would have caught it sooner?
  6. Take a rough draft of something you wrote in the last week (any email, any paper, anything). Put it away for at least one hour. Then revise it using the review-reflect-revise loop. Highlight every change. Write a one-paragraph reflection on which changes came from review (surface errors), which from reflection (structural issues), and which from revision (word choice).

Closing Case Analysis: Back to Parts Per Million

When we left Simrit Kaur-Gallegos, she was sitting in front of five browser tabs with her fingers on the keyboard and forty-five minutes to show Deacon Ollivander a better way to write the letter he had just rewritten in red ink. Let’s walk through what she did with those forty-five minutes and why—section by section, the same way you read the chapter.

Section 4.1: Five Tabs, Eight Elements

The first thing Simrit did was not open a draft. She opened her notebook and wrote the number eight across the top of a fresh page. Then she listed the eight elements of communication down the left margin—source, receiver, message, channel, feedback, environment, context, interference—and the five tabs across the top. She filled in every cell. Forty cells total. It took her six minutes.

What she was looking for was the row where her five documents diverged the most. The answer wasn’t message—the underlying fact was the same in every tab. The answer was receiver paired with context. The FDA recall coordinator and the grandmother in Vermont were reading the same fact through completely different psychological lenses. That insight told Simrit what her real problem was: she could not write one document and serialize it to five audiences. She had to write five documents with deliberate divergence at exactly those two cells.

Section 4.2: The SDL That Saved Her Morning

Simrit had been keeping a Similar-Documents Library for nine weeks. It was the first habit she’d built in the job, before she’d ever drafted a customer email on Lighthouse letterhead. Tuesday morning, the folder had thirty-one entries. Eleven of them were recall-adjacent documents from other small food companies. By 11:30 a.m. she had gone through all eleven and marked the sentences she wanted to pattern after.

This is why she wasn’t staring at a blank page at 4:00 p.m. By the time Deacon walked in with the red-lined draft, Simrit had conventions in her head for every one of her five documents. That’s what targeted practice and reading before writing buy you: they make the composition phase shorter so the revision phase can be longer, which is the only phase that actually matters in high-stakes writing.

Section 4.3: Rhetorical Triage

When Simrit finally started showing Deacon what she wanted to do, she did not argue about his edits. She opened a second document on her monitor, divided the screen into three columns, and labeled them logos, ethos, pathos. She then dragged Deacon’s red-inked sentences into one column and her original sentences into another. She asked him a single question: “Which version of this letter leaves our ethos intact next Tuesday, after the FDA filing is public?”

Deacon hadn’t thought about Tuesday. He’d been thinking about Wednesday. The difference between those two days was the difference between how his retailer letter would read in isolation and how it would read side-by-side with an FDA document anyone could pull up in under a minute. When Simrit laid out the two versions with recall versus voluntary quality notification directly under the Aristotle table she’d photocopied from this textbook and taped above her desk, Deacon stopped talking for a long moment. He did not concede. But he stopped talking.

She was using the cognate strategy of arrangement to move the argument. She wasn’t telling him he was wrong. She was showing him the reader’s view.

Section 4.4: One Writer, Five Registers

By the time Deacon sat down across from her, Simrit had drafts of all five documents in front of him, each one at its appropriate register. She walked him through them in ascending formality: Slack to Yewande, internal memo to the floor, customer notification to the public, retailer letter to the 220 partners, FDA Form 3911. Same fact, five registers, one chain of logic.

What Deacon saw was what any reader would have seen: the voices that belonged to each document were already tuned. He did not have to approve Simrit’s judgment on the formal letter. He had four other documents in front of him that already demonstrated her judgment was sound at every other level of formality. The formal one was the next step in a calibration she had already proven.

Section 4.5: The Word Was “Recall.” The Supplier Sentence Was Cut.

Simrit held two lines in her position.

First: the customer notification and retailer letter would use the word recall. She explained to Deacon, in ninety seconds, why the word shaped the reader’s reality in the exact way Lighthouse needed it to. The grandmother in Vermont was the reader whose behavior the letter existed to change, and the only word strong enough to move her behavior was the word the federal filing was going to use anyway.

Second: the sentence about the supplier “falling below Lighthouse’s rigorous internal standards” was gone. Not softened. Cut. In its place, a single sentence: Laboratory testing of batch TG-0417 identified lead levels above the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s threshold for consumer spices. No blame. No suggestion of blame. Just the test result. The facts would do the work, as Simrit’s graduate advisor had said in week one at Tufts.

Simrit explained the second line to Deacon with two words: libel exposure. Rochelle Trautmann, Lighthouse’s outside counsel, would back her up on the call at 6:00 p.m. Deacon could check with Rochelle if he wanted. He nodded.

Section 4.6: The Ninety-Minute Drawer

Between 5:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., Simrit did nothing but revise. She did not write new material. She hit send on nothing. She had drafts of all five documents, and she went through each one once for review (surface errors, typos, subject lines, salutations), once for reflection (does each document do the job its audience needs it to do?), and once for revision (the word-by-word pass).

On the second pass through the retailer letter, she caught a sentence where she had written “the affected product may pose a risk.” She stopped. May pose a risk was an abstract, hedging phrase that would let a reader off the hook. She replaced it with “the affected product contains lead at levels above Massachusetts’ consumer threshold and must be removed from shelves immediately.” Concrete terms. Specific verbs. One unambiguous action. That single rewrite was worth the entire ninety-minute drawer.

At 6:32 p.m., Rochelle Trautmann called from South Portland. Simrit walked her through all five documents. Rochelle made four small changes—three to the FDA form, one to the retailer letter. None of them were to the word recall. At 7:15 p.m., Simrit sent all five. Deacon signed the retailer letter. The grandmother in Vermont read the email the next morning and put the jar in a plastic bag and drove it to the Whole Foods returns desk in Burlington. The packers at Lighthouse came in Wednesday morning to a memo on the break-room table that did not blame them, and they finished the week still working at Lighthouse. Ravi Chaudhuri in Mumbai got a supplier statement that did not put his six other U.S. clients at risk. And the FDA Form 3911 was on a district recall coordinator’s desk in Bethesda by Friday noon.

Option three, it turned out, was not a third answer. Option three was writing the right version of Deacon’s letter and the right version of Simrit’s letter and showing him that they were the same letter. It required eleven weeks of similar-document reading, a table she’d photocopied from a textbook, a 6:00 p.m. call with counsel, and a ninety-minute drawer she had to make out of nothing. It also required her to choose the word recall and to cut one sentence about a supplier. Most of the work of option three was invisible by Wednesday morning, because that’s the shape good writing takes: the reader sees a clean document and never has to know what was almost there instead.

Case Discussion Questions

  1. Simrit spends almost two hours reading and planning before she drafts a single sentence on her five Tuesday documents. Is this efficient? Defend your answer using at least two concepts from this chapter.
  2. Deacon’s proposed edit—”Due to variations in raw material supplied by our overseas partner”—might have been technically survivable as opinion under some circumstances, but Simrit treats it as a libel risk she will not take. Where exactly is the line between opinion and defamation in this sentence? Explain using section 4.5.
  3. Imagine Simrit had gone with Deacon’s original language on the customer-facing documents. Walk through, specifically, what three different readers would likely have done next: the grandmother in Vermont, a food-safety reporter at a Boston newspaper, and Rochelle Trautmann. How do their responses illustrate the concept that words shape reality?
  4. Five different documents, five different registers. In your own words, explain why Simrit could not have written one document at the middle register and sent it to all five audiences. What would each audience have lost or misread?
  5. Bypassing shows up in two places in the case: between Simrit and Ravi, and between Simrit and Deacon. They look different, but they share one mechanism. Describe it.
  6. If you were Simrit, and Deacon had refused to back down even after the Rochelle call, what would you have done? Write a one-paragraph answer in the voice of a 28-year-old eleven weeks into her first compliance job. Be honest.

End-of-Chapter Materials

Review Questions

  1. What does it mean to say that written communication is asynchronous, and why does that property change how a writer chooses words?
  2. Name the eight essential elements of communication and give one example of how each one might go wrong in a business email.
  3. What three habits does section 4.2 identify as the foundation of learning to write well?
  4. Distinguish Aristotle’s three rhetorical appeals (logos, ethos, pathos). Give a short business writing example of each.
  5. List at least five of the nine cognate strategies and explain what each one is trying to accomplish for the reader.
  6. Compare and contrast colloquial, casual, and formal writing. Give an example of a situation where each one would be appropriate.
  7. Explain the difference between concrete and abstract terms. Why does section 4.5 recommend leaning toward concrete terms in business writing?
  8. Define libel and defamation. What makes the two sample sentences about “X company’s product” potentially actionable?
  9. What is bypassing, and what are the two best practices the chapter recommends for catching it?
  10. Describe the review-reflect-revise loop and explain why it isn’t the same as proofreading.

Key Terms Matching

Match each term with its definition.

Terms:

  1. Source
  2. Channel
  3. Feedback
  4. Interference
  5. Asynchronous
  6. Logos
  7. Ethos
  8. Pathos
  9. Clarity
  10. Conciseness
  11. Credibility
  12. Engagement
  13. Conventions
  14. Colloquial
  15. Formal
  16. Abstract terms
  17. Concrete terms
  18. Libel
  19. Bypassing

Definitions:

  1. Words describing things that can be seen or touched, which usually promote agreement and understanding across audiences.
  2. Noise; anything that blocks or distorts the communication process.
  3. A person or entity that creates and communicates a message.
  4. The path through which a message travels between source and receiver.
  5. The response the receiver sends back to the source.
  6. The rhetorical appeal based on logic, reasoning, and evidence.
  7. The appeal based on the speaker or writer’s character, credibility, and trustworthiness.
  8. The appeal based on emotional connection with the audience.
  9. The cognate strategy focused on clear understanding for the reader.
  10. The cognate strategy focused on keeping key points tight and unpadded.
  11. The cognate strategy focused on the writer’s trustworthiness and character.
  12. The cognate strategy focused on building a relationship with the reader.
  13. Conventional language patterns that a genre of document is expected to follow.
  14. An informal, conversational style that draws on regional phrases, slang, and shorthand.
  15. A professional style characterized by attention to protocol, appearance, syntax, and vocabulary.
  16. Words describing intangible concepts that different readers may interpret in different ways.
  17. Communication that occurs at different times; the writer is not present when the reader reads.
  18. The written form of defamation—a false statement of fact, published, that damages another’s reputation.
  19. A misunderstanding that occurs when the receiver completely misses the source’s intended meaning because the same words mean different things to them.

Answer Key: 1-C, 2-D, 3-E, 4-B, 5-Q, 6-F, 7-G, 8-H, 9-I, 10-J, 11-K, 12-L, 13-M, 14-N, 15-O, 16-P, 17-A, 18-R, 19-S

Application Exercises

Application 1: The Recall Rewrite

Find a real product recall notice issued in the last eighteen months by any U.S. company (the FDA, CPSC, and NHTSA archives are all good sources). Print or screenshot it.

Then do three things: (a) label its rhetorical appeals in the margin—where is the logos, ethos, pathos? (b) Diagnose its register—is it formal, semi-formal, casual? Does the register match the stakes? (c) Rewrite the opening paragraph to make it do its job better, according to your reading of this chapter. Submit the original, your annotated version, and your rewrite, with a one-page reflection on what you changed and why.

Application 2: The Five-Register Audit

Pick one fact from your own life—a group project deadline, a car problem, a financial-aid issue, anything real. Write it up five times, in ascending order of formality:

  1. A Slack message to a close friend.
  2. A casual text to a family member.
  3. A semi-formal email to a classmate or coworker you know only a little.
  4. A formal email to a professor or supervisor.
  5. A highly formal written notice (such as a memo for the record, an appeal letter, or a petition).

In a short reflection, explain which words you kept in all five, which words appeared in only one, and what that told you about your own instincts around register.

Application 3: The Abstract-to-Concrete Stress Test

Find a document you wrote in the last six months—any document longer than 150 words. Read it with a pen in your hand and circle every abstract noun or vague adjective (words like quality, experience, value, engagement, robust, seamless, innovative, impact, significant).

For every circled word, either (a) replace it with a concrete term and specific verb, or (b) defend, in one sentence in the margin, why the abstract term is pulling its weight in context. Submit the marked-up original and a clean revised version. Count the circles you erased.

Discussion Questions

  1. Section 4.5 argues that “words shape reality” and uses the example of how recall and voluntary quality notification produce different behaviors in the same reader. Can you think of a word or phrase used in your own field (or a field you plan to enter) where the choice between two technically accurate terms produces wildly different reader behavior? What’s at stake in that choice?
  2. The chapter makes a distinction between “following the rules” of writing and being creative. Where is the line, in your own experience, between conventions that exist for a good reason and conventions that exist only because no one has bothered to rewrite them? Give an example.
  3. Simrit had to push back on her boss in her eleventh week at a new job. How do you push back on a more senior person’s request for language you believe creates real risk? Draft the first three sentences of the response you would give in that conversation. Share with a classmate and debrief.

Extended Project: The Crisis Writing Portfolio

The Crisis Writing Portfolio (1,500–2,000 words)

Goal. Build and analyze a portfolio of real documents issued during a single real-world business crisis, applying every major concept from this chapter to their language and register.

Step 1 — Pick a crisis. Choose one real public incident from the last five years in which a company, university, government agency, or nonprofit had to issue multiple written communications to multiple audiences: a recall, a data breach, a scandal, a hurricane response, a campus emergency, a drug shortage, an airline meltdown. Pick something where you can find at least four distinct written documents the organization issued (for example: a public press release, a customer email, an investor letter, a regulatory filing, an internal memo leaked to the press).

Step 2 — Build the portfolio. Collect those four-plus documents. Note the date, the channel, the intended audience, and the visible nonverbal elements (letterhead, font, format, length, placement).

Step 3 — Analyze each document. For every document, write a short paragraph covering: (a) which of the eight communication elements are visible, (b) the register (colloquial / casual / semi-formal / formal / highly formal) and whether it matches the audience, (c) the rhetorical appeals present, (d) at least two cognate strategies the writer leaned on, and (e) one concrete-vs-abstract word choice that either helped or hurt the document’s effectiveness.

Step 4 — Argue a thesis. Across the full portfolio, make one argument. Example theses: “This organization maintained register discipline in its formal filings but collapsed into abstraction in its customer-facing communications.” Or: “The internal memo contained the most honest concrete language in the entire portfolio, and the external release was its mirror image.” Or: “This was a case of bypassing playing out across three continents.” Pick your own thesis. Defend it with evidence from your analysis.

Step 5 — Propose one rewrite. Choose the single document in the portfolio you think was weakest. Rewrite it. Submit the original alongside your rewrite with a short note explaining exactly what you changed and why, using chapter vocabulary (ethos, clarity, concrete terms, arrangement, register).

Deliverable. One document, 1,500–2,000 words, plus the portfolio artifacts (links or screenshots) as an appendix. Due dates and specific formatting requirements will be set by your instructor.

What you’ll be graded on. (1) How carefully you read the documents—close reading beats summary every time; (2) how well you apply chapter concepts in specific, non-generic ways; (3) the quality of your own writing in the analysis and the rewrite; (4) the defensibility of your thesis.

Self-Assessment: Back to Before You Read

Self-Assessment

Pull out the four answers you wrote during the Before You Read diagnostic at the start of this chapter. Read them again before you answer the questions below.

  1. You were asked whether you reach for a phone call, a text, or a written message when something important comes up. After reading this chapter, does your answer change? If yes, what’s making you reach for a different channel now? If no, defend your original instinct using the idea of asynchrony from section 4.1.
  2. You were asked how many times in the last month you revised a text before sending it. Reread that answer. Were you revising for surface errors, tone, audience, or stakes? The chapter argues that these four kinds of revision require different passes. Which pass were you actually making?
  3. You were asked what you would do if a supervisor asked you to describe a competitor’s product as “dangerous” in a marketing email. Has your answer changed? What specific vocabulary from section 4.5 would you use now to explain your position to the supervisor—in words they would find persuasive?
  4. You were asked how you know whether to write in a formal or casual tone at work. Go back to the Register Matrix pro tip in section 4.4. Which quadrant did your rule of thumb actually live in? Does your rule work across all four quadrants, or only in the one you’re most familiar with?
  5. Final question — the one only you can answer. Which of the five documents on Simrit’s desk would be the hardest one for you to write, given your current writing strengths and weaknesses? Not which one would be the hardest in the abstract—which one would be hardest for the writer you are right now, today? Name the document and name the specific writing skill you would most need to borrow or build to write it well. That’s your targeted practice assignment for the rest of the semester.

Save your answers to this self-assessment alongside your original Before You Read responses. You’ll have real data on your own growth as a writer by the end of the course.

4.7 Additional Resources

Visit AllYouCanRead.com for a list of the top ten business magazines. http://www.allyoucanread.com/top-10-business-magazines

Words mean different things to different people—especially when translated from one language to another. Visit this site for a list of car names “que no va” (that won’t go) in foreign languages. http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/30/nissan-360-the-otti-and-the-moco

Visit “Questions and Quandaries,” the Writer’s Digest blog by Brian Klems, for a potpourri of information about writing. https://www.writersdigest.com/questions-and-quandaries

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