The Quick Guide to Great Business Writing

By Peter Bartram

Do you have a way with words?

No doubt you don’t have any difficulty putting your point of view when you’re talking to colleagues.

But if you’re faced with having to make your case in writing, do the words dry up?

If so, you've come to the right place. This is a book for people who want to improve their skills at workplace writing.

Good, fluent writing designed to communicate meaning succinctly and effectively is a powerful business skill in its own right. It’s a skill that’s in short supply.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Bartram
• Release date: Aug 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9780992663902

Peter Bartram

Peter Bartram is a writer and journalist who has authored 21 books, including five ghostwritten, in genres that include biography, current affairs, how-to, and business. Peter has written 4,000 feature articles for newspapers and magazine on a bewlidering range of subjects from English wine to weather derivatives! Peter studied politics, philosophy and economics at the London School of Economics. He is married with two grown-up children and lives in the UK.

Book preview

What others say about earlier editions of this book:

Mr Bartram’s advice is sensible and practical… his guidance away from the self-important to the straightforward should be read by everyone who writes anything. – Daily Telegraph

A concise and useful guide for those who lack confidence in their business writing, as well as for anyone who would simply like to sharpen their reports, letters and the like. – Business Age

The Quick Guide to Great Business Writing

How to be clear and concise when you’re writing online or on paper

Peter Bartram

Published by The Bartram Partnership at Smashwords.

ISBN 978-0-9926639-0-2

Copyright 2013 Peter Bartram

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – A way with words

Chapter 2 – A cure for writing paralysis

Chapter 3 – Six steps to successful writing

Chapter 4 – Hitting the target

Chapter 5 –Putting on the style

Chapter 6 –Tactics for effective writing

Chapter 7 –Words on a page

Chapter 8 –Subjunctives, semi-colons and stuff

Chapter 9 –Any other business

Chapter 1

A way with words

Do you have a way with words?

No doubt you don’t have any difficulty putting your point of view when you’re talking to colleagues.

But if you’re faced with having to make your case in writing, do the words dry up?

If so, you’ve come to the right place. This is a book for people who want to improve their skills at workplace writing.

Good, fluent writing designed to communicate meaning succinctly and effectively is a powerful business skill in its own right. It’s a skill that’s in short supply. The official who sent a letter to a member of the public which contained this sentence clearly didn’t have a way with words:

"I cannot fetter the exercise of my discretion by determining in advance of the exercise of such discretion how I might exercise that discretion."

What he meant was:

"I can’t tell you what I will decide until I make up my mind."

This solicitor advising a client needed to brush up his workplace writing:

"If it is a breach of the rules not to reveal that there have been many breaches of the rules then presumably there must be a further breach of the rules not to reveal the breach of the rules in not revealing the mass breach of the rules, and so on."

What he was trying to say was:

"When rules are broken, you have to report the fact. People who fail to report broken rules, break the rule that requires them to do so and should, themselves, be reported as rule-breakers."

And this accountant may have been the greatest bean-counter on earth, but he couldn’t clearly explain a client’s tax position:

"The requirement that deductibility is contingent on expenditure being incurred for the purpose of gaining or producing assessable income is common to the provisions relating to both registration and other expenditure. It does not mean that there must be assessable income arising from the business. All that is required is that the business must be put to use for the ultimate objective of producing assessable income. However, where expenditure is incurred for purposes that include the purpose of producing assessable income, deductibility will only be to the extent that producing assessable income is the purpose for incurring expenditure."

What he was (probably) trying to say was:

"With both the registration and other costs of running your company, you can only deduct those expenses that were intended to generate taxable income. You can deduct them providing you genuinely established the business in order to earn taxable income, even if you were not successful in doing so. But if you spent money on something that was only partly related to earning money for the business, you can only set off a proportion of its cost against taxable income."

At the very least, poor writing confuses or frustrates those unfortunate enough to receive it. But it may create more serious problems. In a past election for London’s mayor, 385,952 votes weren’t counted because voters hadn’t completed their confusing ballot papers correctly. Baffled electors blamed a lack of clear instructions about the single transferable vote system being used in the poll.

Disabled drivers were angry after being fined for not correctly displaying the blue badges which allow them to park in restricted areas. Instructions issued by the Department of Transport had told the drivers to display the badge in such a way that the front of the card is clearly visible – but without stating which side was the front. The drivers had reasonably, but wrongly, assumed it was the side with their photograph.

When a telephone company sent out a letter setting out details of new tariffs, customers were justifiably confused. The letter contained nearly 40 footnotes about the new tariffs. A team of researchers spent four hours using the letter and information on the telephone company’s website trying to work out how much a typical household would pay each quarter for calls – and came up with 36 different answers ranging from £83 to £287.

Poor writing is poor business.

Moreover, good writing is not an optional extra for business. That’s because, in many cases, what is written is the business – whether it’s a contract, an appointment letter, a memorandum giving instructions to staff, a proposal to a prospective customer or an e-mail apologising for getting it wrong. In all these cases, and hundreds more, writing defines the nature of the transaction. That is why written language lies at the very heart of business – and why it is so important.

So it is not surprising that those employees who succeed in raising their own writing game, also enhance their career prospects. If you can write well at work, you raise your own status in your organisation. You can use your writing skill to influence more people – fellow employees, customers, suppliers, your boss – towards your point of view. If you write well, you become more persuasive and those you deal with will be more likely to take notice.

This, then, is a book for people who understand that the ability to write well at work is good for business – and good for themselves.

Isms, jargon and PC

Yet writing well at work has never been more difficult. In the old days, workplace writing was much easier. You knew what was expected of you. There was a stilted style of business English which combined the passive voice with pompous words derived from Latin, and which spoke in cringingly deferential tones. Your esteemed communication of the seventeenth ultimo has been received. Your attention is respectively drawn to… Uriah Heep, eat your heart out.

Today workplace writing is more difficult simply because these conventions have disappeared, but there is no universal agreement on what should replace them. Now you have to make your own decisions about what style and tone to adopt. The world of workplace writing is fraught with tricky tactical decisions. Should you adopt a formal or friendly tone when replying