How to Write Clearly in Business

"Just because people work for an institution, they don't have to write like one," wrote William Zinsser, author of the seminal text "On Writing Well." Yet for some reason, people who write perfectly clear notes to one another after hours write obscure, ponderous text in business, with such phrases as "Pursuant to our discussion of" and such jargon as "adopting an holistic approach to marketing." Jargon and business speak do not add power to a message; clarity adds power. Some quick fixes will improve any email, letter or press release.

Delete all the adjectives and superlatives, like "simple," "excellent," "forward-looking," "leading." Once again, do not hesitate. Business writing (press releases in particular) are polluted with these adjectives; since every company claims to be the market leader, every forecast is forward-looking, and every solution is supposedly simple and excellent, these words add nothing.

Delete all the adverbs, like "simultaneously," "proactively" and "simply." Do not hesitate, just delete them. Chances are that the sentences have lost no meaning, because most adverbs are redundant. People write "proactively plan" when all planning is proactive.

Replace the qualifiers such as "can," "may," "might," "helps the user," with actions. Thus a software solution no longer "helps the user to gain control" of data, rather," it "controls data."

Find a long letter, email or press release that you have written (or that someone else wrote). You will edit this as an exercise.

Replace all passive verbiage with active verbiage. Thus, "mistakes were made" becomes "we made mistakes." "The product was released in January" becomes "IBM released the product in January."

Kill the jargon that has become commonplace, like "manage the bottom line," "holistic approach," and "drives profitability." Replace the word "issues" with "challenges" or "problems." Delete any and all occurrences of such commonplace nonsense as "at the end of the day" and "it is what it is." Replace the word "facility" with "office building," "plant," or another specific descriptor. Similarly, replace the word "enterprise" with "company," "university," or something more clear.
Remove all unfamiliar acronyms you can, like CRM (for customer relationship management) and so on. Keep acronyms for organizations, like FBI, NASA and IBM.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy