IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS WRITING SKILLS

Guest Author: Beverly Zibrak, President of the Word Doc, Brookline, MA

Follow these five guidelines to make your business writing have the most impact:

1. Be concise.  There is more written material available now than ever.  But, ironically, people are reading less.  So being concise is more critical than ever.  If you can say it in 500 words, try honing that down to 300.  The average web page should only contain 250 to 300 words.  Get to the point.  Make your argument or state your facts, then be done.

2. Use correct terminology, but not jargon.  In technical and scientific writing, jargon may be unavoidable.  Otherwise, you can usually sidestep it.  If you aim for clear, understandable writing, avoid trendy terms that often mean nothing.  Replace them with understandable, succinct language.

3. Edit your work.  This is critical.  It is unavoidable to have typos, grammatical errors, or errors of tone after your first pass at a written piece.  To avoid these pitfalls, check your work at least two times before submitting or posting it.  Better yet, have someone who has editing skills edit it.  Nothing replaces a fresh set of eyes.

4. Make sure your facts are correct.  It is easy to use the Internet for fact checking.  However, much that is on the Web is incorrect, including the "facts" on Wikipedia.  So crosscheck any data you find or quotations you use.  And be accurate with names, titles, and genders.

5. Adopt a writing style that is professional but not stuffy.  Try to not write in an overly formal style.  A reader should find a familiarity in your work.  Informal does not mean unprofessional.  But try to avoid slang, acronyms (imho, btw, etc.) and other writing shortcuts.  Save these for personal emails and other such written correspondence.


Beverly Zibrak is President of the Word Doc, a writing and editing services firm dedicated to helping small business with all their communication needs, including web content development, press releases and marketing communications, and blog posts.  You can reach Beverly at www.worddocusa.com or 617.584.9847.

CRACKING THE CODE

Have you ever wondered about the numbered stickers on fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, and nuts?  More than 1400 international PLU (product lookup) codes have been used to identify and assist with check-out and inventory control of bulk produce in supermarkets since 1990.  These 4- and 5-digit codes indicate what the item is, its type and size, and where and how it was grown.  Following are some  key identifiers -- and you can plug in codes at http://plucodes.com for more information. 

- if the 1st digit is a "9", the produce was grown organically.
- if the 1st digit is an "8", the produce was genetically modified.
- if the 1st digit is a "0" or the number is a 4-digit code, the item was conventionally grown.
Source: IDEA Fitness Journal




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