Having worked in the corporate world for well over 20 years, I know that among managers and the rank-and-file, one of the weakest points—“areas needing improvement” or “challenges” (never “problems”) in corporate lingo—is their business writing in English. Apart from being usually studded with grammar and usage errors, most of their memos, letters, and reports look and sound like they have been written by lawyers. Indeed, their language is often what’s termed as legalese—stiff, officious, domineering, and decidedly reader-unfriendly.
The problem, of course, is that their model for good office writing is that of the lawyers. And lawyers, understandably, generally tend to write as if their target audience is a courtroom and the decision-maker is a presiding judge. This heavy-handed style of written language can become so pervasive in a company that unless there’s active intervention from the outside, it could go on and on for years without getting noticed—to the detriment, of course, of the company’s relationships with its various publics.
One way for the organization to shed off the stiffness and officiousness of its written business communication—if not to improve the English of its people in general—is, of course, to send them to business writing seminars and workshops. But people obviously can’t be going to these seminars and workshops forever, so a company should also encourage its people to do a continuing self-improvement program in English and business writing.
But the question is: Should they go right away to the bookstores and grab all those self-help, self-improvement books that dazzle us with fancy titles and promises to polish our English or business writing in 30 days or so?
Maybe for later, yes. But for the moment, I would advise checking out first the many English and business writing resources available for free on the World Wide Web. And, to my mind, easily the web’s most instructive and comprehensive business writing resource is the
Business Writer’s Free Library, which bills itself as the complete integrated library for profits and nonprofits.
The
Business Writer’s Free Library offers an estimated 650 topics on the most important writing tasks in organizations. Spanning a total of over 5,000 links on the web, the resources cover writing tasks required in corporate management, employee performance management, finance, leadership, marketing, organizations, organizational change and development, staffing, strategic planning, and training and development.
Check out the
Business Writer’s Free Library now to see the wealth of material that you can use to improve your own business writing and communication skills. And once you have familiarized yourself with the site’s wide-ranging terrain, make it a point to also read Philip Yaffe’s “The Mathematics of Persuasive Communication” on About.com: Small Business: Canada. He has some secrets on good business writing that you could use to your advantage right away.
Go to
the Business Writer’s Free Library now!
Read
Phillip Yaffe’s “Secrets of Good Business Writing” – Part 1”
