May 17, 2016 | Effective Writing
Regardless of how good your writing skills are (or how good you think they are), you don’t know it all. Stay sharp and keep learning. Strong writers draw attention in business, because most people understand that writing is difficult. Some things that we learn...
Apr 26, 2016 | Effective Writing
Time-worn phrases give your writing a boring tone that lacks originality. Corporate writing is laced with such expressions as win-win, team effort, paradigm shift, and game changer. As a reader, you wonder, is the writer really that dull? Cliches are...
Mar 22, 2016 | Effective Writing
If you want to connect with readers, pay attention to five things they want in an email. Business professionals waste an enormous amount of time dealing with the same information two or three times because messages are poorly written the first time. The reader, unable...
Mar 16, 2016 | Communication, Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
Dashes and hyphens look to be similar punctuation marks, but they play different roles. Knowing the difference can add clarity to your meaning. A dash sets off information that needs emphasis; a hyphen joins words that are used together to form an adjective. The dash...
Feb 16, 2016 | Effective Writing
In corporate writing, technical writing, or public relations writing, using overly complex words to sound impressive doesn’t work, according to a psychologist who asked readers what they thought. People can strengthen their professional image through their...
Feb 10, 2016 | Communication, Editing, Effective Writing, Punctuation and Grammar
Avoid the widespread tendency to capitalize common nouns. Not everything has an official, formal name, but many writers think that if it’s something special, it should be upper case. Writers routinely uppercase names of committees, projects, departments, titles...