Etiket arşivi: Business English Writing İstanbul

Poor Writing Skills Are Costing Businesses Billions

More and more businesses are requiring employees to take remedial writing training

Communication is an essential skill for any business, but what’s shocking is how much time and money businesses are spending each year to bring employees up to a basic proficiency level. Writing seems to be one of the skills requiring the most remedial training.

College training: writing gaps persist

It appears that even a college degree doesn’t save businesses from the effects of poor writing skills.

How can businesses spot weak writers early on in a modern workplace that requires employees to send daily emails, write reports, and present at meetings?

Spotting weak writing skills and training employees

Employers are already being proactive about weeding out poor writers from the hiring process.

One of the first places  poor writing skills can be spotted is within the resume and cover letter. For those who do make the cut, some employers are asking potential hires to complete a writing exercise during the interview process to evaluate writing skills before an offer is made.

For current employees whose writing skills need work, training still seems to be the answer. While expensive, most companies can’t afford writing errors that might cost them business in the long-run.

Tips for improving Your Business Writing

Business writing is not easy. It has to be direct and persuasive. If you use too many unusual words or craft a rambling sentence that doesn’t make sense, you could lose more than a reader-you can lose a customer.

1. Avoid reversing into sentences

Poorly structured sentences often lead with a weaker (subordinate or dependent) clause, and end on an “active” (independent) clause- blunting their impact. Take the example below:

“In order to aid victims of the earthquake, the organization donated $500,000″.

If this sentence is restructured to lead with the stronger “active” clause, it reads much more naturally:

“The organization donated $500,000 in order to aid victims of the earthquake.”

Additionally, this new structure allows the writer to be more concise by removing an unnecessary phrase (“in order to”):

“The organization donated $500,000 to aid victims of the earthquake.”

2. Use crisp distinctions to heighten contrasts between opposing ideas

Drawing effective comparisons is an essential element of any writer’s toolbox. To maximize the impact of a comparison, make sure that distinctions are clearly structured, specific and as analogous as possible. This might mean making sure that your phrasing is very specific: don’t compare Q1 2015 profits with those of “previous quarters”, compare them with last quarter’s profits, or Q1 2014 profits.

Sentence structure and appropriate punctuation also play an important role in heightening distinctions, and guiding users through complex comparisons that bring in multiple details. Take the following sentence as a negative example:

“Candidates for the position include A, a former startup CEO with technical and managerial skills; and a contractor, B, who would need to relocate and has four years of industry experience.”

Although all the information in the sentence is relevant to the hiring decision, the structure and punctuation confuses the comparison- since the information about Candidate B’s relocation is not relevant to the comparison of the two candidates’ experience. Using double dashes to frame that detail as an aside helps reinforce the comparison.

“Candidates for the position include A, a former startup CEO with technical and managerial skills, and B — would need to relocate — a contractor with four years of industry experience.”

3. Avoid over-stretching your thoughts

While great writers often use long and complex sentences elegantly, excessively long strings of sub-clauses can often burden the reader and obscure your point.

The sentence below attempts to squeeze in too many sub-clauses, and it is a challenge for the reader to follow it to conclusion.

“Michael recently moved from China, where he taught english to students in China’s Solar Valley, a community which has enjoyed enormous investment from the Himin Solar Energy Group in solar technology, to New York, where he’ll be utilizing some of his Chinese contacts to start his own solar energy business.

With so many clauses and sub-clauses, the meaning of this sentence is lost and the impact blunted. Tearing it up into two sentences allows the reader to digest the information in manageable pieces. Within the first sentence, the use of a colon instead of a third comma also serves to emphasize the final and most important clause of the sentence (which connects it to the next sentence).

“Michael recently returned from China, where he taught english in China’s Solar Valley: a community which has enjoyed enormous investment from the Himin Solar Energy Group in solar technology. In New York, he’ll be utilizing some of his Chinese contacts to start his own solar energy business.”

4. Redundant word echoes make your writing fall flat

One of the biggest challenges in writing is the necessity of avoiding redundancy. The lines below illustrate the downside of redundancy:

“The submarine industry is on the upswing; but life in a submarine is notoriously cramped and unpleasant (with many submarine operators churning out of the industry on a regular basis). Nonetheless, submarine enthusiasts and investors in marine extraction industries continue to fill submarine order lists.”

If you have to refer regularly to a noun for which there aren’t many direct synonyms (for example, an article about submarines) you might have to get creative. Here are few options:

a non-direct synonym (vessel, craft)
a metaphor (refer to “life under water” rather than “life in a submarine”)
a generic term (instead of “submarine operator” just “operator”)