15 Mistakes to Avoid When Writing for Business
Business writing should always be
clear, concise and to the point. While it may be tempting to write long
descriptions that emphasize your knowledge and skill, your reader just wants to
understand the facts. The business audience isn’t prepared to, nor should
they have to, read the sorts of papers college professors require.
You can ensure that your business
communications are always well-received by avoiding these common mistakes.
- Don’t use acronyms, technical jargon or industry buzzwords that the reader may not know. There’s nothing more frustrating than receiving a letter, report or proposal that is full of language that you don’t understand.
- Don’t use vague, sweeping or ambiguous statements. Be as clear as possible in your business writing. Avoid phrases like “This would suggest,” or “It is advisable,” and similar preambles that avoid taking responsibility for a statement or recommendation. You’ll be perceived as a much more confident and knowledgeable professional if you take ownership of your analysis and recommendations. Also avoid statements that could leave the reader wondering who or what you’re talking about. For example. “They want us to…” or "Mike said that was a bad idea..." These statements beg the questions: “Who are they?” and “What is ‘that’?”
- Avoid jokes, humor, sarcasm and anecdotes. Using humor or sarcasm in your writing sets your tone, and you may come off as sounding unprofessional, uninformed, or just plain ridiculous. Anecdotes on the other hand, while interesting, are best saved for verbal communication because they waste the time of a business audience who just wants to get to the point.
- Avoid clichés. While it is tempting to use the current, trendy phrases in your communication, don’t do it. You’ll just end up sounding clumsy and even insincere. When you’re done writing a letter or other communication, read it back to yourself out loud. When you hear the words you've written, it will be easier to pick out the clichés and clumsy language.
- Don’t use slang or language that may be offensive to the reader. This mistake is unprofessional and can even be insulting.
- Don’t send any communication without proofreading and running a spelling and grammar check. This should also include making sure that you are using the correct word for your meaning.
- Don’t pad your writing with unnecessary or flowery words that don’t add anything to the point you are trying to make. Two things happen when written communications are padded with unneeded words. First, the writer sounds like he's trying to embellish the facts; and second, the reader’s valuable time is wasted because he has to sift through frivolous words to get to the point the writer was trying to make.
- Avoid the use of uncommonly used words. While using an extensive vocabulary in writing may make you sound highly educated, it’s frustrating for the reader to have to figure out what it is you’re trying to say, especially if he has a more limited vocabulary.
- Use passive voice wisely. In business writing, the use of passive voice is
frequently used to avoid specifically naming a person or group of
people. This is okay as long it doesn’t matter to the reader
who specifically did something.
For example: The reports were reviewed and recommendations were provided. (Passive) -versus- Kate reviewed the reports and provided the recommendations. (Active)
- Don’t be overly casual in email communications. Make sure to use a clear subject line and start the email with the person’s name and end it by signing yours, just as you would a formal letter. Also, try to avoid the jargon that’s been developed for texting unless you know you’re reader will understand.
- Don’t use fonts that are hard to read, or may not be compatible with another person’s computer equipment. With the wide variety of fonts available, it’s tempting to use one that you think is particularly attractive. Many seemingly attractive fonts can be hard to read, or your reader won’t have access to the font on their equipment so the computer will substitute a font that can alter your formatting and make your communication difficult to read. Just about every computer has Arial and Times New Roman, making either of these wise choices.
- Don’t use multiple fonts or typefaces. In addition to making sure your chosen font is easy to read, you should also avoid the use of too many typefaces. The most common reason that people use multiple fonts is to differentiate between points or to make a particular statement stand out. However, what ends up happening is the reader doesn’t know where to look or what to pay attention to. A better practice is to use the italic, bold or underline styles of a standard, easy-to-read font.
- Don’t use type that is too small or too large. In general, you should always use a font size between 10 and 12 point. Anything smaller can be difficult to read and anything larger makes it look like you’re trying to fill up a page and conveys an unprofessional image
- Never hand-write a business letter. As casual as society has become, it is still proper and presents a much more professional image to write business communications using a computer. On the other hand, it is perfectly acceptable to hand-write a quick thank you note or other acknowledgment.
- Don’t skip proofreading. Even professional writers need editors to ensure that their writing is understandable and conveys its intended meeting. By asking someone to read over your work, you’ll increase the chance that embarrassing errors will be caught and your business communication achieves its intended purpose.
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Top Ten List of Grammar Errors to Avoid in Business Letters!
The surest way to diminish your company's otherwise sharp business communication is to pepper your presentation with simple grammar errors. Nothing causes a client to discount your message more quickly than to spy one of these top ten common mistakes in your letter!This list provides an easy path toward keeping your business colleague's attention on what's important: your underlying ideas. Dust off your grammar school rules and clean up your correspondence by avoiding these top ten errors:
1. ITS OR THEIR?
Mistake: The practice of this management company is to have each corporate tenant sign their lease on the third day of the month.Correction: The practice of this management company is to have each corporate tenant sign its lease on the third day of the month.
Alternative Correction: The practice of this management company is to have all corporate tenants sign their leases on the third day of the month.
Why: Be careful not to switch from singular to plural mid-sentence, or vice versa. "Tenant" is singular and calls for the singular "its." "Tenants" corresponds with the plural "their." Words like "its" and "their" need to agree with the words such as "tenant" and "tenants" to which they refer.
2. IT'S OR ITS?
Mistake: Energy Electronics is introducing it's brand new line of heating units at the convention.Correction: Energy Electronics is introducing its brand new line of heating units at the convention.
Why: Use an apostrophe in "it's" only when you mean "it is." "Its" without an apostrophe describes ownership, such as "its bond offering".
3. WHO OR WHOM?
Mistake: We will award free parking to the employee who the personnel director selects.Correction: We will award free parking to the employee whom the personnel director selects.
Alternative Correction: We will award free parking to the employee who is selected by the personnel director.
Why: One trick to help you decide which word to use is to substitute "he" for "who" and "him" for "whom." Just rearrange the part of the sentence in question — all the words following "employee" — and say it aloud with "he" or "him" to figure out whether to use "who" or "whom."
4. IS BECAUSE?
Mistake: The reason that our stock price fell is because third quarter earnings were low.Correction: The reason that our stock price fell is that third quarter earnings were low.
Alternative Correction: Our stock price fell because third quarter earnings were low.
Why: Avoid "is because."
5. GOOD OR WELL?
Mistake: We are pleased to report that the mutual funds performed good this fiscal year.Correction: We are pleased to report that the mutual funds performed well this fiscal year.
Why: "Good" is an adjective, and "well" in this context is an adverb that explains how the funds performed. Although the funds themselves may be called "good," the point here is to describe how they performed, and the word is "well."
6. DISTANCE, MONEY, AND TIME?
Mistake: Six miles are the distance between the home office and the satellite office.Correction: Six miles is the distance between the home office and the satellite office.
Why: Though plural in form, "six miles" is considered one unit of measurement, and thus the verb should be "is." The rule for distance holds true for money ("five dollars is a low price") and time ("forty hours is a long time") as well.
7. THAN SHE OR HER?
Mistake: Despite the high esteem in which I hold Ms. Jones, I believe that Mr. Smith is more familiar with the company's cash disbursements than her.Correction: Despite the high esteem in which I hold Ms. Jones, I believe that Mr. Smith is more familiar with the company's cash disbursements than she.
Why: Imagining the unwritten words that complete the sentence makes it easy to choose between "her" and "she." Here, the implied sentence ending is "she is familiar."
8. COMMON OWNERSHIP?
Mistake: The third driveway on the right is Kane's and Abel's office.Correction: The third driveway on the right is Kane and Abel's office.
Why: Only if Kane and Abel have two separate offices are they entitled to two separate possessive endings. The context of the sentence tells you that Kane and Abel share one office, and thus the sign of possession, the apostrophe with an s, follows the second name only.
9. WORD PLACEMENT?
Mistake: Deciding to purchase a piece of real estate, an agreement was negotiated by the buyer and seller.Correction: Deciding to purchase a piece of real estate, the buyer negotiated an agreement with the seller.
Why: Here, the agreement did not decide to purchase a piece of real estate; the buyer did. It thus makes sense to place the word "buyer" nearer that opening phrase. Placing the words in a logical order generally leads to a proper grammatical result.
10. PARALLEL STRUCTURE?
Mistake: It is important that franchisees understand not only the product, but also market it appropriately.Correction: It is important that franchisees not only understand the product, but also market it appropriately.
Why: Always follow "not only" with the same kinds of words that follow "but also." The goal is to create a balance so that the words after "not only" are parallel to the words after "but also." Fixing this grammatical error is usually as simple as moving the place of either "not only" or "but also" in the sentence.
Common Mistakes in Letter Writing
Mistake #1: Not identifying the
purpose of the letter.
Whether your letter is for business
or personal communications, you should state in the beginning what the letter
is about. For example, you are requesting a refund for a broken product or you
are following up on a proposal. Even if you are just "saying hello"
to Aunt Jane, state the purpose of your letter early on. That way Aunt Jane
will know to read with enjoyment as you tell her the latest events in your
life, or whether to read fervently to the end for the delivery of some horrible
bad news. When you don't identify the purpose for your writing, the recipient
may not place the proper priority or urgency to your letter or, in the case of
business, may direct it to the wrong department thus delaying your refund or
prolonging a decision.
Mistake #2: Not getting to the
point.
Just as when you don't identify the
purpose for your letter, not getting to the point risks having the recipient
miss the intended message entirely. If you're really writing to resolve a
specific problem, don't spend three paragraphs apologizing in advance or
talking about unrelated issues. Also known as disorganization, not getting to
the point turns a bad letter into a missed opportunity.
Mistake #3: Redundancy.
There are several types of
redundancy, and all of them are equally unnecessary. The first, and easiest to
identify, is using the same word more than once in the same sentence or more
than three times in the same paragraph. An example is "She added a
personal touch to the personal letter she wrote." The second type of redundancy
that many writers miss in their own writing is repeating the same idea in
different words: "Her message was effective because it was personal. The
personal nature of her letter made her message effective." This message is
not effective - it's redundant.
Mistake #4: Using unfamiliar
acronyms, abbreviations or technical language.
Don't assume your audience knows all
the abbreviations, lingo and acronyms that you know. An acronym is word formed
from the initial letters of a name, such as CHOP for Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia. The same letters can stand for different organizations or
meanings depending on where the person lives or other frame of reference. Or
they simply may not know what it stands for. The same goes for technical
language or jargon specific to a given profession, industry or interest group
and for abbreviations beyond the basic Mr./Ms. and etc. And it's probably okay
to use OK.
Mistake #5: Using ambiguous or
confusing words.
Similar to avoiding acronyms try to
choose words with clear meaning, especially if your letter is attempting to
resolve a conflict. Ambiguous subjects or misplaced descriptive phrases can
totally change the intended meaning of your words. If you are having trouble
identifying your own ambiguity, try writing your major points in very simple
subject-verb-object format. Even if it feels childish, this exercise will
actually spell out for you the key players and actions you want to communicate.
You can fill in details and modify the sentence structure - after you are clear
about what you need to say.
Mistake #6: Monotonous sentence
structure.
Counterbalance to mistake #5, you
don't want to bore your audience to sleep either. Writing every sentence in the
same exact structure and length is amateurish and disruptive to the flow of the
letter. Vary sentence length and alter noun-verb order to add interest to your
message.
Mistake #7: Inconsistency.
Variety, however, should not be
confused with inconsistency. There are two things that generally should not
vary within a sentence or even within your letter: person and tense. Person
refers to first (me, I, we), second (you) and third (he, them, etc.). Tense
pertains to verbs or action happening in the past, present or future. Of
course, there are always exceptions to this rule, such as occasions where
"I" am telling "you" how "I" feel. Inconsistency
applies to technique as well as meaning. If you are sending mixed messages, the
only sure outcome of your letter is confusion.
Mistake #8: Fragments, run-on
sentences and missing or incorrect punctuation.
A lot of people have heard of a
fragment but don't recognize it when they write one. A fragment is simply not a
complete sentence. Commonly used fragments are noun phrases (the man with the
short beard and navy jacket), verb phrases (walking through the park and over
the hill), and prepositional phrases (on a tree stump within the national park
reserve). Run-on sentences have the opposite problem: they are defined as two
complete sentences not separated with proper punctuation such as a period,
comma-and, colon, or semi-colon. Punctuation deserves an article of its own, but
common problem areas are possessive pronouns vs. contractions ("its"
is the correct possessive pronoun, while "it's" is a contraction for
"it is"), hyphen vs. dash (a hyphen combines two words into one
whereas a dash is used to separate words to distinguish multiple ideas or
phrases), and misplaced commas. Items in a series should have a comma after
each item. A comma before the word "and" at the end of the series is
optional, but do not ever use a comma after the word "and". That is a
misplaced comma.
Mistake #9: Bad spelling and misused
words.
It ought to go without saying;
misspelled words are a common mistake in letter writing. Not only does bad
spelling make you look unprofessional, it also gives the reader the impression
that you don't know what you are talking about. If they don't believe you, your
communication is ineffective. If you are using a computer, be sure to run a
spelling and grammar check at least once. Do not, however, rely on spell check
alone. You should know by now, software programs do not identify correctly
spelled words that are used incorrectly in the context of the sentence. A
notorious example is the transposition of the words "from" and
"form". Also, most software does not recognize proper names or some
technical or industry-specific terminology. If you are not paying attention,
your software editor may change a word you spelled correctly to something
completely different -- while you are not looking!
Mistake #10: Not reading it over
before you send it.
The last example is an excellent
reason to be sure to re-read your letter before sending it to anyone. Even if
you think your letter is free of human error (which would be rare!), your
letter may have been corrupted by computer error or unintentional (and
sometimes misfortunate) auto-formatting. No matter what, read your letter
through from beginning to end at least one time.
Keep an eye out for all the common
mistakes above, and make sure you have thoroughly supported your points.
Follow these few strands of advice
and you are sure to produce a well-written letter that will communicate the
message you intend to convey and hopefully, achieve the results you desire.
Common Errors / Standard Business Letter Writing Guidelines
Grammatical Errors: poor grammar can impede your business relations, beinga good communicator is half the battle won. After all, if one speaks and
listens well, then there is little or no scope for misunderstanding. Thus,
keeping this fact in mind, the primary reasons for misunderstanding is due
to inability to speak or write well, or listen effectively.
1 Punctuation, comprehension goes way down if punctuation is not in
place. Punctuation is essential to clarify the meaning.
2 Please ensure proper use of articles
3. Tenses
4. Sentence formation: undercuts your credibility, because the reader loses
comprehension, craft the right phrase. Certain constructions are incorrect
and we need to fix them.
5. Length of sentences: recommended average sentence length is 16 – 18
words for a clear and readable style. Business readers want to grasp ideas
immediately. We must understand wordy and lean sentences. Some of us think
that long sentences sound more impressive, contrarily we only put readers
off and make them doubt our own competence and they don’t think that they
get lost in their own verbiage and don’t go back to see how it sounds and
once the reader/customer loses comprehension, he also loses the
credibility.
“I met her only on one occasion”, and you can read the same sentence and
“I met her only once.” point. Avoid long sentences and big words. If your
reader needs to go back and re-read a sentence or look up a word, the flow
and thought process has been interrupted, and you might not be able to get
him back to the point you were trying to make. Also the sentences should
not bee too short then u may sound choppy
6. Layout: Use a single font for your communication in a size that is easy
to read.
7 Salutation The standard way to open a business letter is with Dear Mr /
Mrs / Ms are strictly formal valedictions(bid farewell) in e-mail…. we are using yours
sincerely, faithfully. Valedictions are words used to conclude letters,
whether casual or formal, paper or email. Some examples are “Yours Truly,”
“Sincerely,” “Best Regards” and “See You Soon.” Techno Advice suggests
including formal valedictions in emails that go out from your company,
while routine email, especially within the company, can be served with a
short valediction, such as “Thanks.”
8 Subject Line in interim replies should be precise, succinct
9 Redundant iteration, eliminate unnecessary words.
10. Font size, writing style.
11. Bullet points: Bulleted lists are important in technical writing. They
summarize information in a manner that is easy to read and absorb. Use them
whenever you can to get your information across quickly. For itemized
lists, use bullet points that are brief and to the point. This works great
for lists of four to five important points you are trying to make. Two or
three points can be worked into one or two sentences. Avoid using long
lists.
12. Active and passive voice: thumb rule that 80 percent of the sentences
should be active in a paragraph. Please prefer active voice in sentences to
communicate clearly, concisely and forcefully than those in passive voice,
we issue bills sounds better than bills are issued by us.
13. Adhere to standards, a burning question is how to tweak standards, urge
u to Use standard letter protocol. Straying from the uniform standards
often conveys a lack of professionalism,.eases the pressure of writing. It
helps to save a lot of time. Some employees are stunted while drafting long
emails that are easily replaceable by the standard replies. It conveys a
professional and uniform look to your business. Standard
Correspondence is risk free as it is free from errors like that of grammar,
spacing and the content is logical, precise and handy to use and saves both
time and energy.
14. In free formats, there is scope of including standard blocks of text.
15. Keeping your self abreast with the client updates
16. Share some emails in our next session to discuss the nature of errors
being committed.
17. Spacing between words should be appropriate, avoid the abbreviated
forms like GR
18. Please use hiphen between e-mail.
19 Address syntax
20 Spacing errors are rampant
21 You should be able to discern the difference between similar sounding
words, belonging to different parts of speech Advice and Advise
22 Review your email, spell check and use correct punctuation and
capitalization. Don’t rely on spelling tools to catch errors: a word that
is spelled correctly could be the wrong word to use in the sentence. Don’t
wait until the checker proofreads your document because these errors are
replaceable. Do something else and then come back to your document. Read it
out loud. It should read through smoothly. Fix areas that you stumble on.
If this is a really important business document, ask someone else to
proofread it. Your credibility is at stake.
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