We live in an era of sound bites and 140 character messages, but good writing still matters when it comes to the business world. Don’t think that good writing skills matter in this digital age of abbreviated texts and tweets? consider a recent grammarly study of 100 linkedin profiles. In the same 10 year period, professionals who received one to four promotions made 45 percent more grammatical errors than did professionals who were promoted six to nine times. Whether youre an entrepreneur, small business owner, manager or an employee aspiring to any of those positions, you need to know how to write effectively for business. Yes, that means paying attention to grammar, spelling and punctuation, along with good word choice and a consistent style.

Bad writing can have a wide ranging, negative effect on your business, from creating a less than coherent business plan and hampering your efforts to attract investors, to communicating with employees, vendors and even your customers. If you are a native english speaker and never learned the difference between its and its, grammarly ceo brad hoover writes in a recent harvard business review blog, especially given access to google, an employer might wonder what else youve failed to learn that might be useful. That quote could easily apply to entrepreneurs or small business owners seeking financial backing.

In addition to the standard rules of grammar, these 10 tips – gathered from around the web – can help you keep your business writing interesting and concise. Avoid phrases such as the purpose of this report that i am submitting today is 2. For example, capitalize the proper name of a company, but not a reference to our company. For example, a judicious use of self deprecating humor can help engage the audience. Follow lauren on twitter. adapted from dont let poor business writing kill your career.

There are many different published books on the subject of academic style and writing at university. Consultation make an appointment with a staff member at the learning centre for more specific advice or questions. For example, academic writing is generally quite formal and impersonal.

It is formal by avoiding casual or conversational language, such as contractions or informal vocabulary. It is impersonal and objective by avoiding direct reference to people or feelings, and instead emphasising objects, facts and ideas. For example: do not is more formal than dont very large is more formal than huge this study will investigate whether is more objective than i want to prove to you that however, even if you already have good skills for writing in a formal and objective style, that might not be enough for good academic writing. This means that you need to develop a large vocabulary for the concepts and objects which are specific to your discipline s of study e.g. Moreover, you will need to keep developing your technical vocabulary for the specialised areas within each discipline. For example, within the discipline of linguistics, there are different technical vocabularies for the fields of phonology, pragmatics and sociolinguistics.

There are not only differences in vocabulary, but also in style. Some of the arts and humanities disciplines expect longer paragraphs, which include topic sentences to show how your argument is structured. Sciences expect short paragraphs, with no topic sentences, which are denser in factual information.