Effective (Business) Writing

It was believed that writing was invented around 3600 BC in Mesopotamia due to the rising need of keeping accounts in trade (yes, for business reasons!). Clearly, drawing out 100 jars of wine repeatedly 100 times on many clay tablets would be very tedious and also leave potential ambiguities (beer? wine? honey?). “100 amphorae of wine” written out in one line will be much more efficient and accurate.

Today, we use writing in various formats for business all the time (email, reports, articles, presentation slides, legal documents...). Fundamentally, writing is a tool for communication, i.e., to present, exchange, and record information. But whether we do it effectively is a different question.

I was recently asked to give a talk on “Effective Business Writing”. And people have since been requesting my PowerPoint (PPT). But PowerPoint is only a tool for presentation and one cannot, and should not, include all the context or details behind those bullet points. So, I thought I would write a quick post here to give some context and a reader’s guide to accompany my PowerPoint on this topic.

In my presentation, I laid out my thoughts on what makes effective business writing and used several of my own writings as examples to expand on those points. Here is a summary of what I covered or tried to cover in my talk and in the attached PPT (see above).

• Planning out your writing: Who is your audience? What are you trying to communicate and how? And what is the key takeaway you want your target audience to remember? 
• “Ethos, Pathos, and Logos”: OK, it’s Greek; but Aristotle already laid out some key elements in persuasive communication for us: (1) make yourself credible; (2) establish a connection to your audience; and (3) persuade/convince with logic and reason.
• Structuring your articles: from opening to closing, how to frame and build up your key points; how to maintain an overarching, consistent arc throughout your narrative; and how to mix in some creativity and personal touches.
• Reports and emails: How to structure and use formatting to make your key points stand out? I used Thomas Jefferson’s famous letter on “Separation of Church and State” as an example to demonstrate how we may re-write it as a modern-day email.
• PowerPoint: I am not teaching TED Talks here (which is becoming a performing art in their own fashion). But I discussed how to use PowerPoint to organize your narrative and the flow of your presentation, to clarify key points and takeaway, and to build visual focuses even on busy slides.

One challenge we all face today is information overload and short attention spans. So, it is even more important to strive for clarity and brevity in business writing (if you are writing a research report, you will need to include a lot of details; but brevity still helps in your opening summary). Julius Caesar famously declared “veni, vidi, vici” (“I came; I saw; I conquered”) in his letter to the Roman Senate after a swift victory at the Battle of Zela. And while we may be far removed from ancient Rome, Lincoln’s immortal Gettysburg address should still ring a familiar note close to home and to our time. And Lincoln’s 2-minute speech was probably more difficult to compose than the 2-hour speech by Edward Everett at the same occasion.

With this, I shall leave you with one final takeaway, “a great writer is a great reader first”. So, in my presentation I recommended several good books and posts I have written about reading. And since I was able to finish all this on one page, I think I’ll enjoy one amphora of Californian wine this coming weekend, and I'll tap on my e-tablet to update the account to 99 amphorae still left.

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