Write It Well

The Alexander Communications Group has written an article for its current Customer Communicator newsletter that quotes Write It Well President Natasha Terk on the importance of carefully written e-mail.

The article includes five important questions that professionals should keep in mind as they write e-mail to customers. Check out the article here for more tips on how employees and managers can make sure outgoing e-mail reflects well on their company’s image!

Some brilliant writers are terrible role models to imitate when you write your business documents. This beautiful passage about e-mail manners includes a bush-league grammar mistake:

In some instances, we are told that our e-mail went into spam, a statement that activates either our inner skeptic or our sympathy. (“It’s the permissible white lie,” Ms. McKean said. “It’s the equivalent of ‘I can’t go to your party, I came down with food poisoning.’”)

— Henry Alford, “When Your E-Mail Goes Unanswered,” nytimes.com, July 15, 2011

That orange comma creates a comma splice — a run-on sentence that could be corrected with a period or colon.

This writer can get away with a nonchalant comma splice because the rest of his prose is carefully crafted and error free. His grammar error is a conscious choice to strike an informal tone. But a comma splice in a high-stakes business document could make an educated stranger think you’re simply uninformed or careless.

Thorough grammar knowledge helps your writing project reliability. Building up your grammar knowledge is an ideal way avoid mistakes, maintain your professional credibility, and earn some confident elegance of your own.

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Write It Well’s e-learning module Just Commas includes self-paced quizzes to help you test your knowledge of punctuation, and our book Essential Grammar includes a full chapter on commas.

We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

Do you have an important document but not enough time to double-check your punctuation? Just use Write It Well’s editing services.

We’ll make sure your prose is correct, clear, concise, and engaging so your readers will follow all your ideas easily and respect your voice.

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Jezebel’s article “How to Sound Awesome Over E-Mail” includes great tips for writing e-mails. Here’s an excerpt from the interview with Natasha Terk.

According to Terk, one of the biggest pitfalls of email-sending is “sending really long emails,” especially “long emails where the main point is buried at the bottom.” She explains, “people just move way too fast and depending on where they’re reading your email, it could very well be on some sort of PDA, and the tendency is to read the very beginning of a message.”

So don’t spend a lot of time dancing around the issue — after a salutation and quick personal introduction (if necessary), get right to your main point. When, for instance, you’re asking someone to do something (so often the case with emails), go ahead and put it right out there.

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Our books Professional Writing Skills and E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide both include information on these topics:

• Crafting subject lines
• Identifying your main message
• Organizing the points your reader needs to hear
• Putting your main message right up front

E-mail Write It Well or call us at (510) 655-6477 to find out how our customized trainings and line of books can help your organization and all its writers communicate more clearly and concisely.

MBA students’ … writing and presentation skills have been a perennial complaint. Employers and writing coaches say business-school graduates tend to ramble [and] use pretentious vocabulary.

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Many businesspeople hold on to very bad writing habits from our school years.

As students, most of us tried using rambling prose to make papers long enough. Most of us also tried using pretentious vocabulary to compensate for skimpy homework.

Both  tactics can be disastrous in business writing. Countless times at Write It Well, businesspeople have told us they want to read clear, concise documents that get straight to the point.

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For entire chapters on clarity and concision in business writing, see our book Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide.

Please e-mail Write It Well or call us at (510) 655-6477 to find out how our customized trainings and line of books can help your organization and all its writers communicate more clearly and concisely.

Or if you have an important document that you don’t feel confident sending out, our editors can help you deliver your message effectively in prose that feels effortless to read.

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“At Morgan Stanley, managers look over new hires’ emails before they’re sent out to clients,” according to the corporation’s global head of recruiting.

She told the Wall Street Journal that associates can “have trouble presenting information … to clients” and “write long emails when only a short list is needed.”

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The Journal asked its readers, “Do you think writing skills are really that important for MBA graduates or engineers?” 96.5 percent of respondents said yes. Distracted Morgan Stanley managers would probably agree.

We’ll have more to say about this article in the coming weeks; it confirms feedback that clients have given Write It Well representatives for decades.

Many people in business have deep expertise in their fields, but lack essential writing skills. The results of poor writing include wasted time, ignored messages, and lost opportunities.

Unclear or incorrect writing can harm individual careers and entire companies. Our mission at Write It Well is to help you find clear, concise, well-organized language for all the prose you write for work. We’re here to give your business the tools you need to feel confident when you send out your most important documents.

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Please e-mail Write It Well or call us at (510) 655-6477 to find out how we can help your organization and all its writers communicate effectively.

It can confuse readers to see inconsistent styles across one organization’s documents. Editorial style guides can solve that problem. They’re collections of rules for all employees to follow – ensuring a standard quality for all the writing an organization sends out.

This weekend, someone at the New York Times website mixed two capitalization styles in one article link. “Case Study” is a regular feature in nytimes.com’s T Magazine, and “Rhubarb Syrup” is an article by its author. The lowercase s in the ad on the top clashes with the Times‘s style guide. It’s inconsistent with both the linked article and even the words immediately before it.

A style guide lays a solid groundwork for an organization’s consistent identity. Once a style guide is distributed, careful proofreading keeps the organization’s image crisp and coherent.

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For guidelines on parallel style in lists and sentences, see our updated book Professional Writing Skills: A Write It Well Guide.

Write It Well offers proofreading and editing services for your own or your employees’ writing. Just send us a sample document, noting any concerns or goals you have for it. We’ll copyedit a sample portion for free and return it within two days.

You’ll get estimates of the cost and time frame for our sending you back a full, edited document that will make a great impression.

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These criteria translate into actions. Here’s our checklist of actions that effective business writers take:

• State the main point clearly, right at the beginning
• Organize information logically
• Leave out unnecessary information
• Use short sentences and paragraphs
• Eliminate unnecessary words
• Include all necessary information
• Use active, precise language and plain English
• Use correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling

Any time you get confused or distracted as you read, ask yourself if the writer neglected one of these criteria. Or if you ever feel lost as you’re writing, assemble your ideas by taking these actions.

Most business readers will only give a document about fifteen seconds to catch their attention. When readers’ time is valuable, the rest of the document has to hold their attention. The best way to make sure people read your whole document is to focus your message and then deliver it in clear, logical, correct language.

So take the time to think about your readers’ needs, organize your information logically, and present it clearly. Easy-to-grasp language and correct grammar and punctuation will keep your readers focused on your message. Considering these criteria and taking these actions will boost your professional image and credibility.

Here is a  simple way to use commas to write crystal-clear sentences when you need your reader to understand items in a series (lists of three or more things).  Without any commas, three or more items in a series run into one another. The result is confusing.

Joe’s first assignments will be to clean the shelves move the filing cabinets put the books in alphabetical order and take the outdated files to the warehouse.

Commas make it clear that each item in the series — in this case, four activities — is separate from the other items.

Joe’s first assignments will be to clean the shelves, move the filing cabinets, put the books in alphabetical order, and take the outdated files to the warehouse.

“Red, white, and blue” is an example of three items in a series. The most common conjunctions for items in a series are the words and and or.

One of the most common punctuation questions is whether to use a comma before the final conjunction in a series of three or more items. This punctuation is sometimes called the serial or series comma.

Without series comma: The store has the shirt in red, blue, green and yellow.

With series comma: The store has the shirt in red, blue, green, and yellow.

In fact, there is no hard-and-fast rule about including or omitting the series comma. Some organizations have rules requiring that you always use the series comma or that you avoid it. Very few journalists use the series comma because omitting it saves column space.

If your organization doesn’t have this rule, we recommend always using the series comma. It makes your writing clearer and makes your life simpler. If you always use the series comma, you’ll never have to pause and ask yourself if your reader will grasp your meaning, and you’ll always be correct.

One more thing: remember that the series comma always goes before the conjunction, and never after it.

Incorrect: Send the company treasurer your last three pay stubs, a copy of your federal tax return and, copies of any form 1099s you might have received.

Correct: Send the company treasurer your last three pay stubs, a copy of your federal tax return, and copies of any form 1099s you might have received.

Finally, here are some sentences without the series comma. Try inserting the series comma in these sentences.

1. The doctor said the condition’s symptoms include itching, hunger and thirst.

2. There are three new team members: Erin Copland, Jennifer Steinblum and Pat Jonas.

3. The valedictorian thanked his parents, Ms. Brown and Mr. Weir.

Next, you’ll find the same three sentences with the series comma. We think you’ll agree that the series comma helps clarify the meaning of each sentence.

1. The doctor said the condition’s symptoms include itching, hunger, and thirst.

2. There are three new team members: Erin Copland, Jennifer Steinblum, and Pat Jonas.

3. The valedictorian thanked his parents, Ms. Brown, and Mr. Weir.

Without the series comma, Sentence 3 could refer to the valedictorian’s thanking either two or four people. The reader is left guessing whether or not Ms. Brown and Mr. Weir are the valedictorian’s parents. The series comma makes it clear that the valedictorian thanked four people.

A large multinational corporation hired Write It Well to look for ways to improve the corporation’s e-mail communication. As part of our engagement, we conducted an internal survey to learn how their employees use e-mail. Here’s what we found.

Sometimes e-mail helps us get our job done more efficiently and effectively, but it can be a clumsy tool. 65 percent of employees waste between two and six hours each week using e-mail unproductively.

The majority of users defined a “good” e-mail as being concise, getting straight to the point, using plain English, and including a signature with contact information. Respondents overwhelmingly agreed that a “bad” e-mail is long, confusing, and has a main point buried in the text.

Here are five ways to improve e-mail communication:

1. Determine your purpose for writing and state your main point clearly at the beginning of the message. You always have a purpose for writing – it’s either to inform someone about something, or to influence someone to do something. Once you’ve determined your purpose, it’s much easier to isolate and state your e-mail’s main point.
2. Delete any unnecessary information. Ask yourself what information your audience members already know, and what new information they need to hear from you. If any information is not absolutely necessary, leave it out of your e-mail.
3. Use plain English and avoid jargon. Our motto at Write It Well is that “You’ll impress people with the clarity of your message, not the big words you use.” Same thing with jargon: it’s as easy to show off with technical terms as it is with ten-dollar vocabulary words. Clear writing is more impressive than either one.
4. Include a signature with your contact information. Always include your name and phone number. You can also include your company name, title, physical address, fax number, Web site address, cellphone number, etc.
5. Avoid BCC, use CC cautiously, and be very careful with the Reply All button. We’ve worked with thousands of professionals and have heard hundreds of horror stories about BCC, which has a tendency to backfire. Lots of people use CC incorrectly, too. Remember that if you CC someone, you don’t expect a reply. Also, the CC recipient should feel comfortable filing the message and reading it at his/her convenience. if you need a prompt reply, put the recipient’s name in the To line. Finally, use Reply All judiciously. No one wants extra mail!

Also, remember to pick up the phone whenever an e-mail exchange becomes too complicated, confusing, or otherwise ineffective.

Read our book E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide for many more tips on writing effective subject lines, sending attachments, planning your message, using the correct salutation and closing, and using correct grammar and punctuation.

When sending rapid-fire e-mails back and forth across the office, it’s fine to write one-line messages. Those messages don’t even have to be complete sentences. When you know your audience well, sentence fragments can be efficient and effective. Take a look at these very effective incomplete sentences:

• To consider at today’s meeting: deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.
• Monday, March 6–OK.
• Sure–when we get budget approval.

Just be sure to be quite clear. Sentence fragments can be ambiguous, sound overly blunt, or give your reader the impression that your message isn’t important. Like I wrote in my previous post, sometimes saving space wastes time. Just keep your audience clearly in view.

For more tips on keeping e-mail efficient and effective with sentence fragments, check out chapter four in E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide.