Write It Well

Have you ever felt drained just looking at an e-mail that was one long, unbroken paragraph of text? A long sentence can have the same intimidating effect. Here’s an example about the short battery life of the iPhone 4S:

For now, Apple isn’t saying anything about the issue – a spokeswoman didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment – in what has become a typical pattern of silence for the company after customers begin complaining about a technical problem with a new iPhone.

The sentence is 42 words long; we recommend that you keep most sentences in business documents under about 25 words. Breaking up the sentence into separate ideas can help you rewrite it:

• For now, Apple isn’t saying anything about the issue
• A spokeswoman didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment
• This has become a typical pattern of silence for the company
• Customers have complained before about a technical problem with a new iPhone

This separation of ideas makes it much easier to create two or more shorter sentences with new transitions between the ideas:

For now, Apple isn’t saying anything about the issue; a spokeswoman didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. This has become a typical pattern of silence for the company when customers complain about a technical problem with a new iPhone.

Busy readers appreciate having a clear path marked out for them, and these 18- and 22-word sentences are much easier to follow.

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Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes a chapter on sentence structure and two more on punctuation. 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 clarify your thoughts and double-check your punctuation and grammar? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.

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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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“Most people could cut their email output by ten percent or so and maintain or even increase their productivity,” writes Art Carden. Messages to cut:

• Questions you could answer for yourself. See what Google has to say before you send an e-mail that makes you look silly and wastes time.
• Responses to e-mails that CC you. Often, these e-mails are just informative, and don’t need an answer from you.
• Forwards. Yes, it’s a noble cause. So why don’t you take the time to compose your own personal, thought-provoking e-mail, and send THAT to your friends? They’ll appreciate it much more.

E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide has more great tips on boosting your e-mail effectiveness.

We might all benefit from following President Obama’s e-mail policy. He keeps his address a tightly-held secret known only to the closest few. Don’t feel bad if you don’t have it; even Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi doesn’t know it, according to today’s article in the New York Times. While free from spam and forwarded lists of jokes, Mr. Obama’s inbox is primarily designed to be hack-proof. Recipients can’t even forward his e-mail. 

George W. Bush had no e-mail at all; he left his inbox behind when he moved to the White House, on the recommendation of his lawyers.

Clearly most of us need our e-mail on a regular basis, and hiding our work e-mail addresses wouldn’t accomplish much of anything. But we can guard our personal e-mail addresses with presidential care, limiting the amount of junk we have to screen. Try having a designated “junk” e-mail address for all the sites that require e-mail addresses to sign up. Alternatively, you can use your e-mail client’s filtering services to direct e-mail to different folders according to sender. Not as effective as the Secret Service, no doubt, but plenty effective for those of us without national security messages in our inboxes.

On his way to give a presentation about social media, a PR executive insulted his audience when he complained about their city on the social media site Twitter. David Henderson, who described the incident on his blog, added later, “The same fundamental rules and principles apply to a new form of media in today’s Internet era as with mainstream or traditional media.”

The difference is that now your mistakes can fly around the world at lightning speed. Mr. Henderson noted that two nights ago more people read his blog post about the mistake than visited most of the major news sites.

Not all of us use Twitter on a daily basis, but the vast majority of us rely on e-mail daily, if not hourly. The risks are quite similar: instant, widespread infamy. To learn more about how to minimize your chances of committing an electronic gaffe, check out E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide.

How to start? Liz Danzico, the information architect and blogger at Bobulate, thinks that e-mail salutations have three basic purposes. In “Anatomy of a Salutation,”  she writes that salutations not only function as greetings, but set tone and establish a hierarchy between writers. More interesting, she notes that e-mail salutations evolve fairly quickly during back-and-forth correspondence. Most e-mail threads start out formal (“Dear Professor Miles”), but by the third e-mail the correspondents often drop to an informal “Hi,” or no greeting at all.

When writing a salutation, follow your correspondent’s cues. You’ll look stuffy and cold if you return a “Hey Charlie” with a “Dear Mr. Bowers,” and you could easily insult someone by using only their first  name. I like to check my correspondents signatures — if they sign only a first name, I can use only their first name, and if they sign their full name, I address them by their title and last name.

For more advice on writing business e-mail, check out E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide.

When Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang got to work writing an e-mail about layoffs, he made some serious blunders. Which was worse — the fact that he sounded patronizing and euphemistic, or that he only used his SHIFT key twice, to make the exclamation point in “yahoo!”?

From his e-mail: “having layoffs is very difficult, particularly in light of all we’ve experienced this year.  but we don’t take these decisions lightly.” Whether he intended it or not, lowercase letters always look a little bit lazy. Sometimes that lowercase laziness looks sleek, hip, and  perfect for a techie marketing campaign — but nobody wants to be laid off by a sleek, hip, lazy boss. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Probably Mr. Yang thought his lowercase e-mail looked approachable. Too bad he further obscured his message with roundabout business talk:

“we understand that hearing this news now creates uncertainty, but we are moving ahead in a way that balances speed with a clear focus on accomplishing what is necessary to set the organization up for long term success,” he wrote. I’m quite sure he knows that “a clear focus on accomplishing what is necessary to set the organization up for long term success” means deciding which employees to lay off. But he didn’t write that. He tried to hide the bad news.

The sad truth is that bad news takes guts to deliver. Coincidentally enough, Yahoo!’s own written guidelines for layoffs are right on the mark:

• Get right to the point.
• Don’t own the employee’s feelings.
• Be clear, concise, and respectful.

Nobody likes to write difficult e-mails. Effective communication skills help us write e-mail that gets the job done and looks professional. Check out Write It Well’s guide to e-mail for more tips on effective writing.

Write It Well delivered a pair of e-mail writing workshops at Leadership Public High School in Richmond on Tuesday, December 2, 2008. In this era of high speed electronic communication and high-profile e-mail misfires, e-mail messages are in the spotlight. The workshops were designed to help high school seniors improve the quality of their e-mail messages and learn what’s appropriate as they prepare for college applications, summer jobs and internships, and the demands of the business world.

More people are entering the workforce without the ability to express themselves clearly in writing. According to The National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges, schools and colleges today neglect writing and, as a result, many college graduates enter the workforce with poor writing skills. Yet, writing – and e-mail writing – is a fundamental business skill. In fact, a recent survey by the Commission found that half of all companies assess writing skills during the hiring process and when making promotion decisions.

Poorly written e-mail can sabotage job prospects while effective e-mail opens doors. “People often enter the workforce without an understanding of what it means to communicate professionally. College applicants can really set themselves apart with a basic knowledge of what’s appropriate and effective in e-mail communication,” says Preston Lewis, Director of Talent, Bonfire Communications.

Leadership Public High School serves grades 9 through 12 in Richmond, CA . The school offers college preparatory curriculum in a small and safe learning environment. “This is not something I’d know how to teach so it’s really nice to have someone come in and teach it to our students,” says Andy Hatcher, 12th Grade English Teacher, Leadership Public High School.

To conduct the training, Write It Well donated copies of its bestselling book, E-Mail – A Write It Well Guide: How to Write and Manage E-Mail in the Workplace. “This book should be required reading,” comments David Krane, Director of Corporate Communications for Google, Inc.

The ability to write an effective e-mail is also essential for landing a job. “Excellent communication skills are universally appreciated in business, and in many cases it’s a core requirement for candidates. Well-constructed, thoughtful and professionally written emails make a powerful first impression, and will often set a candidate apart from the rest of the pack.” Sharon Kittredje, Managing Partner, HIRE Talent Management Solutions, Inc.

“Quality counts,” says Kevin Hoover, Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Duke University. “E-mail has greatly expanded the range of student-faculty interactions and of collaborations among students. When students write clear, crisp, organized, and polite messages, e-mail enriches learning. Sadly, too often poorly written e-mail inhibits useful communications and undermines learning.”

E-mail has become the primary method of business communication, surpassing the telephone as our preferred communication tool in the workplace (Datamonitor report, September 2007). While most people already sense that this is the case, most of us don’t stop to consider the implications for our careers. “While most of us understand that poorly written e-mail can waste time, we forget that poorly written e-mail can also create costly misunderstandings, catapult deadlines, delay deliverables, impact people’s opinion of you, and sabotage your career,” says Natasha Terk, president of Write It Well.    

According to Xobni, a San Francisco-based start-up that has developed an Outlook add-on to help manage e-mail, by 2009, workers are expected to spend 40 percent of their time writing and managing e-mail. It’s an important skill to hone since poorly written can be embarrassing. In fact, in a recent Write It Well survey, a whopping eighty-eight percent of respondents said that poorly written e-mail messages leave a poor impression of not only the writer, but the writer’s organization as well.

Why do we give workshops on “E-Mail Efficiency” instead of “E-Mail Etiquette” like other people do? The short answer: our workshops cover more material. To use e-mail most effectively, of course you need proper e-mail etiquette. You won’t get much done with offensive, boring, or badly-timed messages! But you also need to know how to keep a tidy inbox, for example, and how to write persuasive e-mail messages — not to mention the nitty-gritty details of professional grammar and clean prose.

Write It Well works with your company to tailor an interactive e-mail workshop to your specific needs and strengths. We train your company to write e-mail that gets your work done in less time. That’s efficiency!

If Google had its way, you would never delete e-mail, let alone file it. Google got rid of the old filing cabinet analogy for e-mail when they introduced GMail, which lets you archive everything and easily search for it later. No folders, no files, no trash.

What about confidential e-mail? The “delete immediately” e-mail with jokes about the boss’s son and inside trading tips? Sorry. Confidential e-mail doesn’t exist, and never has. GMail just makes it a bit more clear that every careless e-mail is carved in electronic stone. Even deleted e-mail. In 2006, a judge requested deleted e-mail held on Google’s servers — and got it. If you want to talk about something confidential or offensive, don’t write an e-mail.