Bull's Eye Business Writing Tips

Tip # 446:  Make your writing more concrete.

These FREE weekly business writing tips
will help you improve your business writing.

Tip #446:  Make your writing more concrete.  Before you write, ask yourself these questions:

Purpose:  Am I writing to inquire, inform, persuade, motivate, or do I have more than one purpose?  Maybe you want to go on record, or you want to protect yourself, or you want to gain visibility in the organization?

Scope:  Given both my reader’s needs and my own needs, how much information should I include?

Contents:  What kinds of information will help me achieve my purpose?  Do I have all the needed information?

Constraints:  What can work against me, or make my task more difficult?  Do I have time or cost constraints?  What if my reader is hostile to me?

Weekly Exercise:

We receive over 200 emails per day.  We encourage you to answer our weekly tips, but please, if you are answering this weekly tip exercise,  identify the tip number in the subject line of your email.

This week’s quiz:

Place an apostrophe in the following sentences:

  1. The company manufactures womens blouses.

  2. I want to hear the last two witnesses testimony.

  3. An investors objectives should largely define investment strategy.
Comments:

Here is a further explanation of last week’s exercise (Tip #445):

The answer is 1.  “Harold took the pencil from the desk.  Next he took the book off the table” was the correct answer

Time is involved in this answer.  You took the pencil “from” or beginning from the desk.  Next you took a book away or off the table. 

That is why we say we traveled from Buffalo to Erie. (I would not travel to either in the winter).  Another example is “My birthday is only three weeks off.”

*****

Last week I did not include a clarification of the previous week's tip (Tip #444).  The tip confused some readers. 

Here was my explanation:  “Let me know IF you are coming” means, “I want to hear from you only if you will be coming."  But, “Let me know WHETHER you are coming” means “I want to hear from you with an answer of yes or no."

I hope this explanation is a little clearer than mud.  Sorry about the confusion.

Quote of the week:

“We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.”  (H. G. Wells, author 1866-1946)

Answer to this week's exercise:

  1. The company manufactures women’s blouses.

  2. I want to hear the last two witnesses’ testimony.

  3. An investor’s objectives should largely define investment strategy.

To send the above exercise answers to Gloria for her comments and review,  copy the questions,  paste  them into an email, answer them,  and send to Marsha@basic-learning.com.

 

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10 Easy Guides for Getting to Your Writing Target
By Gloria Pincu, M.A. , President of Basic Learning Systems, Inc.
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Here are some books on business writing that I recommend.

Bull's Eye Business Writing is also available from Amazon.com.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, author, Lynne Truss The Everything Resume Book by Steven Graber
On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction , by William Knowlton Zinsser  The Gregg Reference Manual, by William A. Sabin 
The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, White, E. B. White  How to Take the Fog Out of Business Writing, by Robert Gunning, Richard A. Kallan (Contributor) 

More books on business writing and other business subjects  (available from Amazon.com). 

Contact Gloria Pincu at Basic Learning Systems, Inc.

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