5 Cardinal Sins of Business Writing:Shakespeare versus the Consultants!
Consulting | Mohit | July 15, 2010 at 6:59 am
Sir William Shakespeare, without a shadow of a doubt, was one of the greatest poet/writer of his time. I can’t help but wonder though, what if he were a consultant in the year 2010? Would his clients get mesmerized reading his flawless presentations? Or get so engrossed in his carefully knitted reports that they increase the “out of pocket expenses (OPE)” or sign a multi-project agreement, if for nothing else, then, just to get an opportunity to read Shakespeare’s reports.
Hypothetical scenarios, just as the one described above, tend to turn out very different when such scenarios are crafted without well sounded assumptions and careful analysis of available facts. Poetry is very different from Business Writing. If Sir William Shakespeare were to don the roll of a consultant, he would most likely have his presentations/report/work products torn to shreds by his Partner/ Manager/ Boss. You don’t believe me do you? Let me illustrate -
“As the dragon with multiple faces stood before me, a quiet voice inside of me broke out and said, to check or not to check, that is the question, whether it is wiser to let a defining piece of information slip by, or to carefully select another piece, work on it and let the time go by. So I did what was best and I passed the test. There I stood, as the crowd chanted, you’re the best! You’re the best! ”
Or in simpler terms:
We examined the data provided by Mr. X and found discrepancies in data entered on page 10. This erroneous data was used to calculate the marketing budget for Company X and hence, the overall marketing budget exceeded the estimated value.
Before the entire poetic society puts me on its hit list, let me clarify that Shakespeare would probably have altered his writing style to suit his audience. However, I couldn’t think of a better prop to set the context for this article. So I would request all the aspiring poets/ English majors/ Shakespeare fans to accept my sincerest apologies.
With the apology taken care for, let me move forward. The very first question that comes to mind is what is the scope of business writing? Well, business writing covers almost everything from work products to smses. The end user could be anyone from client to the IT department.
People around us are judging us on the basis of our writing skills. Yes. That’s true!. Effective business writing skills often go hand in hand with excellent communication skills. It is hard to say whether effective business writing skills lead to excellent communication skills or vice versa, but, there is definitely a correlation between them. Before we discuss the 5 cardinal sins of business writing, think of one individual (from a professional context), whose business writing and communication skills you admire. Done? Ok let’s move forward.
So what are the 5 cardinal sins of effective business writing?
1. Using Acronyms and Vague Words
Come on, don’t be lazy. ASAP, EOD, EOB, MOM, BTW, CAGR, POA and the list goes on. We need to banish these acronyms from our system. In the short term, these do not affect our writing skills, however, eventually one runs into a client who is not aware of these short forms and thus can often lead to an embarrassing situation. Recession is the theme of the decade, why take chances!
As far as Curious Benjamin Buttons’ out there are concerned, following are the full forms of the acronyms I mentioned above.
ASAP – As soon as possible, EOD – End of day, EOB – End of business , MOM – Minutes of meeting, BTW – by the way, CAGR – Compounded annual growth rate, POA – Plan of action
If you have to use an acronym then define the acronym the first time you use it. For example
The chief financial officer (CFO) met the store manager in the morning. As it turns out, the store manager and CFO studied at the same college.
Closely related to usage of acronyms is usage of vague words. Two words that we the consultants are guilty of overusing are “Engagement” and “Deliverable”. To a consultant these may sound very obvious but to an outsider, these words can have double (or triple) meanings. The Benjamin Buttons are probably trying to decipher the third usage of the above mentioned words? We will keep that a mystery.
As long as we are still on Acronyms, I’d like to share a true story, a friend of mine went on a meeting , a client personnel asked him if he was the SPOC (*SPOCK*), My friend oblivious to the acronym, quickly retorted SPOCK as in the character from Star Trek?. The client personnel obviously bemused retorted No,Single Point of Contact.
2. Making grammatical errors
Yes we need to revise our grammar. We all started our learning our A, B, C’s, we graduated to grammar. Some of us meticulously learned those boring grammar concepts others merely decided to float through high school with bare minimum grammar knowledge.
Sadly, as we grow older, we tend to forget those very same grammar rules. Most of the time all that the situation demands is couple of hours of revision, other times, the situation might demand learning the concepts from scratch. I am no grammar expert so I wouldn’t dwell deeper on this concept but a few things one should keep in mind are:
- Use active voice as much as possible: I developed the plan is better than Plan was developed by me.
- Avoid subject-verb agreement error: Some of the apples is/are lying on the table? [ we need to use the plural form of the verb - “are” - in this case]
- Don’t eat the Subject: Planned a meeting at 5, see you there. (Who planned the meeting? )
- Avoid redundancy: advance planning, all year round, annually each year, end result, exactly identical (catch the drift?)
3. Writing more than required
Concision is the key to a better work product. We should try to say more in fewer words. As you master the grammar concepts, the number of words you use to articulate your thoughts should also reduce. No client wants to read a 200 page report, In fact, most clients only read the summary of the report. Consulting clients (or end users of our reports) tend to the key decision makers at the client, the strategy heads, the directors, the chief executive officers etc; these individuals do not have the time to go through a 200 page document. Keep your audience in mind. They are your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future (Ah, finally an article where I can use lines from the sunscreen song).
4. Not revising after writing
Don’t you just hate revising? At least I do, but revision is pivotal for effective business writing. As is often the case, you type an email to your boss and then you send the email without a second read, only to realize that you missed a connecting verb somewhere in the email.
If you’re lucky, your boss won’t even notice the missing verb, in the worst case scenario; however, your boss would ring you up and recommend that you buy a copy of the Wren & Martin (the famous grammar book).
5. Misspelling a name
Never ever never mess up the spelling of someone’s name. This is by far the biggest sin you could make. People are very protective of their names. You mess up a spelling on the email and the reader will put you on his hate list right away. Get the name right. No exception what so ever.
These are 5 cardinal sins of business writing. The individual you admire, how many of the above mistakes does he or she make? Answer would be zero in most cases. Make sure you keep these sins in mind before crafting your next email/report etc. I would love to hear your suggestions. Please drop in the comments below.
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Mohit – I really enjoyed this post, and you made strong points.
I particularly agree with you about acronyms and concision. There is no point is shortening a string of words, if your audience still has idea what you're saying (You might as well write "hfsghflbl"). And in this day and age, most people don't want to read the next novel, when a few concise paragraphs can get across the same message in a fraction of the space.
I hope all the professionals out there take notice. I've submitted it to Digg, to help it get some traffic. Again, Mohit, great job on the article.
Robert A. Burns, II – Public Relations & New Media Specialist
http://www.RobertBurns.com || http://www.linkedin.com/in/RobertBurnsII
Thank you Robert.