Storytelling techniques employed by writers of fiction and screenplays can be used to make business writing more lively and readable. Including the building blocks of good stories in your blogs and news releases can revive your writing and bring the human element to the forefront. Good stories have four key elements: an account of events, overarching meaning, interesting people, […]
Tag: writing
Passive voice is okay
Business writers have been told to remove passive voice in their writing so often that I think we forget just how useful it can be. To me, passive voice in business writing is more of a necessary evil than something that must be banished at all costs. First, let’s be clear what passive voice is. In […]
Glean Business Insights from Social Media
Blogs, customer reviews, tweets and Facebook status updates are voluminous and noisy, full of cat gifs and One Direction fandom. But buried in that is powerful information about your business and trends in your industry. So how do you gather it? Social media’s deepest value stems from your efforts to engage directly with your customers, identify early […]
Writing to connect, not impress
The Plain English movement, now more than three decades old, promotes simple, straightforward writing in government, military and business documents. Its principles are quite simple — be clear, be brief and avoid technical jargon. The author of Plain English at Work put it like this: “Just write the way you talk.” It sounds obvious, but […]