The secret to improving your business writing skills- just how easy is it?

Author: John Oliver

Writing is often assumed to be a skill that has its people. There are individuals who make writing look so effortless. However, it is important to know that if you want to improve your writing you should do a lot of practicing. As they say; practice, practice makes perfect. This cannot be more the case with writing. It gets even better; you can teach yourself how to write. Slowly by slowly increasing the complexity of your writing you will get a grip of all sorts of writing and it will be so easy for you. Perhaps now is a good time to mention that there are people who are paid to write. It is not only the novelists but also technical writers, bloggers and business writers.

Types of writing

There are basically two main types of writing. They include:

  1. Fictional writing
  2. Non-fictional writing

Each of these comes with its styles which must be mastered if you want to be successful in any of them. It should come as no surprise that there are people who are able to write fiction so easily but they cannot draft a business letter even to save their lives. These are the kinds of people you will find seeking out ways to acquire better business writing skills.

Business writing is a form of non-fictional writing. It will include all sorts of writing from letters and reports to notices and reminders. People have great challenges when it comes to writing for official purposes. Proper business writing comes with its rules and regulations. However, it is writing like any other so it should not be a problem. Most people isolate business writing from other forms of writing which makes things even harder for them.

How to write professionally

One of the most important things that you should always remember if you want to improve your writing is that you are writing to some audience. Therefore knowledge of your audience is going to help you write good work or pathetic work. This is particularly the case when creating fictional content. People have different needs when they choose to read. The same is the case with business writing. You must know who you are writing to in order to know how you will do the writing.

Business documents always follow particular format. People have been writing official letters for so long a time therefore they know the format of a letter. There will always be two addresses, a salutation, reference and a closing at the end. How these are organized is sometimes a problem for some people. Furthermore, it depends on what kind of letter you are writing. There are many different types of letter from recommendation letters to application letters.

Aside from letters, the other business documents that you will find yourself working on include the likes of press releases and reports. How will you report the findings of your business activity? The press release for your company- what should be there and what ought not to be done? These are some of the things that you need to always consider if you want to take your business writing to a whole new level.

Content matters

The content of your business documents will convey the intention of your writing. Therefore, the content must be well done to make sure that people get to understand what you meant. The grammar should be good, sentence structure great and the spellings flawless. This way, people will not be left wondering exactly what you meant when you wrote the document. Acquiring better business writing skills is a matter of learning and employing the rules of writing for better results.