How to Improve Your Business English Writing Skills

Introduction

Hello! It’s Kristine here with the Express to Impress podcast. In this episode, you’ll learn how to become a better writer for work. You may have noticed that some people have the gift of gab from an early age. But becoming a great writer takes some effort for everyone. In this episode, you’ll hear about my path to becoming a better writer, and I’ll share some tips for improving your business English writing skills.

Every week, I post a new episode with stories and tips on communicating clearly, confidently, and effectively for success in job interviews and the workplace. If you like my podcast, don’t forget to subscribe to receive notifications whenever I post a new episode. You can subscribe anywhere you download podcasts like Pandora, on my YouTube Channel, or my website at www.express-to-impress.com.

Now, let’s begin!

Benefits of Improving Your Business English Writing Skills

Let’s talk briefly about some of the benefits of improving your Business English writing skills. Strong writing skills will help you tremendously in your career! When you write in a polite, confident, clear, and concise manner, you will gain respect, approval of your ideas, and what you ask for on time! It will also allow you to build relationships and achieve your goals, like securing more clients or making more sales.

When you become a better writer, you will also avoid misunderstandings, rejection, and time spent agonizing over emails and other business documents.

In short, becoming a better writer for work will lead to big rewards!

Story

Now, I will tell you about my experience with business writing, specifically with writing business emails. It’s not a “reply all” Horror Story, though I have some of those! Before I tell you my story, I want to give you some context. I confess that I am sentimental and have many scrapbooks containing long, multi-page emails that I wrote in high school and college.

When I joined the workplace, I continued using that archaic writing style. As you can imagine, people did not appreciate my long-winded emails, among a handful of things. It was a real shame to me because I like being expressive, and I didn’t want to write short emails. But I soon learned that more concise emails are more likely to get responses, so I put in some effort to shorten my writing. Even though I had to write shorter emails, I wanted to write about my ideas or mundane things like mail merges in a pleasant way. Working with fewer words made that more challenging.

Then, I noticed that someone else at my workplace always managed to write emails politely and pleasantly. Her message was always clear, and she seemed so reasonable. I found myself even more likely to reply to her emails more quickly than others that were long and unorganized. Those other messages seemed like a lot of work and could be overwhelming. So, I’d flag those for later and reply quickly to anything she requested.

I wanted my writing to be more polished like that of my colleague, so what did I do?  I created a file where I stored my favorite emails. The file mostly contained her emails, but others, too, that had the vibe I wanted to convey. When writing emails, especially when writing about a new topic, I would reference that file for inspiration, get ideas on how to structure my email, remember the tone I was going for, or even pluck a few words to insert into my own writing. Later, I learned that I had created a swipe file.

A swipe file is a tool that has helped me become a better writer. I’ve learned some other techniques and tools to become a better writer along the way, too. Let’s take a look!

Tips on How to Become a Better Writer

There are many techniques and tools to help you become a better writer. I will share just five of them with you in the tips section.

In episode 15, you learned that to speak great English; you must repeat what you hear (just like children do!) The shadowing method for language learning relates to the first tip I’ll share with you. To write great English, you must copy what you read. Let’s take a look at how to do that.

1. Examine and copy examples of the kind of writing you want to produce

• Select a piece of writing with a style and tone that are attractive to you. It could be an email, report, blog post, or something else.
• Carefully identify the vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structures.

• Look up new vocabulary on Youglish.com to hear the words used in different contexts.
• Write down the sentences word for word.
• Memorize the grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structures you found.

2. Create a Swipe File
As I mentioned previously, a swipe file is a collection of writing samples. To use this technique, bookmark websites with attractive writing or save headlines, sentences, or full paragraphs in a folder or app like Evernote, where you can store and organize your notes and screenshots.

3. Get to the Point

As I mentioned in the story section, effective business emails and other business writing gets to the point. FastCompany says never to send an email more than five sentences long. So,

• Put the most important information first.
• Make your call to action clear.
• After writing your document, re-read it and be merciless. Delete any unnecessary words.
• Don’t send an email unless it’s vital.

You can practice writing concisely by writing 300-word summaries of your favorite business articles. Then, review your writing and reduce the word count to 150, and then 75.

4. Use an app that identifies errors and shows you how to enhance your writing

I have a subscription to Grammarly and use it daily. It’s an incredibly powerful tool. You can set your goals for the document, such as audience, formality, and tone. The app will analyze your writing and give you tips on where you need to make corrections and enhance the writing’s clarity, engagement, and delivery. It’s the best writing coach I’ve ever had! There are other tools I have heard of but haven’t used like the Hemingway Editor.

5. Educate Yourself About Business Writing 

I have a copy of the HBR Guide to Better Business Writing, and I recommend it to any client who wants to learn how to become a better writer.

The Purdue Online Writing Lab is another amazing writing resource for business or academia.

Alright, now you know how to become a better writer for greater workplace success! When you have a critical document and have doubts about it, keep in mind that professional editing is one of the services I provide. I’ve edited a letter that helped someone successfully contest and reverse an unfair demotion, transformed recruitment emails so that they were more effective, improved cover letters and resumes that allowed people to get more interviews, and much more!

How to Write a Standout Resume Online Video Course

I often remind my clients that they interview with a company BEFORE they ever talk to someone about a job. The first interviews are written ones, of course! Before you get a chance to talk about yourself and your abilities, you represent yourself in writing on your LinkedIn profile, resume, cover letter, public online communication, and email correspondence.

To help my clients succeed in their written communication during the job search process, I created the 90-minute online course, “How to Write a Standout Resume.” The course includes a whopping SIX handouts, including resume, cover letter, and e-note samples and templates, and importantly, a Guide to Finding Your Writing Mistakes. The Guide includes seven steps to follow to uncover your writing mistakes and a full page of examples of common writing mistakes that you can look for in your own writing. When you’re looking at paying at least $100 for a resume editor, at just $59 USD, the course is a steal! Plus, you can get 15% off by using the coupon code podcast15 at the checkout. To learn more about my How to Write a Standout Resume video course and watch free lessons from it, visit my website at www.express-to-impress.com.

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Next week, tune in again to improve your English skills. You’ll learn definitions of phrases and idioms from this episode. If you’re a non-native English speaker working with native English speakers, you won’t want to miss it!

And if there is a communication topic you want me to discuss on the podcast, write me an email to tell me about it. You can reach me at hello@express-to-impress.com.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Express to Impress. If you liked this episode, please remember to share it with a friend!  See you next time. Bye!

 

Music By Lucas Knutter