Improve your business writing by ‘unlearning’ your classroom lessons

A quick Google search of the words “business writing” returns more than 74 million results. If that isn’t a sign that many people are struggling with basic business communication, I don’t know what is.

Now, there’s someone to blame: all of your past English teachers.

Well, that’s not really the case. But this blog post, from dorisandbertie.com, a financial and business communications website, uses advice that we all remember hearing from our teachers and points out how that advice might actually get in the way of effective business writing.

For instance, dorisandbertie.com states that one of the six ways your schoolteachers sabotaged your business writing was by teaching you to write with a beginning, a middle and an end. Good advice, if you’re working on a term paper. Not so good if you’re writing a persuasive memo about changing your paper supplier.

As the blog points out, in business, you don’t have the luxury of the preamble. Your readers are time-pressed, so you need to dive straight in with your main point.

Have you had to unlearn any school lessons to be more effective in the business world? Leave a comment and let us know.