Business Writing for Results

I read a book once titled “Business Writing for Results”. I liked it because it summarizes what you can learn in months or even for some people years of hard work. A lot of people write emails, reports, offers, proposals,…. But a few think of how to write it to make your audience respond in exactly the way you want.

How to make sure that people respond to your writings the way you want. How to make them read what you wrote to start with? This is not an easy task and requires great care while you are writing.

The following lines summarize what the book said:

Divide your task into the following three steps:
1-Get Your thoughts in order:
a. Answer the question: “What do I want my readers to do as a result of reading this?”
b. Analyze your audience by considering their personality and how they would react to your writing.
c. Be persuasive.

2- Create a Draft (on the computer or on paper)
a. Organize your thoughts.
b. Put your thoughts on paper and then select your beginning and ending paragraphs. (Those two paragraphs have great effect on whether your readers will read and respond or not so write them with care)
c. Generate a complete first draft.

3- Revise for Clarity
a. Revise to create a second draft.
b. Check if you need to add index, appendix, attachments,…
c. Revise to make sure your writing is specific, clear, concise and positive.
d. Select the best words and rephrase whenever necessary.
e. Check your spelling, grammar, punctuation and capitalization.
f. Make the draft visually appealing.
g. Read the entire draft again to produce the final version.