Tech Biz Writing

If time is money, as it undoubtedly is, consider how much money is wasted over botched business writing. Bad writing costs money because it costs time. It also costs the goodwill of your potential client or customer, which may result in lost business.

Inappropriate writing leads to lost reputations, jobs and more money. Think about it: total communication time is the time you take to write a document, plus the time it takes for the recipient(s) to read it.

So saving time over writing a piece will probably result in your reader having to work harder to get to its core meaning. If that reader is your boss, or a future buyer, beware. Your reputation as a poor communicator will become set in stone and you may be moved to other, less sensitive, tasks — jobs off the critical path to advancement.

In this age of email, one thought which doesn’t occur to people often enough is: should I be writing this at all? We’ve all read the newspaper stories about the Jack the Lad who emails his chums with intimate details of the night before, only to have it forwarded to many others. Before long the email is zinging between overseas offices until, over a million pairs of eyes have read the details. At this point it becomes a media story. End of story for the writer.

The same principle holds for many types of business communication. Sometimes it’s easier, and more effective, just to pick up the phone, or take the life to another floor and talk it through. Apart from the effectiveness of face-to-face discussion, it also means that your proposition is not committed to paper or screen before it matures and you have thought it through. So when should you avoid writing, if at all possible?:

1. When a delicate situation occurs and you need to observe another person’s reactions before going to the next stage, a face-to-face meeting is always preferable.
2. When you need information that someone else has in their head, you only need to make a phone call.
3. If a number of people are involved, it is better to meet than send a barrage of cc messages.
4. Sometimes a point is better not committed to paper or screen. Use your intuition.

Time is an important consideration in business writing. Don’t save time and lose your career.

The next post is, 3. Four Steps to Writing Power.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 16th, 2006 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Technical Writing, Business Writing, Publishing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.