The ability to communicate clearly is always important, but when it comes to business writing, clarity reigns supreme. In business, words drive decisions and action. Write clearly, and you help colleagues and customers make the right decisions. Write haphazardly, and you lay the groundwork for mistakes and confusion. Since most companies prefer profits to problems, make every effort to turn clarity into your standout writing skill. Here are my nine clarity tips - I hope they help.

1. Say what you mean. Don’t beat around the bush when you deliver bad news - out with it! When announcing a price increase, don’t say, “Due to a sustained imbalance in raw material availability, we find it necessary to notify you of a 5% price adjustment.” Among other things, the writer of such a sentence assumes customers will infer that a 5% adjustment means a 5% increase. Well, customers may or may not infer correctly, but either way they won’t enjoy wasting time decoding your message. Don’t be afraid to say “price increase” - not saying it won’t make it go away.
2. Use facts and be precise. Staying with the example above, we can make the announcement much clearer by simply saying, “Because of rising raw material costs, we are forced to announce a 5% price increase.”  But perhaps this is too simple. A few facts and a bit more clarification will give  customers all the information they need to fully comprehend your meaning. Let’s try this. “Because the cost of our largest raw material component, steel, has risen 14% since January, 2007, we must increase your price 5%, effective with orders placed January 1, 2008.” In business, facts make decisions easier to accept, and more pleasant to debate.
3. State your purpose right away. Did you ever read an e-mail or a business article and get four paragraphs into it before getting your first clue as to its purpose?  If you have memories of such an experience, I’ll wager they are not fond. Business correspondence is not a mystery novel. The business reader does not curl up in a chair by the fireplace, savoring every word in eager anticipation of your thrilling conclusion. Let readers know right off the bat what your purpose is, and why they should care.
4. Have a purpose. In sales, everybody talks about customer “touches”. Reaching out to customers is indeed praiseworthy, but it needs to consist of more than an e-mail saying, “Hi Jan. Haven’t talked to you in awhile. Just wanted to let you know I’m still here.” Give your customer a link to a relevant blog post. Offer a piece of industry insight. Talk about a new product or service.  Irrelevant touches grow annoying. Relevant touches grow valuable.
5. Avoid jargon. We tend to get so wrapped up in our specialty we forget that people at large neither know nor want to know our lingo. What’s clear inside the corporate box might be incomprehensible outside. For example … When I was in packaging, I would find myself slipping into sentences such as, “Because this tape has a 3.0 mil, biaxially-oriented polypropylene backing, it’s tensile and transverse directional strength are vastly superior to the competition.” What I should have said was, “For all practical purposes, this tape is indestructible.” You can never go wrong writing in plain English. 
6. Follow the rules of grammar. Am I stating the obvious? Perhaps, but it’s equally obvious that poor grammar plagues business writing, rendering it vague, confusing, or flat out meaningless. If you’re a business leader, I encourage you to offer the staff basic training in grammar and style. Every writing workshop I’ve conducted has been well received. Whereas employees sometimes resent being “trained”, they unabashedly acknowledge weak writing skills and are eager to improve them. Self improvement? Many excellent writing blogs are at our fingertips. My favorites include Copyblogger, Away With Words, Bad Language, Manage Your Writing, and of course, Confident Writing. What are some of yours?
7. Use a sounding board. Have someone you trust read your composition before you hit “Send”. Often, we don’t see the forest for the trees. We think we’ve written clearly, but we’ve missed a few steps or jumped to a conclusion. My sounding boards have spared me many an embarrassing moment.
8. Be brief. Shakespeare said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Blaise Pascal said, “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” Brad says, “When in doubt, leave it out.” Chipping away the excess makes your point as clear and memorable as an ice sculpture.
9. Mean what you say. Exaggeration, idle threats, and intentional misrepresentation have no place in business writing. Ultimately, credibility and trust are what make colleagues and customers pay attention to your words.

My list is by no means exhaustive, which is a wonderful thing. What makes writing fascinating to me is that one can always learn more, a fact which explains the popularity and importance of blogs like Joanna’s. What has experience taught you about clarity in business writing?

Brad Shorr is a sales and marketing consultant who lives near Chicago, Illinois.
His company, Word Sell, Inc., provides strategic consulting, sales training and coaching,
and business blog and other online marketing services. Source: Confident Writing

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