Business writing must focus on the audience

The essence of all good business writing is to begin with an understanding of the audience.

It's almost impossible to spend too much time getting to know the people you are trying to reach.

As with advertising, if business writing is to have an impact, the writer has to connect with the audience. To walk in the shoes of the audience members. To understand their wants and their needs.

If you are writing a report for your Chief Executive, you have to think clearly about her requirements. What does she want to read about? What results really interest her? How much time will she have?

Imagine you are a retailer and you hold a special after-hours opening for your gold card loyalty members. If you write a report of this event for your manager, that report will almost certainly be very different from a report in the Loyalty Membership Newsletter. It's all a matter of the audience.

In such a case, your boss would, presumably, want to know about the sales figures during the event, the costs and the breakeven point. Positive or negative feedback from attendees would also probably be of great interest. In contrast, very little of that content would be featured in the newsletter because the newsletter has a different audience.

Generally, business writing has some accepted formats, such as how to organise memos, reports, letters and newsletter articles. In addition, business writing has a number of generally accepted practices: writing concisely, using bullets and headings, employing short sentences, creating brief paragraphs, and getting to the point quickly.

Many specialist writers say that the critical point about business writing is that it needs to be in ‘plain English'.

Plain English refers to:

• Writing in a way that gives a co-operative, motivated person a good chance of understanding the document at first reading.

• Plus, the reader will understand the text in the same sense that the writer meant it to be understood.

To achieve these goals, the writer has to pitch the language at a level of sophistication that suits the readers. And it means using an appropriate structure and layout to help readers navigate through the document. However, it does not mean always using simple words at the expense of the most accurate words, or writing whole documents in kindergarten language.

Business writing needs to use words that the writer is sure the intended reader will understand.

Some top tips for keeping your business writing user-friendly include:

• Over the whole document, make average sentence length no more than 15 to 20 words.
• Use only as many words as you really need.
• Prefer the active voice unless there's a good reason for using the passive.
• Use the clearest, crispest, liveliest verbs to express your thoughts.
• Reduce cross-references to a minimum.
• Avoid sexist usage.
• In letters, avoid dull first sentences and formula finishes.

In brief, business writing must be reader friendly. If it's not, your efforts to communicate may very well fail.

Action Words is premium business writing company in Melbourne. Action words not only offers business writing and letter writing, but also business writing courses and SEO copy.