Tips for the ‘cowboy’ writer

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Whether or not you’ve taken our tongue-in-cheek style test, if you write like George Dubya speaks, then please read on.

Here’s what our three ‘A’ style test sentences look like when put together:

‘The people supposed to be looking after our PCs misunderestimated what they had to do. From now on no-one can cancellate the deal without 3 days’ notice! If what we’re saying resignates with you and even if it doesn’t it’d be grate to hear from you ;).’

There’s Plain English and there’s plain unprofessional! Writing like this is the equivalent of not thinking before you speak. At best you might earn yourself some free exposure – but as the latest Facebook ‘funny’, at what cost to your reputation?

On a positive note, at a mere 46 words you certainly win on brevity. Nor could you be accused of speaking down to readers. If you want to convince people that you are worth paying attention to, though, here are some tips on what you most definitely should NOT do.

  • Write without thinking – All business documents have a purpose, an intended audience and a point to get across. A successful communicator takes all three into account when deciding how and what to write.
  • Make up words – Shakespeare may have made an art of it, but these days making up words is more likely to shout ignorance than inspired creativity. While I confess to inventing ‘cancellate’ for the purpose of this demonstration, you may thank George W Bush for misunderestimated and resignates.
  • Be careless with spelling and punctuation – If you can’t be bothered to get these right, what else don’t you bother with? That’s the impression sloppy writing gives readers. Rightly or wrongly, mistakes of this kind also cause people to question our intelligence and ability.
  • Blame others – Taking responsibility when things go wrong, especially when they are not our fault, earns respect. There is, though, a solution where no-one need take the blame and that is by using the depersonalising passive voice – e.g. the breakdown was caused by a fault in the IT system.(See *Be active below for why we do not normally advocate use of the passive.)
  • Use contractions – With the advent of social media many of the old rules of formal writing no longer hold sway. Nevertheless using contractions such as we’re and doesn’t in business documents still tends to be frowned upon, while awkward-sounding constructions like it’d should always be avoided.
  • Be too casual – Contractions we have covered above, but also included here are what could be considered dismissive terms and phrases (e.g. the people, PCs), numbers, exclamation marks and emoticons.

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*Be active – Active verbs make it clear who is doing the acting. Passive verbs make you sound impersonal and aloof. So usually better to say, e.g. we currently use instead of is currently used; and, you can contact us instead of we can be contacted.