These are simple insights that can enable you work on your written communication in a business scenario or otherwise. You may be already aware of these, but then you invariably miss out on these.
Who is the recipient?
Presentability of written communication – Good formatting
Are you someone who churns out ugly looking documents? If so, please learn some basics of formatting, typography, word processor usage, etc. There is something called alignment – left, right, justified and then there are things called uppercase, lowercase, spacing, heading and bullet points. You will find these in your word processor (Ms Word or similar software). How you use fonts is also important.
To get your document read– you don’t need to write every text in uppercase, and you don’t need to mix 15 different fonts to create a good looking document. Also, when you copy and paste from somewhere else, please remember that some formatting code, etc., also sticks along the text. Please see that the copy-pasted part integrates well into your document by getting rid of formatting code. Read – Taming unruly formatting in your Word documents.
Essentials for effective written communication – Spelling. Grammar. Sentence construction.
This email (screen grab below) was sent to our sales desk by some executive from a leading corporate.
Seriously! Are they serious about the business? If the sender is a newly appointed executive, was the manager sleeping while this email was being sent? Why can’t they train their employees to write well in the first place? Oh Crap! This is the executive who will take the first shot at evaluating our trainers profile or our proposal.
Sentence construction is a funny thing. We all mess up at some point of time, and we all need to improve. It is a fact that we normally skip the proof reading part. I find it weird, reading some of my old documents and articles and landing up on some absurd grammar, spelling or sentence construction mess up.
It’s always good to get someone to help you with proof reading your written communication – documents. If you don’t have anyone around to help with proof reading, give some gap between writing and proof reading your document. Next time you create a report, write an article, or an email – do proof read.
If you represent a business, please understand that the kind of communication you or your team releases to partners, vendors, customers, etc. reflects on the image of your business.
Image Credit : Hand & keyboard image – sourced from web. For credit / attribution or a take down request please write to me. Note: Also published on LinkedIn (Praveen Mishra)