Writing for Business

Professionalism, Integrity & Power

Ellen Jovin

• Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781529303452
• eBook ISBN: 9781529303476
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

Build essential skills and write with confidence at work! Immediately practical guide to better business writing designed to help you develop a clear, direct, natural communication style that supports rather than obscures what you want to say. Writing for Business covers writing principles that are relevant for a wide range of business documents, including email, letters, memos, reports, proposals, and more, while also offering editing tips to ensure you come across as professional and polished. The book features examples and tips straight from the workplace.

Chapter 1

Getting to the Point
in Email

In email, you have two opportunities to get to the point quickly: (1) in the subject line and (2) your main idea, equivalent to the idea of the thesis you may remember from when you were in school—that one sentence in the opening that summed up the point of the whole paper.

Short or long, in most email messages, you should skip a line after your salutation, between paragraphs, and before your closing (e.g., Regards). You do not need to indent. The email below illustrates appropriate spacing.

To:	John Smith <[email protected]>
From:	Jim Plant <[email protected]>
Subject:	Status of Invoice #532

Hi John,

I am following up on invoice #532 (see email below). I just checked our records, and I do not yet see payment. Could you let me know the payment status?

Thank you very much.

Regards,

Jim

Jim Plant

Director, Marketing | XYZ, Inc.

123 Anywhere Street, New York, NY 10024

[email protected] | xyz-inc.com

[phone]

Sample Email Format

A note: from this point on, the signature block (i.e., the contact information you see at the bottom) will be excluded from email examples unless the discussion addresses that part of the email specifically. That does not mean you should exclude them from email, because you usually shouldn’t!

1.1 Email Subject Lines

The subject line of an email needs to be brief yet descriptive. It is by scanning subject lines that many people can find your message among a slew of other incoming messages competing for their attention.

Below are examples of bad and good subject lines with commentary on each.

Bad Subject Lines
Example	Commentary
Meeting	Unhelpful when reader is trying to decide whether this email is something that needs immediate attention. Useless when someone is searching for it even a day later.
technology report	Too vague. Lack of capitalization looks careless and unprofessional.
Report on technology expenses for the third quarter of 2019 attached	Too long. Might get truncated on the screen. Syntax is convoluted.
I’m not sure where the meeting is can you send me the address?	Don’t write your email in the subject line. Also, don’t write run-ons in subject lines (or anywhere else).
Language proposals	Too vague. Proposals for what event? Are the proposals being submitted with this email, or is this a request for proposals?
[Empty subject line]	Subject-free emails tend to look like spam, and the lack of information is annoying to recipients. Seems lazy.

Good Subject Lines
Example	Commentary
1/13/20 Schedule for Cleveland Marketing Meeting	Professional capitalization. Specific information with date. Good length. Specifies the aspect of meeting being discussed.
Technology Expense Report Q3 2019	Information presented compactly and in a way that is easy to process.
Language Enthusiast Conference 2021: Call for Presentation Proposals	Uses a colon effectively to break up information and make it more readable. Precise language.

For capitalization of your subject line, you have two main options:

•Capitalize the subject line as you would a title, beginning everything except minor words with capital letters.

•Capitalize the first word of the subject, as well as any proper nouns, but begin all or most other words with lowercase letters. This makes sense especially if your subject line is closer to a short sentence than a simple noun phrase.

The decision is a stylistic and aesthetic one, based on your own preferences and the context.

In managing an ongoing dialogue, it can sometimes be helpful to change subject lines to reflect evolving subject matter. Alternatively, begin a new dialogue.

1.2 The Subject Is Not Part of Your Email Message

Most email messages are no longer than a few paragraphs, and many messages are much shorter—a few lines. There is no minimum length requirement. The ideal length is this: as long as you need to get your point across.

No matter the length of the email, the subject line is not a substitute for a main idea in the email itself. People who write their emails as though the subject line is part of the message often confuse their readers. Here is an example of such an email:

To:	Ali Gold <[email protected]>
From:	Jim Plant <[email protected]>
Subject:	Proposal is now with the client . . .

. . . so let’s start on the next one this afternoon, okay?

Confusing Use of Subject Line

If the reader starts reading in the freeform ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction A Philosophy of Workplace Writing
• Chapter 1. Getting to the Point in Email
• Chapter 2. Email Salutations
• Chapter 3. Email Closings
• Chapter 4. Email Models and Makeovers
• Chapter 5. Mind Your Email Details
• Chapter 6. Special Topics in Email
• Chapter 7. The Creative Process: Idea Generation
• Chapter 8. The Structure of Longer Documents
• Chapter 9. Notes on Different Document Types
• Chapter 10. The Art of the Sentence
• Chapter 11. Word Choice and Writing Dynamism
• Chapter 12. Writing Myths
• Chapter 13. Editing Tips
• Conclusion
• About the Author
• About Syntaxis
• Index