Business WritingBrainstorm first to make your business writing more concise and professionalBusiness Writing needs to be creative and well written just like other writing. In fact, poor writing in business can have a disastrous impact on your company's reputation. Business writing needs to be clear, concise and error-free. Brainstorm to be sure you have all the keywords and ideas organized for understanding and completeness. When a prospect or customer receives a document that is well written, their impression of you and your company is reinforced. Business majors have not always studied writing in school nor seen themselves as proficient writers. Some of the ideas below may help get you past "business writer's block." How clear and concise was your last business proposal or letter?Look at some proposals, letters and emails that you have written lately and be honest with yourself about the quality of writing. If it could use some improvement, here are some ways to approach your next writing effort. Brainstorm about the purpose of the document. A clear purpose helps you focus your writing and makes the result easier to read and understand.Use either mind-mapping or clustering to get down all the key ideas and keywords first in a flowing natural way and then organized by sub-topics.
Clustering
is more free form letting your mind guide your hand to jot down all associations and connections to the main topic. Then using those keywords you can write a concise and organized document. A great book on the topic is Writing the Natural Way, by Gabriele Rico If you feel a more structured method fits better, you can use mind-mapping. With mind-mapping you organize as you go by choosing the appropriate topics and subtopics, adding keywords based on the topics. There are lots of mind-mapping hints, ideas, and tools on the page on
mind-mapping.
If your document is to be short, a quick hand drawn mind-map is best. If you are going to do an extensive document such as a proposal, and especially if you are collaborating on the project, you may prefer an online version of mind-mapping that can be saved, updated, and shared. There are many
mind-mapping software programs available.
If you are developing a presentation, you might find screen writing methods and tools helpful. Take a look at brainstorming specifically for screen writing. It's a guide to screenwriting software, books andsupplies on the net. Reviews, resources,retailers, articles and more. Writing an essayWriting an essay in school or to submit to a journal requires the same power brainstorming before you get started as other business writing would require. You first word your subject as a questions making sure that the question is clear and complete.Then you power brainstorm for potential solutions to the problem including ones that may seem too expensive or impossible when first uttered. As described in other places on this web site and especially in the book, Power Brainstorming , bringing together a few people with very different thinking styles and backgrounds will improve the variance in solutions suggested. If you can't pull together such a helpful team, consider using the different styles and backgrounds as shoes to step into while thinking of responses. Click to return from Business Writing to the Home page.
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