10 Comments

The early parts of my career were in "corporate communications" and at an ad agency and I learned so much about how to get a point across quickly and concisely (and also saw lots of examples of when people take forever to get to their point in writing, and how ineffective that is). It's a good exercise to have to fit your words into a small square on the back of a brochure.

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Such a metaphor!

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A gem of a post, Mark - thank you! Saving it for reference!

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Great! I was going for emerald so mission accomplished!

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There’s business writing, and then there’s corporate word vomit. The latter is of no value. I was once worried about How To Email At Work and I very quickly realized a lot of people who’ve been doing the whole business writing thing longer than I’ve been alive are not good at it. The reader in me despairs at the quality of most writing that arrives in my inbox. It’s always nice when someone emails you and is good at communicating!

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It's true, there's a lot of writing out there that looks like someone spewed all over the page and made no effort to clean it up.

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This is why I hate coming in to a workplace and being told "here are our document templates and examples of each". More often than not, I completely ignore them and just do my own thing.

Usually the people who care about using document templates are the ones who don't know how to write and need a "paint-by-numbers" approach to writing. That's never effective -- I'll start pointing people to this essay to help explain why. :-)

PS: usually, the result of me "doing my own thing" becomes the new template.

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The nearly astronomical volume of emails I've sent pales in comparison to the number I've received ... the result of the 'Reply All' button that, seriously, should be removed and tucked away somewhere where you only access it on the rare occasion when required.

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Your business writing advice absolutely works across the genres. I shudder to think of how many emails I’ve written in my corporate past. And while I do not miss business writing, I definitely learned precision and how to keep the message on point and concise, which I carry into micro/flash writing; haiku; and my latest venture--foodwriting.

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