Embellishments, Jargon, and Buzzwords

The best business writing is simple and easy to understand. Even if you love baseball and thrill to read about latest record broken , you can't assume your audience shares that enthusiasm for the Boys of Summer.

Here are some examples of wretched buzzword-filled writing that only served to annoy and alienate the reader. Doesn't the notion of disruptive ideation methodology appeal to you? No? Any idea what it is? I'm guessing the writer wanted to say something about how their company approaches problem solving in creative and unexpected ways. But why not just say that?

Writing Guidelines - some things are universal

Problogger is a well established site for bloggers who hope to make a living blogging. Granted, there are relatively few people who are successful enough to give up day jobs to do this, but this site has great suggestions and ideas about how you might pursue making money with a blog. As you might imagine, good blog writing isn't that different from any other good writing. Here's a post from that site with five rules for good writing. The first two shouldn't surprise anyone: revise and proofread.

On a related note, here's a persuasive piece that suggests that even if your writing isn't perfect, the key to getting readers is providing great content. After all, the Federal Tax Code probably doesn't have a lot of grammatical errors, but for most of us, it's hardly scintillating reading.

Take a Deep Breath, Count to Ten

Is business communication suffering from hastiness? That would be the claim in this article about how communication is changing. The examples noted are mostly of emails fired off in haste, but the consequences are alarming: everything from a one day 22 point stock drop to a some very bad press. The solutions suggested by the author are nothing new or fancy, just a return to the basics: focus on the audience, practice good writing skills, be sure to edit and proofread your work before you hit the send button. But you knew that, didn't you?