Words At Work: Business Writing In Half The Time With Twice The Power

Good writing has long been undervalued in the workplace. After all, business letters, memos, proposals, and the like are about communication, not literature. And, true, the readership probably couldn't care less about sentence structure or tone. Still, something inspires the recipient of such material to either read it or toss it, and that something is very often the quality of the writing. Words at Work is a practical guide by the founder of a company that offers writing services for businesses: Susan Benjamin. She believes that the average letter has to be "captivating within the first five words." She hauls away tired phrases ("I enjoyed speaking with you on the phone last week" and "Our company is committed to meeting your needs"), clichés, and jargon, encouraging businesspeople to be specific, fresh, anecdotal, and grammatical in their writing. Benjamin's analogies may make you cringe ("Go for ordinary, clean words, which your reader can glide across like a skater over ice"; or "'To whom it may concern' is as old and bland as Lawrence Welk reruns"), but her system won't. Her strategies are easy to follow and are sure to make for crisper corporate correspondence.