1. Style
Jennifer Harrison
Alex Park
Jenna Sherman
Hyun Yoo

2. Know your Audience
The key to any effective writing is to know your audience.

3. Before you compose anything, think about the recipient of
your document.
What are you trying to say
to this person?

4. After you decide what message you are trying to convey,
make sure the message is brief.
Strive for clarity and avoid vagueness!
Be precise!

5. Grammar
Nothing can kill your credibility faster than
grammatical and punctuation errors.
Especially in formal documents.

6. Many errors occur simply from insufficient
proofreading.

7. Proofread and have someone else
proofread your report.
You cannot proofread
your own work with 100% accuracy!

8. Not all errors derive from proofreading
mistakes. Some are common grammatical
mistakes.
Such as...

9. ● Misuse of apostrophes and commas
○ Its, it’s
● Contractions in formal pieces
○ Using won’t, I’ll, etc.
● Ending sentences in prepositions
○ ie. “I do not know of”
● Incomplete sentences
○ ie. “Since he likes to”

10. So our words of advice…
Invest in some good reference books
and use them!

11. Effective Use of Passive Voice
Active voice, active voice!!! It seems so many teachers
are shouted at us.
In general we are told to
eliminate passive voice
as much as possible

12. But….
Like every rule in the english
language there is an exception!

13. Effective use of the passive voice in business
writing is an art.

14. Sometimes you will have to
write a report or memo
describing a disaster that was
caused from someone who
made a mistake.

15. Passive voice can describe the mistake without
directly putting blame on someone.
(this is especially useful when said
person is your superior!)

16. Overall, passive voice should be eliminated
(you can check your document’s passive voice
% through Word) but there ARE times where
the use of passive voice can increase the tact
and diplomacy in your document.

17. Gender Neutral Writing
Under traditional style, “he” includes both male
and female actions.

18. Some will switch on and off using “he” or “she”
but this is confusing and offensive to the
opposite gender.

19. So..
what do you do?
Just eliminate the pronouns
all together!

20. If you are writing a letter when you do not know
the gender of the person you are addressing,
use their title
...such as “Dear Editor”

21. Informal/Formal??
Get writing samples from CEO or top officers of
your company

22. Formality in the workplace has relaxed a little,
but not so much in the banking and legal world.

23. If your upper leaders use formality in office
notes, you should to.
If in doubt, always be formal in an office memo
or letter, especially when writing to a superior.

24. At the end of the day, the goal is
communication. Communication is best
achieved by writing in the preferred style of the
recipient of your document.

25. Conclusion
With the trend towards instant and global communications
via computer, a company's written communications and
marketing literature impacts a larger audience than it ever
has before