Hello, Friends!
What is business communication all about? Well, really, it’s about getting messages across in the most effective way we can.
So why is it so hard? Well, partly it’s because we forget that MOST EFFECTIVE should often mean SIMPLEST.
One of the problems with business writing is that we tend to be long winded. For some reason, we think it’s clever to write more words than we need.
Business writers also like to use a lot of jargon to make themselves sound smarter. But it’s not smarter if the message gets lost.
There are lots of ways to shorten what we say and make the message simpler and easier to understand.
Here is a wonderful list of phrases that can be simplified.
Do you use any of these when you write?
Here are some “trendy” things that business writers seem to love, but are totally unnecessary and certainly don’t help communication.
These are my pet hates:
as it were… means nothing at all.
going forwards… “in the future”
negative economic growth… “recession”
outside the box… “creatively” or “imaginatively”
paradigm shift… “change”
proactive… “active”
re-focussing the company’s skill set… “firing people”
so to speak… means nothing at all
Do you have any that you dislike?
Share the ones you hate in the comments!