Page 35 - How to write effective business English your guide to excellent professional communication by Fiona Talbot

24 How to Write Effective Business English

It’s true that sometimes you just have to write the way your line
manager suggests. But it’s always better to know the reasons why
they consider one way better than another. Even in UK English you
can write certain words in two ways, both of which are correct.
You can write ‘recognize’ or ‘recognise’, or ‘judgement’ or ‘judg-
ment’ – and it can be personal or company preference that dictates
which you use. If you don’t understand the reasons why you must
write a certain way, your manager owes it to you to explain why.
But you also owe it to yourself to ask why.
It’s in your own interest to know if you make mistakes. Readers
may comment on them. In business you can’t afford to ‘bury your
head in the sand’ – in other words, just because you don’t acknowl-
edge something, that does not mean it does not exist! Problems do
occur and every business needs to identify them. How else can we
seek solutions and get things right?
Making mistakes may be human, but we do need to focus on
quality and it’s best to define what we mean by this. Does it mean
‘top quality’ or simply ‘acceptable’? You might be surprised at the
number of businesses who don’t define what they expect the qual-
ity of their written output to be – not just from their point of view
but from their customers’ perspective. This lines up with one aspect
of Step 1 on the ladder of success, described in Chapter 2.

Further costs of getting your writing

wrong

We saw how things can go wrong when we don’t update written
messages in the light of changed circumstances. The following sce-
nario also shows other costs businesses can pay for getting writing
wrong.
I submitted a database entry on my business to a company for
inclusion in a Europe-wide guide. Their fee seemed reasonable,
given the likely exposure to new business. I had to follow their
format with limited word count, so my entry was as follows: