From the course: Business Writing Principles

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Making your writing conversational

Making your writing conversational

From the course: Business Writing Principles

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Making your writing conversational

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- [Instructor] Effective writing expresses the message in a conversational tone. Stiff, stilted legal terms, and old-fashioned business language can make our documents sound like contracts rather than a simple request or a routine announcement. So how can you achieve the conversational style? Often when communicating in business, we forget that a human being is reading what we've written. A human being who reacts just like you and just like me. I could give you a multi-page list of words to use and words to avoid using, but let's make learning how to achieve the conversational style simple. Ask yourself this one basic question. Think what you were about to write and then ask, "Would I say this if I were speaking face-to-face with someone?" For example, would you ever say to someone in the hallway as you handed that person a packet of material, "Enclosed please find the following items." What would you say, as you handed…

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