LETTERS

Effective Letter Writing

The average business professional spends 3 hours and 47 minutes a day on written communication.

Business readers are impatient. Since they generally have to read a lot of material in a given day, they don't like to sift through excess verbiage and lengthy discourses. They want rapid access to the information contained in the correspondence that is sent to them.

Business readers ask two questions when they pick up a letter addressed to them:

• What is this about?
  
• What (if anything) do I need to do?

Good business writing is clear and lean, both suited to its purpose as well as economic in its use of words.

Anticipating these questions, effective business writers produce clear, concise letters that contain only relevant information and waste no words on useless cliches. Their writing activities are very efficient because they follow a writing process that includes:

Good writing is an essential skill because business does business in writing. Those who write well will do well in business.

1. Planning the document--determining the document's purpose (informative or persuasive) and analyzing the potential readers
   
2. Brainstorming the document content--recording thoughts quickly without judgment and seeking a quantity of ideas
   
3. Stating the main point early in the document--defining document purpose and subordinating references to previous documents, meetings, and conversations
   
4. Organizing the document logically and visibly--basing that organization on the document's purpose and the readers' needs, and using emphasis techniques to highlight key concepts
   
5. Editing and revising the documentusing a systematic review process to ensure organizational clarity, content accuracy, and grammatical correctness

When writers consistently employ these principles of effective business writing, their readers understand clearly why the letters were written and what should be done after reading them.