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School Days: Effective Business Writing

By: Julie Steininger | 09/02/2008

The day after Labor Day – in my book, that should be the beginning of the school year. But at Standing Partnership, we encourage and support a learning environment all year round, both for our employees and the many audiences that have invited us to the front of their classrooms.

I recently stepped out of my “Summer Friday” mode into my “wow, I am a professional and someone cares about what I have to say” mode to discuss effective business writing with the students in Saint Louis University's John Cook School of Business one-year MBA program.

While writing effectively seems like it should be second nature to MBA students, corporate executives and even communications professionals, we all could use the occasional brush-up regarding the importance of critical thinking as it relates to business writing, how to organize information and how to use that information to write concisely.

Two of the most common mistakes we all make when diving into a writing assignment are forgetting the purpose of our writing and forgetting the needs of our audience. What is our writing supposed to get the audience to do? What does the audience need to understand to take the desired action?

As we lift our pens (or tap our keyboards) to tackle “this semester's writing assignments,” let's not forget that regardless of our academic backgrounds or occupations, standards and consistency are critical to writing effectively.

Posted in Public Relations