1. Business Writing Differs
Visuals
Academic writing is mostly narrative.
Business writing employs multiple strategies to convey a message – tables, charts, Powerpoints, and more.
Visuals
Academic writing is mostly narrative.
Business writing uses the best medium to convey the message. Business writing is meant to be attractive and persuasive. It’s written to get the reader’s attention. So, go ahead, use lots of visuals to convey your message. But, don’t get cutesy – stay with professional polish.

2. Business Writing Checklist/Rubric
In Blackboard usually in the Course Documents folder, you’ll find the Business Writing Checklist/Rubric which details items in business writing. Review this list, compare the items to the mentions in your text and in all the content in Blackboard. Contact me for any expansion of information that you need. Use this document as a reminder of the requirements for this new way of writing and thinking.

3. Good Business Writing…
Is clear & concise
Is complete
Is correct
Saves the reader’s time
Builds goodwill
Effective business writing is clear and concise. The language is easily understood by the reader. Use as many words as you need to convey your message - no more and no less.
Be complete. This means include everything the reader needs to know and no more. Too little information is upsetting to the reader and causes a need for him/her to follow up with you. Too much information causes the reader to get bored and stop reading. This is a critical business writing factor to employ.
Correct. It should go without saying, your document is to be error free. If you have errors in your work, you loose credibility. If you loose credibility in business, you have harmed your ability to get ‘things’ done.
Saves the reader’s time. You are to create documents that are quick and easy to read. Don’t make the reader work hard to understand…because they won’t. They’ll stop reading and feel dis-engaged from you – which is what you dont’t want.
Goodwill. Business is relationships. We get work done through each other and with each other. So, when you communicate both in writing and orally, you need to work to build goodwill.

4. Controlling Sentence Length
8 words
15 words
19 words
28 words
Comprehension Rate
100%
90%
80%
50%
In the beginning of moving from academic to business style writing, I often find sentences made of 50 or more words. Yikes. As you can see from the table on the slide, this is not helpful to the reader.
According to Guffey, The American Press Institute data, states that sentences that are 8 words in length are understood by the reader at 100% comprehension. The more words in the sentence the more we don’t comprehend. Notice that at 28 words our comprehension has dropped to 50%.

5. Conventional Formatting
Use 11 font size
Standard margins
Single-spaced
Times News Roman, Veranda, Arial
Follow cultural conventions
Typical business writing is in 11 (Times News Roman, Veranda or Arial), using Microsoft’s standard margins and is single-spaced. Be careful not to choose font’s that cause the reader to feel the message is too formal or too casual.
Follow cultural conventions in your place of employment. That is to say, whatever that particular organization uses as protocol is the format of appropriate choice.

6. Academic-Writing to Business-Writing
Dianne Garrett
Business Communication, MGT309
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Business writing requires new thinking. It’s takes know-how and it takes practice. I look forward to receiving your works.
Writing that Works (2010). Oliu, Brusaw, & Alred