So, you’ve got something you need to write. It might be a report you’ve had to do mountains of research on, until the facts and ideas are crowded and jostling against each other in your head. Or maybe it’s a document for which you have all the necessary facts in your...
It's easy to treat subheadings as a token afterthought once you've gone through the hard work of actually writing your document. But it's worth paying more attention to them than that. They can be an effective tool in drawing your reader in to your full text or...
Given the nature of business today, it's very likely that at some point you'll have to write to someone from another country – or someone whose first language isn't English. (We are making a bit of an assumption – that, since you’re here, you tend to write in...
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Proofreading properly isn’t as easy as it might first appear. You’re constantly fighting with your eyes and brain, both of which want to tell you that everything on the page is just fine. One problem is that our brains are actually a bit too clever. Did you know that...
Things can get complicated when big numbers or long division are involved – not least when you have to write numbers out. The question even extends to the punctuation you should use – especially hyphens. For instance, do you need hyphens in long numbers when you write...
Should we show up in our own business writing? The question of whether it's OK to use first person pronouns like 'I' and 'we' in business reports is a common one. (We know this because it comes up often on our courses.) The short answer is 'yes'. But that isn't the...
Signing off an email with 'Love and kisses' tends to be frowned upon in business correspondence. But that doesn't mean there aren't other ways you can show your reader you care. Or excellent reasons why you might. The power to make an email's recipient (or, indeed,...
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Networking doesn't top many people's lists of favourite activities. Let's face it, the word comes with some baggage. Many people have come to associate it with awkward interactions and self-interested, empty chit-chat at corporate mixers. But networking is simply the...
![How to show empathy in your customer service responses [with examples]](https://www.writing-skills.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/people-on-headsets-customer-support-400x250.jpg)
When you work in customer service, it's inevitable that you'll spend a lot of your time in touch with people who are not too happy with your company right now. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you'll be writing a response to a complaint, as a customer will be...
As a learning and development professional, you'll know only too well the wide range of documents, updates, posts and messages you have to write in the course of your work. And you know that each one plays a part in the success of your learning programmes. So how do...
You may or may not be tempted to visit a tailor the next time you want to buy a suit. But you probably know that if you did, you'd end up with something that fitted you much better than if you went with off-the-rack. The same is true of training. We run scheduled...
The first draft of a document is usually something like the proverbial first pancake: a less-than-ideal shape, a little thin in some parts and undercooked in others. OK, I've stretched the analogy, but you get the point. The best pieces of work don't appear fully...