Welcome to esiq.org
|
Business writing: What it is and Tips to Help You
(business writing)
Business writing is much more precise and less detail oriented than other styles of writing. In writing for a business there are a few elements you must know. Your knowledge or lack there of these elements can make or break your business writing career. Your goal for business writing is to strive for clarity and precision, yet not be too vague or elaborate. Examples of business writing would be emails, business plans, brochures, and many more. Virtually anything writings that pertain to a business are classified as business writing.
When people read business writings they are not only looking for what happened and why, but how you are handling the situation at hand. A person reading a business writing that has an organized and concise style with an active tone is going to heed a much better result and give confidence that any matters will be taken care of.
Organize your thoughts. The more organized you are the quicker and easier it will be for you to put your words in a decisive and orderly style. Your writing should be grammatically correct along with the proper usage of capitalization and punctuation. These errors can cause misinterpretations amongst the readers of your business writings. An example of correct and incorrect punctuations would be “We are missing the actress Jane.” Or “We are missing the actress, Jane.” While both are correct, they mean two entirely different things.
Business writing is backwards or upside down from other writings. You start with the ending and then give a brief synopsis on how you got to that point. You may include other avenues that were considered and why they were not chosen.
Have a positive attitude. Even if you are conveying a message that has on outcome other than optimal a positive tone will bring a much better response. Tell your readers what good came about from the outcome. Tell them what you can do with these results. For example a non-profit agency held a fundraiser. They were hoping to bring in $25,000 for building repairs and play ground equipment. Unfortunately, they only got $15,000. Positive tone writing would be “Our fundraiser was successful. We can now begin building repairs.” Or “The new playground equipment will be delivered tomorrow due to our successful fundraiser.” Even though it was not as much of a success as you would have liked, by keeping a positive attitude and showing people what can be done will promote a positive attitude in the future. A negative tone might be something like “Since our fundraiser was not as successful as we had hoped, we will have to choose between playground equipment and builder repairs.” This approach could be unfavorable to future fundraisers because it seems as though you are unthankful for what you did get. Being positive shows your appreciation for the hard work or donations that you have received.
Don’t play the blame game. Even if you know whose fault it is a deal fell through there is no need to start a mud-flinging contest. Surely, the person responsible is already aware of the situation and chances are so is everyone else. Down the line they are not going to remember whose fault it was, but they will remember who was naming names. This is not only very unprofessional, it is malicious and that is not how you would like to be talked about.
Finally using an active voice will promote a better reception to your business writing than a passive one. An active voice shows that you are in control and are aware of how or why things are going to happen.
Examine the Interior of Publishing Companies (publishing companies) The publishing company can be seen as the backbone of the writing world. Written words seemingly would not have been able to be seen without publishing companies. The publishing company provides a great service to society by publishing and displaying the work of authors. The existence of publishers is obvious, but the interior of the publishing world and its companies is unknown by many people. Publishing is known as an apprenticeship industry, which means that most of the knowledge needed by a publishing professional will be learned with hands-on experience on the job. Generally, information that is learned in one department of a company is useful throughout the publishing house, which gives professionals the opportunity to move between departments. There are many levels to a publishing company and they all have different functions. The administrative level is the first level of any company, and has many responsibilities in the functioning publishing companies. The administrative department is responsible for managing daily operations for publishing executives and management. This responsibility involves interaction with all of the employees from all of the departments, as well as interaction with authors and agents. The administrative employees are required to manage the calendar, maintain organized files, screen/prioritize mail, draft correspondence, make travel arrangements and prepare itineraries, process expense reports, take minutes at meetings and prepare reports. A position as an administrative employee allows a person to have a high-level of understanding of a publishing company, while being visible to executives. Advertising is another division of publishing companies. Most publishing companies have in-house advertising agencies that purchase media space and create and design advertisements. In a publishing company, the advertising department works closely with the marketing directors, editors, and publishers of titles to create an advertising plan that will promote sales of an individual book. Every advertising plan requires research and negotiation to provide the best venues and the most cost-effective methods of advertisement. These employees also work closely with graphic designers, commercial sales representatives, printing presses, and internal staff to facilitate the run of advertisements. The editorial department of a publishing house is one of the most important departments. This department acquires, negotiates, develops, and edits book projects for publication. The daily activities of editorial employees include preparing acquisitions for transmittal to the production department, developing and maintaining relationships with authors, booksellers, and agents, performing general administrative duties, participating in editorial, design and marketing meetings, and reading and evaluating submissions by writing reader’s reports. The editorial department must work closely with all departments. Another division of publishing companies is the marketing department. The marketing department has the responsibility of creating, preparing, and establishing marketing strategies and policies for each title by coordinating the efforts of the publicity, promotion, advertising, online, and sales departments. The marketing department is responsible for preparing all sales presentation materials, audio recordings, fact sheet collation, and promotions, creating and producing additional account-specific presentation materials, researching and establishing relations with new markets, and planning and maintaining sales and marketing schedules. The publisher’s office is also an important department for many publishing companies. The publishers oversee the life cycle of a title from acquisition to production, and onto the sales force. Publishers are responsible for making executive decisions for all titles within assigned imprints while staying within any cost restraints. This department is also responsible for sponsoring book projects, strategies, and initiatives for the publishing company. The subsidiary rights and permissions department is also one of the most important divisions of a publishing company. This department finds additional sources of profit for a given title, including serials, book clubs, and paperback, audio and e-book rights. The daily activities for the subsidiary department include writing submission letters, sending manuscripts, proposals, and books to foreign publishers and agents, coordinating co-productions with other publishers, working with book clubs and sales for special editions, and maintaining relationships with other publishing companies. Publishing companies have many divisions, including, sales, purchasing, publicity, promotion, production, managing editorial, legal contracts Internet development, information technology, human resources, finance, art and design, and audio. The Makings of a Magazine: Do They Include You? (writing magazine articles) Magazines are everywhere. They are published on nearly every subject you can imagine, in duplicate and triplicate and more. All that a start-up magazine needs is a niche and an audience. While there may be hundreds of cooking magazines out there, a new one could come up if it should cover cooking for your pets. In fact, there may already be such a magazine in existence. The niche is cooking for pets. The audience is those people who want the healthiest foods for their pets and are willing to put the time and effort into making it for them. If you are interested in writing magazine articles, you’ll be sure to find one that is perfectly suited to your interests and abilities as a writer. Because there are so many magazines, it won’t be difficult to find one that you will enjoy becoming a part of. What You Should Know Magazines survive on advertising. The advertisers pay because the content is good enough that readers will invest in the glossy covers again and again. The best way to find a healthy magazine is to look through the racks for thick publications. They will only be full of content if they are full of advertisements. The big magazines can afford to pay their writers more, but they can also afford to pay only the best writers. Even though there is quite a lot of space to fill with content, you may have a hard time getting published in major magazines at first. Smaller magazines do not have quite the readership and so they also do not have quite the advertisement content. The space will be limited and the pay will be lower, but these magazines will be more open to new writing talent nonetheless. The More You Know, the Better When it comes to a writing career, the more you know the better off you will be. It is not hard to figure out that you will have the best chances for publication if you can write on a variety of topics. You should not limit yourself to a small area of expertise. Work to become an expert in every topic you come across. There is no possible way of course to be an expert in every area of human knowledge, but it will help you in writing magazine articles to learn every new piece of information that you can. For example, if you were to send a query to a health and fitness magazine about writing a short piece about general mountain biking tips they may accept it. They may also then request additional information about the pros and cons of using a road bike on mountain trails. If you only know about mountain bikes, you’ll be stuck. If you have worked on broadening your horizons though, you’ll be able to produce the work that the magazine editor requires. Getting On Staff Querying magazines is a way to get published, but if you need a more stable job, you may be interested in getting on staff with a magazine. Writing magazine articles is a talent. If you can consistently bring an editor what he is looking for, you might have a chance. To improve your chances, in addition to writing effectively, it will help to have some significant education behind you. If you are serious about making it to the masthead of your favorite magazine, it’s time to go to school. A degree will help your credibility as a writer and will help you open doors into the magazine publication world. Writing magazine articles takes a special kind of writer. You have to have a feel for what people are interested in reading about. The magazine content will help you understand how to write for a particular magazine and audience. You can also improve your chances of writing accepted articles by improving your knowledge base. Don’t be picky about what you’re willing to learn and you could go very far in the writing business. |