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Business Writing

Writing so the reader gets the point on the first pass, not the third.

Business writing is writing built for a reader who is busy, distracted, and deciding within the first line whether to keep reading. That's a different job from writing an essay or a diary entry: the goal isn't to show your reasoning in the order you thought of it, it's to get the point across as fast as the reader needs it. Most workplace writing fails not because the ideas are wrong but because the structure makes the reader work to find them. Good business writing puts the point first, the support second, and cuts everything that isn't doing a job.

Mostly Harmless

The Wall of Text

Believes that thoroughness is measured in paragraph count. Every piece of relevant context, every caveat, every tangential consideration goes in, in the order it occurred to them, with the actual point buried somewhere around paragraph six. The reader is expected to mine for it, unassisted, using nothing but patience and a growing sense of dread. Genuinely offended when someone asks "so what's the ask here?" after reading the whole thing — the ask was in there, technically, load-bearing and unmarked, like rebar in concrete.

The Passive Voice Diplomat

Writes sentences where nothing is ever done by anyone. "Mistakes were made." "It was decided that the deadline would move." "Feedback has been received." Every sentence technically describes an event while carefully avoiding the question of who caused it, who decided it, or who should act on it. The effect is a message that reads as informative and somehow tells you nothing you can act on, composed entirely of things that simply happened, to no one, by nobody's hand.

The CC-Everyone Diplomat

Solves every ambiguity about ownership by adding more names to the recipient list. Uncertain who should handle something? Cc the whole department and let the group figure it out. The message technically reaches everyone who might be responsible, which is functionally identical to reaching no one, since everyone assumes someone else on the thread has it, and the CC-Everyone Diplomat privately considers the matter closed the moment the message sends.

The Friendly Fog Machine

Wraps every request in so much warmth, enthusiasm, and exclamation points that the actual ask dissolves into the niceness. "Hope you're doing well!! Just a tiny thought, no pressure at all, whenever you get a chance, if it's not too much trouble :)" — three sentences in, still no verb indicating what they actually want or by when, and by the time one arrives it's wrapped in enough hedging to be easily mistaken for a suggestion someone could safely ignore.

Scenarios

You need three people to review a document by Friday. What would you write — a message that opens with context about why the document exists, or one that opens with the ask and the deadline, with context available below for whoever needs it?

A stakeholder asks for a status update on a project that's behind schedule. What would you do — write a message that leads with everything that went right before mentioning the delay, or lead with the current status and the recovery plan, in that order?

You're documenting a decision that reversed an earlier one, and you know it'll be read by someone who wasn't in the room when either decision was made. What would you write — a message that assumes the reader remembers the history, or one that states the current decision first and then gives just enough history to explain the change?

Takeaway

  • Put the point in the first sentence. Everything else supports it or gets cut.
  • State who should do what by when — explicitly, with a name and a date, not implied by who's on the thread.
  • Use active voice: name the actor. "I decided" or "the team decided," not "it was decided."
  • Cut a sentence if removing it changes nothing the reader needs to know or do.
  • Reread your message and ask: could someone who's busy get the ask from just the first two lines? If not, move the ask up.

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