Introduction to Business Writing: Rules v. Guidelines Video Lecture | Learn and Master: Business Writing - Communication

I'm so excited today to talk to you
about a set of tools for business
writing that's going to help you improve
your business writing skills now the
first thing in order to help you
understand business writing is to
differentiate it between creative and
academic writing this writing business
writing is not creative you don't have
to wax prosaic we don't even want you to
you don't have to be poetic it's not
like academic writing where you are
research-based as in writing something
for a scientific publication we want for
your business writing simply to help you
relay information that is clear specific
and direct you want to help your
business employees to move from point A
to point C in as little time and with
the most efficiency possible so that you
can be action-oriented and help people
get things done so we're going to give
you eight tools that are going to help
you construct clear concise messages so
that you communicate with power and
efficiency now in order to do that we're
going to give you some rules and we're
going to give you some guidelines rules
are those things that if you break them
you're actually going to go to grammar
Jail which means these are bonafide
rules that are right or wrong you want
to understand what those rules are so
that you don't break them they're
important on the other hand you have
guidelines these are style guidelines
these are things that aren't necessarily
rules that will send you to jail to
grammar Jail but these are guidelines
that when implemented at the right time
and place
in business writing are going to help
you construct clearer more effective
messages so now I'm going to illustrate
for you one of those grammar rules that
if you break it actually changes the
meaning of the sentence
now what I'm trying to say is that John
owns a small business he's a small
business owner but in actuality the
sentence as written because I haven't
correctly used my adjectives in the
sentence is saying that John is a little
tiny business owner and I'm not trying
to say that he's a small business owner
I'm trying to say that he's an owner who
does small business so to fix this I'm
going to add in a - we'll talk more
about this later but one of our rules
states that we have to use adjectives
correctly and in this case in order to
link these two adjectives together I
need a hyphen
so break that rule you've actually
broken a grammar rule and you change the
meaning of the sentence now let me show
you an example of something that's
simply a guideline where a grammar rule
is not being broken but if you violate
the guideline you weaken your sentence
one of our guidelines states that we
want to use strong subjects that have a
strong relationship with the action
taking place in the sentence this
sentence is a weak example of that
principle it is important that we
deliver the documents let's first do a
word count and then we're going to look
at the subject verb relationship so this
sentence has one two three four five six
seven eight words in it again in
business remember we want to get people
from point A to point C as efficiently
and quickly as possible so reducing word
count typically is something that we
want to do I'm going to now circle the
subject of the sentence and underline
the verb it is well it is a Wimpy
subject it's weak and it's not really an
actor or the action doing something it's
simply a weak pronoun so I'm going to
eliminate this and restructure my
sentence
now I've rewritten the sentence with a
strong subject and it says we must
deliver the documents clear direct
language and in fact instead of using
eight words I'm only using five I'm
delivering my meaning faster and with
better clarity because now I've
indicated who is actually doing the
action that's a guideline it is
important to deliver the documents
doesn't break a grammar rule you won't
go to grammar Jail but you are being
inefficient so in the next set of series
of videos we're going to give you both
rules and guidelines that are going to
help you write clear strong powerful
business writing