Myth #1 - It’s all about language

This is the first article in a series in which we clear up some common myths about business writing. Let’s start with language skills.

Myth — good language skills are the most critical aspect of business writing.

Reality — they are certainly important, but a lot less than we might think.

An article appeared recently in the Financial Times entitled The rules for clear, effective business writing. Alas, it was anything but clear and effective. On the contrary, it was long, meandering and convoluted. And it focused entirely on language, thereby implying that business writing revolves around grammar, punctuation and sentence structure.

Are language skills important? Of course they are. But — and here’s the rub — that won’t matter one jot if a person decides not to read what you’ve written, or starts and gives up halfway. When someone makes a conscious decision not to read something, it’s rarely because of poor language. Here’s why.

To read or not to read

Here’s the decision process you go through when you receive a typical piece of business writing:

As you can see, good language skills only come into play towards the end of the chain, at the UNDERSTAND stage. Before that, some rather more basic decisions are taking place around whether you’re going to read the document at all. So, it’s no surprise that a lot of business writing never even gets opened — or once opened, is put aside after a quick glance.

To see why people might decide not to read what you’ve written, let’s clear up the next myth, which is Myth #2 — If it’s important, they will read it.