by Sharon Ernst | Sep 16, 2024 | Business Writing Skills
Writing with numbers, what…what is this doing here??? This is a blog on business writing! Yes, it is a blog on business writing, but it is more so a blog on writing well, and that means being clear and concise so you can easily communicate your message when you’re writing with numbers. To be honest, it’s easy to get numbers wrong, and when that happens, our writing and therefore our message is affected. So let’s take a look at some rules for using numbers, plus some ways to make sure our writing is always clear, no matter how...
by Sharon Ernst | Sep 13, 2024 | Business Writing Skills, The Copywriter's Corner
Last time, I showed you an example of word puking from a restaurant website. It was a whole lot of fancy words that said essentially nothing that would help the reader understand what kind of food or experience they could expect. This time we have a run-on sentence—71 words—that does say something, but the reader gets lost in it because it is so darn long and confusing. Here’s the sentence, with brand names removed: The auto industry has paid lip service to digital sales for years, but with the growth of ABC’s direct sales model and...
by Sharon Ernst | Sep 4, 2024 | Business Writing Skills
Originally published June 2020; updated February 2025 How does advice on how to write better paragraphs relate to COVID? Hang on. You’ll see. During the pandemic and people working from home, we all heard about the empty highways and lack of traffic. At my house, I probably heard more about it than most because my husband was commuting each day—and enjoying the easy drive. (He works in aircraft maintenance, so WFH was not an option.) As our stay-at-home order ended and people hit the road once more, my husband’s commute...
by Sharon Ernst | Aug 30, 2024 | Business Writing Skills, Marketing Writing
I’m a little irritated, as you’ll see as you read this post. Why? Because I’ve come across another example of worthless writing that makes all of us who care look bad. As the amount of information inundating us daily continues to increase and our ability to pay attention to it continues to decrease, it becomes ever more important to communicate well…if we want to communicate at all. This is especially true when writing at work as well as writing for sales. Yet I continue to see countless examples of what I call word puking. What is...
by Sharon Ernst | Jul 22, 2024 | Business Writing Skills
What’s the easiest writing tip ever? Don’t start with “we” or “I.” This makes me crazy in copywriting, because any time a marketing piece–be it an email, a web page, a print piece–starts with “we” or “I,” we’ve turned off the potential customer. Why? Because people only care about themselves, and that includes you and me, so I’m not dissin’ on anyone here. We are all only human. But, here’s the deal: This is also a turnoff in business...
