How Effective Business Writing Skills Protect Your Reputation and Credibility

How Effective Business Writing Skills Protect Your Reputation and Credibility

Originally published November 2017, Updated January 2024 When I tell people I’ve started BetterFasterWriter.com, they all nod knowingly, because they either work with poor writers or they sense their own writing could use improvement. How about you? Are you nodding along, knowing that poor writing is pandemic in today’s business world? Do you see the same lack of effective business writing skills that I see? Putting up with poor writing is annoying, but there’s a longer term negative impact that results: loss of credibility, for the...
To Improve Your Business Writing Skills, Avoid This Embarrassing Mistake

To Improve Your Business Writing Skills, Avoid This Embarrassing Mistake

Originally Published October 2017, Updated January 2024 Today’s topic is kind of technical: misrelated constructions. Ugly name, I know. It sounds like some kind of grammar geek speak. But if you want to improve your business writing skills, this is one mistake you don’t want to make. (Although it can be funny when it happens, as you’ll see…) What’s a misrelated construction? A misrelated construction happens when a word or phrase that’s supposed to be connected to a certain word or phrase isn’t and ends up connected to another word...
Focus! 8 Ways to Minimize Distractions so You Can Write Better, Faster

Focus! 8 Ways to Minimize Distractions so You Can Write Better, Faster

Originally published September 2017. Updated January 8, 2024. To write better and faster, you must minimize distractions and interruptions, and avoid them as much as you can. Obviously, you’re going to react if the smoke alarm starts squealing loudly. If that happens, get out! But I’m not talking about interruptions that matter. I’m talking about interruptions that don’t. And you can take steps to keep those at bay. Interruptions slow us down and make us stupid Did you know it takes 25 minutes to get back on task after an...
6 Ways to Proofread Your Writing (and Avoid Looking Dumb)

6 Ways to Proofread Your Writing (and Avoid Looking Dumb)

Originally published July 14, 2017. Updated January 5, 2024. Proofreading! It is guaranteed to improve your writing at work! I’m serious! If you only changed one habit this year to be a better, faster writer, get into the habit of proofreading everything you write, and I mean everything. “But, Sharon,” you’re probably thinking. “That makes no sense because that will slow me down, not make me faster.” OK, yes, but no, because when you catch your mistakes, you avoid confusion which saves time,...
Ditching Digital in 2024 for Better Writing…and Living

Ditching Digital in 2024 for Better Writing…and Living

What if I could give you just one tip for the new year that would improve not only your writing at work but your entire life? I can. That tip? Ditch digital. By that, I mean ditch the smart phone as that’s how much of our digital interaction happens. OK, I realize few of us can totally ditch the smart phone. But we can spend a lot less time on it and improve both our writing at work and our quality of life. The writing part might be obvious, and I have outlined the ways your smart phone dumbs down your writing at work here. And...
How Horses Can Improve Your Writing at Work

How Horses Can Improve Your Writing at Work

Sure, as a horse person I like to sneak in horses as much as I can when blogging about writing at work, but it works, as you’ll continue to see… 🙂 I recently volunteered as a horse handler for Leadership with Horses. It took 6½ hours of driving to get there and back to be there for 5½ hours. Why then did I do it? I was intrigued. Horses have much to teach us and I wanted to know how that would play out with leadership training. Because I was a horse handler, I was with the horses, and I missed out on the discussions between Amanda,...