by Sharon Ernst | Nov 25, 2024 | Business Writing Skills
Why are we so short on business writing skills anyway? Mark Twain supposedly said, “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” Obviously, he was being sarcastic because there’s a lot more to writing than crossing out the wrong words, right? But what? What are we missing? What do we not know? Well, it turns out there’s a lot we don’t know about writing…especially business writing. One study found 26.2% of employers think college graduates have deficient business writing skills—not weak but deficient. As for...
by Sharon Ernst | Sep 27, 2024 | Business Email Writing
Originally published May 2020. Updated September 2024. Why should you care about effective business emails? Because they save time, both for you and for the people you email. How do they save time? Because you write fewer emails when you are better at it. When you’re a competent and considerate writer of emails, you cut down on the unnecessary back-and-forth email traffic and the clutter in your inbox. And your reward? You get back time. Better emails = better brand + time saved In my last post on business email writing, I talked...
by Sharon Ernst | Jan 31, 2022 | Business Email Writing
Email subject lines are often overlooked but have the potential to make or break your workplace communication and productivity… What’s the first thing people look at when deciding whether or not to open an email? The From name. And the second? The email subject line—and that makes the subject line key. This is something I emphasize when teaching email copywriting, but it is every bit as relevant to writing at work. While the email marketer needs compelling email subject lines to get a prospect to open an email so they’ll see the...
by Sharon Ernst | Nov 10, 2018 | Business Email Writing
It’s a Friday afternoon as I write this, and the long work week is winding down. That means I’m reflecting on the past few days—and realizing that twice this week my time was wasted by bad business email writing. Twice this week I received unclear emails and I had to spend time trying to understand the instructions and timelines and attachments, write emails in reply to get clarification, and put tasks on hold as I waited for the answers. It all added up to about an hour of my time. You might think, “Well, an hour isn’t much time,...
