Writing for the workplace may seem simple at first thought – all you have to do is be professional and get your point across and you should be fine, right? Well, that is true, but it goes much deeper than that. Every piece of business writing requires rhetorical awareness: the understanding of the purpose, audience, stakeholders, and context of the document. To execute business writing effectively one must go through a long and thorough process of defining the key characters of the writing and how it will affect them, establishing proper tone, and making all the information easily accessible.

The main persons involved in each piece of business writing are the primary author (you), the audience (who will be making the decision), and the stakeholders (who will be affected by the decision that is made). In order to present your point in the most effective way you must preform an in-depth audience analysis where you consider every relevant aspect of the audience and stakeholders. This could include the needs, values, and attitudes when it comes to the subject and their physical, political, economic, and ethical context.

In the kinds of writing that we have done previously the audience does matter and you do need to understand them to a certain extent in order to have one in the first place. However, it is absolutely vital in business writing that you have a deep understanding of who your writing will effect affect and how your writing needs to effect affect those who you are attempting to persuade.

Tone is also an important part of business writing. It will vary from what kind of message you want to convey, but typically you want to have a voice that is confident, courteous, and sincere. Even if the message you are sending is negative, you want to give that message as eloquently as possible. This can be achieved by using proper emphasis and subordination, which is basically amping up the good and hushing the bad. It is also important to use non-discriminatory language that could turn a lighthearted and positive message into an automatically negative one for those who are excluded or demeaned (the most common case of this is assuming that males hold all dominant positions). These are all things that should be kept in mind in other forms of writing, but it is nowhere near as important since you are trying to sell your idea on behalf of a major company, not on behalf of the story itself.

One of the final differences in business writing is the use of proper design. The document must be easy to navigate and should have a table of contents, page numbers, and specific headers. The information itself should be presented generally at first then become more and more specific with headers to match. Every sentence should be simple and clear so that anyone, including people who are not in the primary audience, could read it and understand. The layout of the pages itself are important as well; you should do your best to compliment the information with visuals that follow the Z pattern along the page. Balance and color choice are important as well. While in past writing types the design should be considered, it is again not as in depth as it should be for business writing.

Overall, business writing requires a lot more focus on the audience, structure, and tone than on the content itself. As in all types of writing, revision is highly important. This is more true than ever in a business atmosphere where the last thing you want to do is waste your client or boss’s time since time is money.