The only business writing book you’ll ever need - Laura Brown, Rich Karlgaard 2019

Preface

Over the past thirty years, my clients have often asked me to recommend a good book about business writing. My first book, How to Write Anything, is nearly six hundred pages long and contains a lot of information about writing for school and writing in your personal life, so it’s not the kind of handbook my clients were looking for. I haven’t been able to find another business writing book I would recommend wholeheartedly, so I’ve written my own.

Most business writing books on the market are too long, too academic, and out-of-date. Many of them still treat e-mail as a newfangled thing. Many of them sound like they were written by English professors rather than by people who work in an office.

Business writing has changed tremendously over the past few decades, and it continues to change rapidly. At the same time, writing is becoming more important in business. We’re all writing more at work than ever before. The advent of the Internet, with the explosion of e-mail and mobile communication, coupled with globalization and virtual teaming, means that writing is the primary form of communication in many work settings. If you can’t write well, your chances for success are limited.

After thirty years of training and coaching business writers, I felt pretty confident that I knew what kind of help they needed. To be sure, though, I conducted a ten-question online survey on business writing, asking respondents what they write at work, where they have the most trouble writing at work, where they think their colleagues could use the most help with their writing, and whether they would find a new business writing book helpful. The survey was launched in April 2016 among my clients and associates; was promoted on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn; and ended up with 528 responses. (See Appendix A for the list of survey questions.) The responses proved invaluable in helping me create a book that responds to the needs of today’s business writers.

I hope this book will make writing at work a lot easier for you. If you have any feedback, I’d love to hear it. Please write to me at laura@howtowriteanything.com.