Effective business writing for professionals you're looking for a new job or trying to advance your career, strong business writing can make all the difference. This handout outlines key elements of professional communication, including how to create and maintain a clear, concise, effective, and engaging writing style for business situations.

Understand your audience. What are their priorities and expectations, and how will they receive your information? Consider factors like language, cultural considerations, and even time zone differences. Then adapt your organization and writing style to reflect those considerations.

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Use evidence to support your claims. This can include data, exploration of past trends, examples, analogy, assessment of risk or consequences, or citation of authoritative figures and sources. Your knowledge of and relationship with your audience will help you choose the forms of evidence most appropriate to the situation.

Avoid jargon. Industry terms may be recognizable to team members, but they may confuse or mislead readers outside your field. If you must use jargon, be sure to include a definition in your text and provide a link to further resources on the topic.

Follow standard formatting for different types of documents. For presentations, this means utilizing visuals and the popular organizational formula OABC (opening, agenda, body, closing). For letter writing or memos, it might mean using bulleted lists, boldface words, text blocks, and section headers. For a business email, it might mean keeping the document as short as possible and eliminating redundant or off-topic words.