Make every word count.
I recently stumbled across the following paragraph (edited to protect the guilty) on a corporate website. It’s 40 words; can you rewrite it to 20 or less?
“We firmly believe that transparency and ongoing partnerships are key drivers toward finding long-term, sustainable solutions to global challenges. To this end, we maintain relationships with key stakeholders including government officials, politicians, regulatory authorities, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations.”
I’ve started collecting these. Would love to hear yours.
Lily Tomlin once said, “I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.” I’m willing to bet they’re the force behind the following “innovations” on business websites:
There’s no single, correct way to show numbers in business writing. The only “rule” is to be consistent: $1 million, $1,000,000 and a million dollars should never appear in the same document.
That said, most writers rely on a combination of the AP Stylebook (or The Economist Style Guide if you write for international audiences) and common sense. Here are guidelines:
Sometimes it seems like verbs are taking over the world—or at least, overunning the noun category. I’m creating a list of nouns that have been verbed, for better or worse. What are your favorites (and least favorites)?
The Good: Bookended, headquartered, googled, waffled, texted
The Bad: Incentivized, guested, friended, gifted, conferenced, dialogued, leveraged, tasked
The Ugly: Incested, usagized, sunsetted, podiumed, actioned, impacted, boilerplated
Among the dozens of email newsletters competing for my 
attention, three stand out. One has spoilers for my favorite TV show; the second lists last-minute airfare deals; the third contains journal-style observations on the author’s life with her differently abled child.
From this unofficial sampling, I’ve derived three reasons that people read newsletters:
Does your newsletter fall into one of these categories? If not, why would people read it?
I googled “pet peeves” and got 1.2 million results. That’s a lot of peeves. Merriam-Webster traces the term back to “pevish” (Middle English, spiteful; first use circa 1530), while the Oxford English Dictionary links it to “perverse.” Either way, I think we can agree that it’s overused.
Other candidates for retirement:
Which terms set your teeth on edge?
These aren’t necessarily errors, but they’re bound to annoy recipients just the same.
Ask someone to review your work before you send. This rule applies to every document–from a two-sentence email to a book-length manuscript–that will be seen by someone you hope to impress.
I was once asked to provide a caption for a photograph of a Parisian river scene. Unfortunately, I made a tiny error; a single letter was incorrect. The caption read: “After a busy day of sightseeing, there’s nothing more relaxing than a quiet wank by the Seine.”
It would have taken five seconds to have someone review that little gem. Instead, I got three years of ridicule.