Many writers plunge into their work without a clear destination. They don’t stop to think about their goals, but hope their reader will manage to decode the message about which they themselves are unclear. But this approach wastes time and is unlikely to achieve results. Successful writers think about their desired outcome before they even touch the keyboard.

Start by asking: What should readers think, feel, or do after reading this piece? Your answer shapes everything that follows.

• Writing an email to set up a meeting? Don’t vaguely request “Let me know your availability.” Instead, write “Can we meet Thursday at 3 p.m. to discuss project updates?” This specific request drives action.
• Writing a memo about new fire safety protocols? Your goal isn’t to have readers stash the information away with other non-relevant emails. “Please read the following carefully and confirm receipt of this email after you’ve read it” will alert readers that the email is relevant. Then format the content to make it easy to follow and understand.
• Writing a persuasive proposal? Imagine the decision you want readers to make. Then build your argument to lead them there. Address their concerns early. Present your solution clearly. Support it with evidence. Create a path that guides them toward agreement.

Once you clarify your goal, organize your message to achieve it. Map out main points, anticipate objections, and craft a compelling call to action.

For example, you could break down a proposal for a new marketing initiative into the following sections: an introduction to the need for the initiative, the proposed solution, supporting data, and a closing call to action that encourages the decision-maker to approve the plan. By clearly mapping out these sections ahead of time, you ensure that the document remains focused and persuasive from start to finish.

When you start with clarity about what you want to achieve, you create a document that resonates with readers and leads them to the action you desire.

In the end, writing isn’t just about stringing words together; it’s about shaping an experience for your readers, guiding them through your ideas and encouraging a specific result. Whether you’re seeking to inform, persuade, or request, your message will always be stronger when you begin with the end in mind.

So, the next time you sit down to write, ask yourself: What do I want the reader to think, feel, or do after reading this? As you continue in your writing life, remember to think about the end result you are striving for. Focus on that as you organize, plan, and write your document. You will be amazed at the outcome.

copyright 2025 Elizabeth Danziger

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​Call Worktalk When:

• Companies lose customers due to poor messaging from sales and customer service teams;
• Clients complain about communication from professional service firms’ staff members;
• Employees need to humanize the output of AI-assisted writing programs so it doesn’t sound fake;
• Employees need help developing the right prompts for AI-assisted writing programs to generate more effective outputs;
• Employees waste time repeatedly emailing one another because their messages are unclear.

Contact me at lizd@worktalk.com or 310.396.8303.

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Words matter; using the wrong word in a business document is a quick credibility crasher. I recall a meeting attended by a friend who was a highly paid business consultant, a prospective client, and me. We were discussing the client’s project when my friend leaned forward and said expansively, “Let me share a little antidote with you.” I was stunned. Had the prospect just been bitten by a snake? Using “antidote” instead of “anecdote” gave the lie to my friend’s façade of expertise. We didn’t get the job.

Here is a list of five of today’s most commonly confused word pairs in business writing.

1. They’re/their/there

Often, this error is more a matter of fat fingers than ignorance. We all know that they’re is a contraction of they are. Their is a possessive pronoun meaning “belonging to them”. And there indicates a place or location. We just get caught up in typing; before we know it, we’ve used the wrong form. Here’s a sentence using all three:

They’re on their way to the house over there.

2. Accept/except

Accept is a verb. It means to receive or agree to something.

Except is a preposition. It means excluding or with the exclusion of.

I think writers often confuse these words because they sound so similar when spoken. Train yourself to make the “a” sound when saying “accept” and the short “e” sound when saying “except,” and you might find it easier to distinguish between the two.

I would like to accept your gift except that I am unable to receive gratuities.

3. Advice/advise

Advice is a noun. It means guidance or recommendation.

Advise is a verb. It describes the action of giving advice.

Often, this error is a result of typing too fast. Stop and think for a moment when using these words and you won’t go awry.

I advise you to accept his advice.

4. Affect/effect

Affect is a verb. It means “to influence.” In psychology, it can also be a noun refering to a person’s emotional state.

Effect is a noun. It is a result or outcome. An effect is the result of being affected.

Like “accept” and “except”, these words may sound similar on the tongue. Pronounce them carefully and see if the confusion disappears.

His entire life has been affected by his inability to acknowledge the effects of his decisions.

5. Principle/principal

A principle is a core idea or value.

Principal refers to the first or foremost thing, as in the head of staff at a school or company. I always remember the saying, “The principal is not your pal.” It also refers to financial capital.

In principle, withdrawing funds from your principal is a bad idea. The principal reason for this is that, on principle, we want to preserve our assets. I’ve spoken to the principal members of our staff about this idea.

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These word pairs are not new to you – you learned them in elementary school. But that was a long time ago, and today, the gas pedal is floored as you try to type your way through a daily slog of verbiage.

In the pressure of rushing, you may sometimes type the wrong word. And in the urge to “Send” and get the document out of your work queue and into someone else’s, you are tempted to put off proofreading. When we rush, we do not see errors that would be obvious if we slowed down.

For fun, I tried to use all the words in this Writamin in a couple of sentences. Here you go:

Except for their effect on children, the principal reason I advise people to refrain from spending too much time on social media sites is because, in principle, these sites are designed to affect our attention span. Meta has many talented engineers – they’re out there trying to rob you of your attention. Take my advice and steer clear of Facebook.

Next month’s Writamin will contain five more commonly misused word pairs, including your/you’re, stationery/stationary, and ensure/insure.

Please send me the word pairs that you see most commonly confused and I’ll add them to the list.

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Take me to your leader! Communication woes drain the lifeblood from an organization. Connect me with your decision-makers and see how Worktalk can transform communication in your world. Contact me at lizd@worktalk.com or 310.396.8303.

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If you missed the last Writamin on “A Merry Christmas is Wished to You by Us,” you can see it here.

To read my recent Inc.com columns:

​3 Essential Writing Tasks that AI-Assisted Writing Programs Cannot Do For You​

​Use Reflective Writing to Distill the Lessons of the Past Year​

See my latest article in The Harvard Business Review on how to respond to an upsetting email!

The post Manage Misused Word Pairs appeared first on Worktalk.

Interruptions plague today’s business readers more than ever before. Between notifications, emails, text messages, voicemails, and physical interruptions, most people find it challenging to sit down and read through a written message. Research indicates that our brains carom off in another direction about every 44 to 50 seconds when we are engaged with a screen.

Yet as business writers, we want our readers to read through our messages and comprehend them. An important project may depend on everyone reading a report. A major sale may hinge on the prospect reading our proposal.

To defeat digital distraction, we need to understand it and work around it when we write.

How is Digitally Distracted Reading Different?

Dr. Anastasia Dedyukhina (www.consciously-digital.com) studies digital distraction and its effects on learning and productivity. She notes that leaping from stimulus to stimulus without pausing to process what we’ve learned is contrary to the brain’s evolutionary path for retaining information.

Dashing from email to email or text to text short-circuits the organic process of integrating information. Modern readers may lack the time or will to pause and incorporate the information you are sharing with them. Even worse, they may fail to absorb key parts of your message.

So what can a manager, salesperson, or team member do to increase their chances of breaking through the noise?

Adapting Our Writing to Deal With the Distracted Mind

When I asked Dr. Dedyukhina how the reality of distraction squares with the need to write at work, she replied, “People are spreading their attention very thinly, so accept that they are not reading closely. They are skimming.”

She notes that writers need to compose with these conditions in mind, making their language accessible and allowing places for the reader to look away from the text and easily return to it.

Here are five ways to increase your chances of being understood by the digitally distracted reader.

1. Put your main point first.

People are paying the most attention at the beginning of your message.

Deliver the main message within the first 40 words to ensure it is received. In a short text, this is easy. In an email, don’t start with the back story: Cut to the chase.

2. Use clear, simple, language.

• Aim for a reading level of around eighth grade. I promise you, if you write for a twelfth-grade level, your readers will either skip your message or save it for “later”, which may never happen. Use MSWord’s Check Readability Statistics function to determine your document’s grade level.

• Clean up your word choice. Write use instead of utilize, and before instead of prior to.

3. Be concise.

• No one has patience for roundabout language.

• Purge quaint phrases and buzzwords. Don’t write at the end of the day; instead, write, in the end, or ultimately. Shun low-hanging fruit: embrace opportunities

• Avoid unnecessary words in phrases like personal belief, plain fact, or advance reservation. Instead, write belief, fact, or reservation.

4. Simplify your sentences.

• Long sentences bore people. Maintain an average sentence length of around 20 words as measured by MSWord’s Check Readability Statistics function.

• Include a maximum of two clauses beginning with that, which, or who.

• Don’t glue together two word gobs with and or but and imagine that your readers will follow your train of thought. They won’t.

5. Break up the text.

Subheads, bulleted lists, and blank spaces all add to your readability. By varying the visual format of your message, you make it easier for readers to skim and look for keywords.

Digital distractions are here to stay. As writers, we must be mindful of our readers’ world. By being concise and clear and by formatting for readability, we help our readers break free of the hamster wheel of diversion and focus on our message.

Did you make it to the end of this column? Congratulations on overcoming the allure of digital distraction!

The post 5 Ways to Cut Through the Noise and Write to Distracted Readers appeared first on Worktalk.

Simplify

How can we simplify our writing? The first key is to be able to express our core idea in one or two sentences. If we fail to grasp the big idea, we will get lost in the weeds and our readers will blunder after us. In this sense, simplicity comes from distilling complex concepts into their fundamental elements, making them accessible to a broader audience.

We also need to consider our readers. What’s easy for one person is hard for another. My husband is a physicist – an article on stellar nucleosynthesis is easy reading for him and incomprehensible to me. Conversely, an article on grammar that I enjoy might make him grab his head in pain. Before you write, ask yourself how much detail your reader needs in order to do their job or take the next step in understanding.

Once you’ve focused on your main point and reader, you create simplicity through word choice and sentence structure. Brief, concise language is always welcome. Use straightforward language without trying to dress up your ideas in fancy words or outdated phrases. Avoid jargon. No matter how complex your ideas are, you will profit from using plain language.

But Don’t Oversimplify

We’ve looked at ways to simplify; now let’s tackle the issue of oversimplifying. As one pundit wrote, “Beware the simplicity that is born out of ignorance and overlooks the complexities of reality.”

Life is messy. Business and political situations are created by interconnected factors. Trying to paint everything with a broad stroke might mean missing essential subtleties. If, in your attempts to crystallize your ideas, you omit key factors, you haven’t served anyone. Oversimplifying leads to misunderstandings and mistakes. It may make your readers believe that they understand circumstances they actually don’t comprehend.

Writing simply without oversimplifying requires mastery of your subject. Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman was once asked to review a textbook on freshman physics. He told the author that he had not covered a concept that Feynman thought was key. The author said that he thought the concept was too difficult for freshmen to understand. Feynman famously retorted, “If you can’t explain it in a way that a freshman can understand it, then you don’t understand it!”

The goal is not to dumb down the content, but to present it in an easily digestible way without sacrificing accuracy or diluting the core message. Doing so requires you to deeply understand your subject matter and its nuances. If you do not fully understand what you are writing about, try to restrict yourself to writing about the things you know.

Embracing Einstein’s wisdom, we can elevate our business writing by making it as simple as possible while holding on to the necessary depth and accuracy. By striving for clarity, conciseness, and relevance, we can captivate our readers, convey ideas effectively, and foster meaningful connections. In an increasingly complex world, the ability to simplify without oversimplifying can set you apart from the crowd.

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The post “As Simple as Possible But No Simpler” appeared first on Worktalk.

Whenever you write, your credibility is on the line. Your readers assess your trustworthiness, intelligence, competence, and attention to detail with every word you compose. You might have a great product or service, but if your messaging seems untrustworthy, you jeopardize your success.

What can damage your credibility? The first things people see are problems such as grammar, punctuation, spelling, and formatting. These mistakes can trigger your reader to delete your message before reading it through. Someone recently sent me a marketing message listing the “benifits” of his service. Maybe his service did have many benefits, but I will never see them because the moment I saw that misspelled word, I assumed he did not value quality control.

Assuming you get past the most obvious issues, you may face even more hazardous thinking difficulties such as failing to address the real issue, not clarifying the goal of the document, or not focusing on the reader’s needs. Customer service and sales communications often fall short because they do not accurately pinpoint the topics that matter to their customers.

Add to that writing blunders of rambling, interminable sentences, and confusing the reader, and you have a trifecta of failures that can capsize credibility and kill communication.

Practical problems

Every message operates at multiple levels. Your literal meaning says one thing, but just as posture and clothing speak about a person’s role and capabilities, the non-content messages in your document speak volumes about who you are. Just as showing up for an important business appointment with ketchup on your shirt damages your image, proofreading and grammar errors detract from the message you’re trying to convey.

Do proofreading errors matter?

People sometimes tell me, “It doesn’t matter if I have grammar and punctuation errors–my readers know what I mean.” Yes, they can usually figure out your literal meaning. Still, when they see your “body language” errors, they are learning something more important: that you either do not care about details, do not check your work before sending it, or are ignorant of the English language. Can you afford to have people in your business life draw these conclusions?

Proofreading gaffes are damaging because people generalize: They figure, if you are careless about one thing, you are careless about others. I trained the audit department of a large hotel chain recently. I told them that if an email from the audit department has a typo, the guest receiving it may worry there will be hair on their pillow the next time they visit the hotel.

​Thinking errors undermine your authority

​As damaging as proofreading errors are, they pale in comparison to errors in thought, such as not considering why you are writing, failing to address the real issue, and not focusing on the reader. Someone once asked me to design a writing training for her team, lamenting, “They know how to write–they just don’t know what to write about!” Her team was studiously spewing out sentences that did not move the business forward because they did not know which points were salient to the matter at hand. Clients quickly tire of messages that don’t hone in on their true concerns.

If we reflect on our goals for writing and remember that, to reach our goal, we need to touch the mind of our reader, we are likely to gain that person’s trust in our message.

​Rambling leads to ruin

​Once you have the practical elements down and think through your message, you must compose it straightforwardly. This means getting to the point promptly, writing sentences whose average length is around 20 words, and avoiding acronyms and jargon that might confuse your reader. As I write in my book, Get to the Point!, straightforward writing makes for easy reading. In an era of goldfinch-size attention spans, brevity and focus matter more than ever.

Building your credibility with every message

Why do you smooth out your shirt before a meeting or a Zoom call? Probably because you want the other people in the meeting to take you seriously and give weight to your ideas. When you write, you lack the advantages of visual appeal and body language: All you have are your words, and you need to make them right. That means:

• Proofreading your work before you send it.
• Rereading to ensure that your purpose is clear and that you have addressed the issues that are both salient to you and relevant to your reader.
• Editing your document so that your language is crisp and clear.

Notice that all these suggestions require you to resist the urge to send every document the moment you finish composing it. Having the patience to reread and revise every message will pay off when your readers reward you with their trust.

The post Build Your Credibility by Avoiding These Writing Errors appeared first on Worktalk.