Transcript Business Development Skills From the SMP

Ten writing pitfalls
A quick training session from
1. Passive verbs
Passive verbs are often queried by your
spell/grammar check.
‘Sam hit Jason’ uses an active verb.
‘Jason was hit’ or ‘Jason was hit by Sam’ uses a
passive verb.
Active verbs are clearer and punchier.
2. Jargon
Avoid jargon.
The only exception is when you know for sure
that the entire audience will know exactly what
you mean. Using it here will give you credibility.
3. Inconsistencies in tense
‘Their knowledge and experience is well known
to their clients’.
What’s wrong with this sentence?
3. Inconsistencies in tense
‘Their knowledge and experience is well known
to their clients’.
‘is’ should be ‘was’.
Note that your spell/grammar check won’t pick
up this sort of error.
4. Meaningless superlatives
Avoid ‘best’, ‘newest’, ‘freshest’ and similar
meaningless superlatives.
They carry no credibility unless a strong rationale
is included that proves it is indeed the best.
5. Negative language
Note the difference between the negative ‘A’
and the positive ‘B’.
A. Whether or not you’ve had success with
previous programmes, Weightdrop makes sure
that you won’t be disappointed.
B. Weightdrop guarantees satisfaction with its
weight loss programme.
6. Chunky, awkward language
Always get someone else to read your copy out
loud.
Whenever they trip up, lose the sense of the
sentence or run out of breath, edit/re-write.
7. Over use of emphasis
Avoid underlining and italics.
To give something emphasis move it to the
beginning of the sentence or paragraph.
8. Vague phrases
Everything you say should have a specific meaning
and add something to the message.
If the logical follow up to one of your sentences is
‘why’ then rewrite what you’ve said. For example:
8. Vague phrases (cont)
Note the difference between the vague ‘A’ (which
begs the question ‘why’) and the specific ‘B’:
A. Hipton Hotels are a wonderful place to spend a
weekend.
B. Hipton Hotels offer a quiet, relaxed refuge from
city pressures.
9. Absence of credibility
If you state an important fact, always
substantiate it.
10. Wordiness
When you’ve finished writing, keep editing it
down until every word is fundamental to your
message.
Spelling a word as it’s commonly pronounced
Don’t write would of, should of or could of, when
you actually mean would have, should have and
could have.
Don’t write suppose to or use to. When talking
the ‘d’ is often silent.
The correct spelling is supposed to and used to.
As in the sentences: We used to do that. We
were supposed to do it this way.
And finally…
There are numerous words that sound similar
and are commonly mixed up when writing.
For a great resource on this go to:
www.englishplus.com/grammar/mistcont.htm
“That which is written without effort is generally
read without interest.” Dr Johnson