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Use pronouns to sound personal and friendly, yet professional, in your business letters, emails, and memos. I like this explanation from plainlanguage.gov: “Pronouns help the audience picture themselves in the text and relate better to your documents. More than any other single technique, using ‘you’ pulls users into your document and makes it relevant to them. When you use ‘you’ to address users, they are more likely to understand what their responsibility is. Using ‘we’ to refer to your agency [or company] makes your agency [or company] more approachable. It also makes your sentences shorter and your document easier to read.” That’s it in a nutshell!

Here are five writing tips that professional writers use.
1. Tackle big writing jobs—and complex, frustrating ones no matter what the size—in small bites. Set a timer for 30 minutes (or 10 to begin with and increase the time as the project progresses) and start writing. Once the timer goes off, stop writing. Set a schedule: take three to five “bites” out of the project the first day and continue from there.
2. The best time to write… is right now! Don’t wait for the perfect time to write; you’ll accomplish very little if you do.
3. Write in a professional yet conversational tone. Use “you” and “we.”
4. Take time out from writing to procrastinate. It’s okay to take breaks while writing, but limit each procrastination to 5-10 minutes and don’t leave your desk. Use a timer, and when it goes off, get back to work!
5. Your first draft doesn’t have to make sense. Just start writing. Get all of your ideas down no matter how jumbled they may look on the screen/page, and clean up the draft later.

Before starting a writing project, write a brief description of your audience. Do not simply write: sales force. Write: “sales force, highly trained, most with college degrees, 50% men/50% women, overachievers, overworked, and feel left out of the loop here at headquarters.” Such a profile will allow you to write your letter or report with their point of view firmly in mind

You are your own worst proofreader. That’s a common theme in the writing world. Because we are so close to the words we write, we will often read “in our heads” what is not actually on the page. We see the word “conect” on the page, but read “connect” in our heads. That’s how typos slip through the cracks. Here are four tips to help you prevent typos.

1) Let someone else read your work.
2) Turn on the auto-correct feature on your computer.
3) Read what you write out loud.
4) Read what you write backwards. That’s right: starting with the last word you wrote, read right to left. This way, each word stands out and you will not gloss over any typos in the document.

But of course you can. Here’s what Garner’s Modern American Usage has to say on the topic: “It is a gross canard that beginning a sentence with but is stylistically slipshod. In fact, doing so is highly desirable in any number of contexts, as many stylebooks have said (many correctly pointing out that but is more effective than however at the beginning of a sentence).”

The Chicago Manual of Style agrees: “There is widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice.”

For example: Everyone decided to vote against Bob’s idea. But Pat disagreed.

So there you have it. If beginning a sentence with but “works” or “sounds right” for the sentence you are writing, then do it.

Use parallel construction, that is, a consistent form, when listing several ideas.

Correct: Pat respects people who are honest, reliable, and sincere.

(The verb are makes sense with each of the three adjectives at the end of the sentence.)

Incorrect: Pat respects people who are honest, reliable, and have sincerity.

(Here, are does not make sense with have sincerity, and the noun sincerity is not parallel with the two adjectives honest and reliable.)