Be Careful with Sloppy Writing
People judge you by your writing. They decide how smart, creative, and trustworthy you are — all from what you’ve written. So be sure your writing makes a good impression on the reader. Here are some common mistakes that can damage your reputation:
- Using lots of pairs or sets of threes. For example, avoid sentences like this: “The policies and practices of business and nonprofits can be expected to change and grow.”
- Inventing names or acronyms. Making up terms sounds pompous, not smart.
- Repeating words with no good reason. Writers seem inattentive when they have a lot of empty echoes in their documents.
- Using inconsistent bullet points. If three of four of your bullet points are complete sentences and one is only a phrase, that’s sloppy.
- Changing the order of items. If you refer to A, B, and C, don’t discuss them in the order A, C, and B.
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*Source: Harvard Business Review’s Management Tip of the Day.
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