The Importance of Tone in Business Writing

Writing is one of the most common tasks that you’ll find yourself doing during a regular workday.  In 2011 the average corporate user sent and received an average of 112 emails every day.  And that’s just email, it doesn’t include the sales proposals, technical documentation, business letters and other documents that you’ll work on.

Just as important as the content of business writing is the tone – the writer’s opinion and emotion toward the reader and subject matter.  Just like your tone of voice in a spoken conversation, the tone of a written conversation is as – and sometimes more – important as the actual content.

When crafting a piece of business writing – a quick email before you dash off to a meeting or a hundred page sales proposal that you and your team slaved over for weeks – you certainly have to make sure that the content is appropriate but you have to make sure the tone is, too.  You can’t take chances when you’re communicating through writing – you can’t read facial expressions or body language and you might not get a second chance if your content and tone miss the mark.

Not Good:  Joe, get me the final specs quick or you’ll cause us to deliver late.

Better:  Joe, we really need the final specifications before we can finalize delivery.  Would you be able to send them over at your earliest convenience to avoid delays?

One of the most important considerations in establishing the tone of your writing is to be honest, authentic and sincere.  Most readers will pick up if you’re not being true and you might lose your credibility.  If the reader doesn’t trust you there isn’t much of a chance that they’ll be convinced by your writing.

Your state of mind plays a large role in your tone: if you’re in a bad mood, if you’re feeling playful, if you’re feeling happy – all of these emotions will come out in your writing.  If you are in a bad mood or feeling stressed, you might want to stay away from your keyboard – those grumpy feelings will seep into your writing whether you like it or not.

At all times, you should maintain a professional tone, even if you are very comfortable or have a friendly relationship with the recipient.  Talking about the baseball game you went to, how your kids are doing in school or your kitchen renovations might be appropriate for the person that you’re writing to directly but not for those that the recipient could forward it on to and you can’t count on them deleting the friendly chit chat before they do.

Finally, you should favour a concise and precise tone in business communication over a verbose and flowery one.  The person reading your writing doesn’t have time to wade through linguistic pyrotechnics fancy words and filter out your message.  Also, there’s a good chance that instead of coming off sounding eloquent you’ll end up sounding pretentious.

Not Good:  We would like to inquire about your upcoming availability to arrange a mutually convenient brief conference call, if possible on next Wednesday morning, so we might gain some additional insight into your requirements for the upcoming project.

Better:  Are you available for a short call next Wednesday at 10:00am?  We have some questions about the project that we’d like to ask.

Conclusion

The tone of a piece of business writing is just as important as the content.  If you’re in a positive frame of mind, are honest and sincere and keep your message concise then you’ll infuse a positive tone in your writing and generate a readable and convincing piece.  And if you decide that you need help with any sales and marketing, technical or business writing projects that you’re working on, we’re only an email or phone call away.

Got something to say? Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you! Got a question that we can address in our blog? Contact us through our website or email me directly and we’ll put our crack team to work and let you know when we post a reply.


Amanda Hartley, Managing Partner
Fering Communications Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: amanda.hartley@feringcommunications.com