The Pweor of the Hmuan Mnid

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer what oredr the ltteers in

a word are. The only iprmoetnt thing is that the first and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. This is bcuseae the human mind deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe.

 Amzanig huh?

For most of us, we have an average of 121 business-related emails to send and receive each day, and that number is expected to increase to 140 a day by 2018, according to a recent study by the Radicati Group, a tech market research firm based in Silicon Valley.

 In other words, business writing is not going away anytime soon.

1. You must read. If the only writing you ever read is your own, you will have no standards to judge your writing against. Read like a spectator, if you must, but try to read like an apprentice.

2. You must write. No matter how many rules you know, it takes practice to write well. Your tenth letter to a disgruntled client will be easier to write than the first one, and believe it or not, the tenth report will be easier to write too.

3. You should want to write. Find personal reasons for wanting to write well and for wanting to communicate with others. Then, turn off the internal (or external!) language cop that’s slowing you down and get writing.

4. You need a feedback system to tell you how you’re doing. You need to know if your writing works. People don’t learn to write well from being corrected; they learn not to write. Look at feedback as an opportunity to find better solutions, not as an opportunity to correct errors.