Motivational speeches and articles persuade your audience or readers to take particular course of action or adopt a behaviour, usually in the area of personal development and performance.
When writing a motivational speech or article, stories can be powerful tools that make your message more credible and memorable for several reasons.
You might have seen the television programs showing extremely cluttered homes that are a result of hoarding. In a similar way, business writing can be full of clutter. Clichés, jargon, complicated words and phrases, and unnecessary words will muddle your business writing and make it difficult to read.
Super long sentences, tombstones of text, wallflower headlines…ugh! When it comes to copywriting, good looks matter. Copywriters sometimes neglect the aesthetics of their work. We get so caught up in what the words say that we forget the importance of how they look. But visual presentation is a hurdle your copywriting must sail over to get read at all! And this is not a job that lies solely with a graphic designer.
In previous posts on making business writing more readable, we have discussed the importance of using short and simple words. In the following passage from the Members’ Handbook of the Society for the Preservation of English Language and Literature (SPELL), see how short words are essential for clear and effective writing.
I recently read the most riveting book in a single day. I’d meant to sneak in a chapter here and there for a bit of R&R. But a few pages in and I couldn’t put it down. Once I’d finished the book I felt a real loss — what was I going to do with myself now? What I did was head right out and buy the second and third instalment in the trilogy! Hurrying off to the bookstore, I just couldn’t believe how emotionally invested I’d become in the characters and plot. So I started thinking about how such skilfully woven storytelling could translate into copywriting.
Writing a media release is a science but getting it into print is an art! A media release can add power to your PR for free — not to mention getting your brand, news and company in front of many eyes fast. The trouble is journalists are time-poor, details hungry and bombarded by media releases by the minute. The cutting room floor of a newsroom is home to countless media releases that are lucky if they’ve had their title read — not the fate you want for your news story. So this post is about how to write a media release that gets noticed.
For a few years I have been hearing about companies that outsource their editing overseas to cut costs. The idea is that an English speaking editor in India or the Philippines can do the same work that an Australian editor can do.
Let’s look at the pros and cons of outsourcing editing overseas to countries such as India and the Philippines.
Although the beginning of a speech is important for setting the stage and getting the audience’s attention, the conclusion is their final impression of you and your message. It can be tempting to neglect the conclusion after you’ve spent hours on writing the opening and body, but a weak ending can lessen the effectiveness of your entire speech.
In previous posts we looked at the importance of keeping your business writing as simple as possible. An easy way to achieve this is to remove unnecessary words when editing. Tautologies are one form of redundancy in writing and speaking that you can easily spot and remove once you are aware of them.
Although the Ancient Greeks may seem irrelevant to our lives, they developed many important ideas that affect us today. One area where we can apply these concepts is in our business writing.