5 Costly Business Writing Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
Have you ever spotted a business writing mistake and wondered how it happened?
Clear, accurate communication is a key driver of business success, but busy teams often face tight deadlines, meaning preventable errors can slip by unnoticed. These mistakes can affect a business at every level and impact internal operations and customer (or client) relationships alike.
The quality of written content guides purchasing decisions at every step of the customer journey. Research shows that careless errors in grammar, spelling, or punctuation can erode confidence in online product reviews – a vital source of social proof for most brands. Similarly, poor business writing can have major consequences, such as lost sales and disrupted daily operations. The key to preventing these distracting and expensive mistakes before they reach your target audience is a strong editorial process – especially at the final proofreading stage.
In this post, we’ll explore five costly business writing mistakes, how to avoid them, and how proofreading can help you meet your business goals.
1. Overusing Technical Jargon and Buzzwords
Business language can evolve quickly. Many organizations rely on corporate jargon or trendy buzzwords in their communications, especially in industries such as tech and finance. However, overusing jargon in your writing can alienate readers who aren’t industry insiders and leave potential clients, customers, or employees confused.
This is one reason why the Plain English Campaign, a language-advocacy organization based in the UK, promotes the use of clear business communications. The group maintains a list of organizations given the “Crystal Mark,” which is the seal of approval for clarity of printed or online documents.
Instead of using corporate jargon, prioritize clarity by writing in straightforward, easy-to-digest language (i.e., plain English) that readers can quickly understand and connect with. Potential customers are better able to understand the value your business offers if they don’t have to spend time decoding your message or guessing what services you provide.
Similarly, prospective employees are more likely to apply for open roles when job descriptions are clear and precise. According to one survey, almost half of applicants feel job descriptions use too many “annoying” buzzwords, such as “ninja” or “guru,” and this creates a negative impression of the role and the company. Too much jargon causes readers to struggle to decipher what the position actually entails, which could discourage even strong candidates from applying.
And this lack of clarity doesn’t just affect who applies; it can also affect how long new hires stay. If the job description is vague, misleading, or full of unclear jargon, successful candidates might find themselves in unsuitable positions or with unexpected responsibilities – which won’t inspire them to stick around. High staff turnover is a significant business expense, as replacing an employee can cost as much as 200% of their annual salary. Beyond the financial impact, frequent turnover can harm morale and disrupt the efficiency of your team.
Outlining responsibilities clearly and concisely demonstrates professionalism and respects the applicant’s time – and may help you better attract and keep the right person for the job.
2. Poor Formatting and Structure
How you structure your website is also integral to clear business communication. Unclear formatting and poor readability can discourage readers from staying on your website. Furthermore, it can negatively impact search engine optimization (SEO), leading to lower traffic in the first place.
Dense blocks of text with little white space, inconsistent heading styles, or confusing formatting elements can all make your website difficult to navigate and result in an overall poor user experience. Many people access the internet from a phone or other mobile device, making it especially important to optimize web pages for skim readers and different screen sizes when drafting your business content.
Distracting or unclear formatting can also signal a lack of professionalism or attention to detail, which creates a bad first impression and can negatively impact your revenue. In fact, one survey on customer experience found that 32% of customers would stop doing business with a brand after a single bad experience, even if it’s a brand they love. And that number climbs to 59% after several negative experiences.
Standardizing your web page formatting and implementing key SEO elements in your website’s structure can boost engagement and improve search rankings, which leads to increased visibility and time on page, a key metric in site performance.
Below are some tips for ensuring clear, SEO-friendly formatting and structure on your website:
- Use bulleted and numbered lists to improve readability.
- Maintain consistent spacing and margins.
- Break up large text blocks with headings and subheadings.
- Limit distracting visual clutter (e.g., excessive underlining, colors, or bolding) so your message stands out.
- Review charts, tables, and graphs to ensure they are easy to decipher and align neatly with the content.
- Proofread every piece of copy before it’s published.
- Perform a full review to catch misaligned text, inconsistent formatting, uneven margins, and other layout issues.
3. Style and Writing Inconsistencies
Brand identity is how a business chooses to present itself – essentially, its personality. It encompasses everything from visual components such as logos and color schemes to written elements such as preferred words and tone of voice. A memorable, easily recognizable brand identity can boost your website traffic and keep your customers coming back.
According to one survey, 90% of consumers find brand loyalty to be crucial to purchasing decisions, and 59% prefer to shop with brands they are already familiar with when looking for new products. A clear brand identity plays a major role in building this trust. This means that inconsistencies in brand voice, language, and tone can confuse both new and existing customers and cause them to lose trust in the business. Trust is essential for building a loyal customer base and expanding to new markets. Once an audience calls a brand’s credibility into question, it can be difficult to repair the damage and restore brand authority.
One way to ensure consistency across all content distribution channels, and prevent this loss of trust, is by establishing a team-wide brand style guide. A detailed style guide outlining all the core elements related to your business keeps your team on the same page (literally and figuratively!) when it comes to your brand identity.
While every style guide is unique, there are some common points to address in a business writing style guide:
- Punctuation rules (e.g., whether to use a serial comma and whether to use em dashes or en dashes)
- Preferences for grammar and point of view (e.g., favoring active voice over passive voice or using second person to address the reader)
- Capitalization guidelines (e.g., for headings and subheadings)
- Preferred dialect (e.g., UK or US English)
- Spelling preferences (e.g., e-book vs. ebook)
- Guidance on formatting and visual elements (e.g., font size and standards for branding and logos)
Following a preestablished style guide makes it quicker and more efficient to produce content, but it also continues to save a company’s time and resources (and therefore money) long after publication, as it prevents the need to rewrite or reformat content after it’s already live on your website.
4. Using the Wrong Word
The English language can be mind-boggling and frustrating at times. Have you ever considered how through, though, tough, and thought are all spelled similarly but pronounced completely differently?
Confusing word pairs such as affect vs. effect, principal vs. principle, and complement vs. compliment are often mistaken for each other or used interchangeably. However, when this happens in business writing, it can result in time-consuming misunderstandings and give an impression of carelessness or unprofessionalism.
Furthermore, using the wrong word can even have potential legal ramifications for your business. Take a look at these two words:
insure: to provide or obtain insurance on or for
vs.
ensure: to make sure, certain, or safe
These words differ by only one vowel, so it’s easy to use the wrong one or overlook a slip of the keyboard. However, if this is done in a business context, it can change the entire meaning of the sentence and potentially lead to liability issues. “We insure your shipment…” has a very different meaning to “We ensure your shipment…”!
The best way to prevent the wrong word from making its way into a piece of copy is by referring to a dialect-specific dictionary or the relevant style guide for the text if you’re unsure of the proper usage for a term when writing content. Then, it’s essential to thoroughly proofread the text and double-check if you come across something that doesn’t seem right. If you need to proofread your own writing, reading your content out loud or asking a colleague to perform a final check can help you catch these sometimes subtle mistakes before your readers do.
5. Missing or Misplaced Punctuation
Punctuation errors such as a missing period or stray semicolon may initially appear minor, but they can change the meaning of a sentence and cause confusion. Consider the following example:
We had a video conference with the managers, Joanne and Louis.
vs.
We had a video conference with the managers, Joanne, and Louis.
The first sentence could be read in one of two very different ways, either of which could be correct! It might be that there were three groups in the meeting, or it could be read to mean that the conference was with the managers, and the managers were called Joanne and Louis. In the second sentence, the use of the serial comma clearly indicates there are three distinct groups: the managers, Joanne, and Louis.
Although this is an example of unclear punctuation usage and not an error – to use or omit the serial comma is typically a style preference – it highlights the importance of proofreading business content for clarity of meaning.
Another type of punctuation error that’s easily overlooked involves the use of hyphens in compound adjectives. Consider the meaning of each of these sentences:
We offer small business loans with flexible repayment terms.
vs.
We offer small-business loans with flexible repayment terms.
Without the hyphen, “small business” reads as two separate words, suggesting that the company offers business loans that are small. With the hyphen, the two words are joined as a compound modifier, and this tells the reader that the company provides loans (of unspecified size) to small businesses. So these are two very different definitions!
Pausing to determine which meaning is correct can temporarily slow down a potential customer’s buying process: does the website offer small loans or does it work with small businesses? These types of errors in business writing can stall the customer’s movement through the sales pipeline and even undermine your credibility due to the lack of clarity.
The solution to distracting or problem-causing errors is an editorial process that includes proofreading. Proofreading serves as the final quality-assurance step, identifying subtle, easy-to-miss mistakes in punctuation, spelling, and grammar – errors that can needlessly confuse your customers or hurt your reputation. Boosting your proofreading skills by taking a business proofreading course for professionals helps you catch these small but costly errors prior to publication.
Proofreading For Professionals
If you’re looking to avoid costly business writing mistakes and drive business growth, check out our Proofreading For Professionals course. It offers everything you and your team need to know to boost your content quality and expand your company’s reach. Try two free lessons with no strings attached to see for yourself.
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