Notes on Coursera Business Writing Course

• Clarity above all.
• Don't waste the reader's time. "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter" - Blaise Pascal.
• The look makes a difference. Make your text easier on the eyes. Use bullet points, white space, shorter sentences, margins, boldface, etc .
• Be smart: don't try to sound smart. Avoid jargon.
• Be the authority: don't use "I'm thinking", "in my opinion", etc.
• Scaffold well to write well. Structure you text in 3 phases: say what you want to say, say it, repeat it.
• One idea per paragraph
• Every paragraph should start with a strong sentence on the paragraph's topic.
• Start with your purpose, not the motivation or justification for it.
• The text may become too mechanical after revising. Keep your "voice" in your document by reading it out loud.
• If you find duplicate sentences, cut out the negative sounding ones first.
• Grammar matters.
• Grammar - I vs me: use I if it's a subject
• Attribute modifiers like adjectives need to one of the nouns. Make them adjacent.
• pronouns are words that take the place of nouns, like I, he, them. They refer to the closest antecedent noun.
• Think of the writing from your reader perspective
• Cut adjectives and adverbs; qualifiers and amplifiers; “in fact”, “possibly”, “generally”, etc
• Cut out generalities like "everyone knows", they often include the words: all everybody, everywhere, etc. You may need to rewrite sentences to make them more specific if they include words like: some, somebody, etc.
• use an active voice: "Bob did X", not "X was done by Bob". Passive voice is longer, less clear, and less emphatic. But it's acceptable in scientific papers because it sounds more impartial.
• Limit verbs "to be" and "to have". Including forms is, am, are, were, was, will be, have, has, had, have been and more.

Ref: Business Writing course on Coursera