BUSINESS WRITING BOOKS

In our business writing courses, people often ask us to recommend books on business writing, grammar and punctuation, and related topics. What we recommend depends on the company and the types of writing the employees do. Click these links for topics of interest to you.

Business Writing Books Style and Reference Manuals Books on Presentations

Business Writing Books

Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter’s Guide

Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky, Free Press, 2005

Our favorite book on business writing, this Bullfighter’s Guide should be mainstream business reading despite its oddball title. It’s a splendid, irreverent guide to what’s wrong with business communication and how to make it right. Especially valuable if your organization is prone to fuzzy words and bloated sentences, this book will validate your efforts to write clearly.

Help Employees Write Better: A Guide for Managers, Trainers, and Others Who Care About Business Writing

Lynn Gaertner-Johnston, Syntax Training, 2008

Based on the author’s experience helping thousands of managers and employees write better, the guide shares practical solutions, tips, and action steps for managers, coaches, and trainers. It’s the ideal guide for people who find themselves continually rewriting other people’s work. Don’t rewrite—help others write better!

E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide—
How to Write and Manage E-Mail
in the Workplace

Janis Fisher Chan, Write It Well, 2005

Everyone sends email, and nearly everyone can benefit from dipping into this book. We know executives who found it helpful. The slim volume of 181 packed pages covers planning, organizing, editing, proofreading, and managing email. Much of its good content applies to business writing in general, so if you want a writing guide complete with exercises and checklists, this is it.

Write to the Top: Writing for Corporate Success

Deborah Dumaine, Random House, 2004

As an inexpensive, up-to-date, practical business writing resource, Write to the Top is hard to top. It contains useful sections on analyzing your audience, generating ideas, brainstorming, sequencing information, and editing. This newly revised volume includes chapters on writing presentation documents, sales proposals, email, and web pages. And it helpfully covers writing as a team and coaching other writers, two valuable topics often not mentioned in writing manuals. A bonus: quizzes on grammar, punctuation, and editing.

Persuading on Paper: The Complete Guide to Writing Copy that Pulls in Business

Marcia Yudkin, Infinity Publishing, 2002

A great resource for those who need to sell on paper, this highly readable business writing book offers tested methods for writing successful sales and marketing pieces. In a breezy yet thorough approach, the author begins with basics such as “Who Are You Really, and What Are You Selling?” and moves step-by-step through writing and producing brochures, letters, newsletters, and other promotional materials.

The Zen of Proposal Writing:
An Expert’s Stress-Free Path
to Winning Proposals

Kitta Reeds, Three Rivers Press, 2002

Few business writing books are engaging enough to read from cover to cover, but this is one of them. Cleverly written and attractively designed, it provides excellent tips and strategies for writing proposals, along with a large dollop of common sense. The chapter title “One Hand Clapping: The Sound We Make When We Forget to Connect with Our Readers” typifies her easy style.

Pocket Guide to Technical Writing, Third Edition

William S. Pfeiffer, Prentice Hall, 2003

This slim paperback offers valuable examples of 16 different technical documents, from sales letter to trip report to feasibility study. Pfeiffer does a fine job explaining the various needs of the technical expert’s readers. He shares useful tips on rendering complex information graphically and on writing and giving technical presentations. If you’d like one book on technical writing that you can read and use, this is it.

Style and Reference Manuals

For employees and managers writing on the job

The Gregg Reference Manual,
A Manual of Style, Grammar, Usage, and Formatting, Tenth Edition

William A. Sabin, McGraw-Hill, 2005

“Gregg” is a comprehensive manual with the answer to virtually any question on punctuation, capitalization, and many other aspects of writing. With its detailed illustrations, Gregg is also a good reference for producing business documents such as minutes, agendas, and financial statements. Unless you’re intimidated by generous sprinklings of terms like “independent clause,” this is the best reference for correctness in general business writing. The new edition has a searchable online index.

For journalists, newsletter writers, and
      magazine writers

The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law

Norm Goldstein, Editor, Associated Press, 2006

The AP Stylebook features all kinds of entries a journalist or newsletter writer might need—things like trademark information, names of countries and organizations, military abbreviations, and the correct spelling of tricky words—broccoli, for example. It includes special sections on reporting on business and sports, and it covers punctuation with clear, crisp examples.

You can thank The AP Stylebook for the absence of the serial comma (before and), as in “The menu featured prime rib, halibut and pasta primavera.” AP is one of the few commonly used style manuals which drops that comma.

For book publishers, editors, and copyeditors

The Chicago Manual of Style, Fifteenth Edition

The University of Chicago Press, 2003

“Chicago” is the Bible of book publishers. It deals with the parts of a book, manuscript editing, illustrations, captions, punctuation, foreign languages, numbers, and much more. This new, significantly updated edition also covers journals and electronic publications. We like and use “Chicago,” but it’s a specialist’s volume. Unless you’re a professional editor or copyeditor, this expensive reference book (about $55) should not be among your first purchases.

For documentation writers

The Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, Third Edition

Microsoft Press, 2004

Along with an A-to-Z usage dictionary, this must-have volume offers well-written, detailed chapters on documenting the user interface, globalizing content, formatting, indexing, and more. The plentiful correct and incorrect examples are a valuable feature. With the book comes a CD of e-versions of the style manual, Microsoft Computer Dictionary, and Microsoft Encyclopedia of Networking, which jointly provide everything you need to write or edit documentation. 

For science writers and editors

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition

American Psychological Association, 2001

This highly regarded volume is made for people who write or edit scientific publications. It includes guidelines on the content and organization of scientific manuscripts; ways to express ideas and reduce bias; and a lot about the correct, effective rendering of illustrations, scientific abbreviations, numbers, and measurements. It provides thorough information on citing publications and other references, including electronic works.

For everyone

Write Right: A Desktop Digest of Punctuation, Grammar, and Style, Fourth Edition

Jan Venolia, Ten Speed Press, 2001

In 200 compact pages, this humorous and accurate guide reviews the essential mechanics of writing. Venolia has fun, and her readers do too, with clever drawings illustrating language slips such as “I saw a man on a horse with a wooden leg.” This is a style guide for your desk, but it’s also small enough to carry. When you’re kept waiting, pull it out of your pocket, dip into it for a writing reminder or a grammar gem, and smile. 

Books on Presentations

Point, Click & Wow! A Quick Guide
to Brilliant Laptop Presentations

Claudyne Wilder and Jennifer Rotondo, Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2002

Point, Click & Wow! is a rich guide for anyone who wants to present well using PowerPoint. The preparation checklists are excellent tools for beginners and experts. Had we read the dozens of suggestions on avoiding last-minute problems, we would have saved ourselves (and our audiences) many lost minutes staring at blank screens.

The book offers excellent advice on using slides to bring concepts and data to life through stories. Examples and templates of real presentations from the Nature Conservancy, Harmon Inc., and other organizations are included in the book and on the valuable accompanying CD-ROM.

Back to top

Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire

Cliff Atkinson, Microsoft Press, 2005

We recommend this excellent volume for creative, literary-minded people who are ready to revolutionize their presentations. Using a storyboard approach, with a setting, protagonist, Acts I-III, scripts, and plot resolutions, author Cliff Atkinson shows presenters how to tell stories that move and inspire their audience.

Atkinson offers research to support his claims that if we shun bullet points, we will be free to connect with our story and communicate with our audience. Along with his fine ideas about story-telling, he shares tips for using diagrams, displaying numbers, snapping screen shots, rehearsing, being authentic, and improvising.

What’s even better than a business writing book? A quick-reference tool you can use immediately. In our business writing courses, participants get tools, blueprints, and job-aids that do the work of reference manuals. Click Our Classes for descriptions of our business writing courses.