How does business writing differ from academic writing? List down the various points of difference between these two genres of writing.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary. Business writing is just one of several genres of writing.It differs from academic or compositional writing in many ways and is more akin to technical writing. Therefore, learning to be a good business writer often requiresunlearning some of the conventions of academic or compositional writing you may have acquired in your previous training.The context of business writing is very different from academic and compositional writing, including the elements of audience and purpose. Academic and compositional writing instruction is intended to teach students to write formally and correctly to an audience who loves writing and has the leisure time available to linger over it and appreciate its stylistic aspects. This is not the case for business audiences, many of whom do not like to read or write and don't have the time to linger over it. Most business audiences are not analyzing your writing for grammatical correctness and stylistic appeal, particularly in the case of routine messages. Instead, they are reading your messages to gather the information they need to move forward in their job duties.Another difference between business writing and academic or compositional writing is that because of time pressures, business audiences are reading messages quickly. That means two things: Business writing should be complete yet concise, and it should be easy to skim. Therefore, a business reader is likely never to ask you to write a four-page report on information that might easily be covered in two or three paragraphs. It also means that you need to learn to write in such a way as to provide sufficient "entry points" into your message to enable skimming.The style and tone of business writing also differ from academic or compositional writing. Because compositional writing emphasizes the rules of English as used in the conservative environment of the academy, the style is often formal and the tone may be stilted due to the use of overly long sentences and multisyllabic words, both of which are more time-consuming to read-a "no-no" in a business context. In contrast, business writing tends to use less complex sentences, plain language-and a friendly, personable tone in order to cultivate positive relationships as an important strategic goal. REJ: Please see the section "The Genre of Business Writing" for more information.