Supercharge Your Writing

Mike Ulmer, worked as a sports reporter for the Toronto Sun and Maple Leaf Sports. His passion now is written communication and he outlined his ten commandments of effective business writing. 1 - You can do this. 2 - Do not try to sound smarter than you are. 3 - Let your verbs do the work. 4 - Do not use new or big words. 5 - Build your house. 6 - Do up your fly. 7 - Use simple punctuation. 8 - Vary your sentence length. 9 - Respect your reader. Proof your work. 10 - Print out your work. Have someone else read it.

Five and six need explanation. Build your house stresses that 50% of one's message comes in the first few sentences. Take care to make this happen. Do up your fly means don't look foolish. Watch words like it's and its, their and there, we're and were.

Mike stressed that we cannot afford to write poorly and poor writing never goes away. Members commented that social media is destroying good writing, reading aloud is a good way to proof read, and watch those auto correct features on word processors that change words and meanings.