business writing articles

Effective Business Writing

Leading provider of teaching materials for management education

Successful managers and leaders must employ effective writing skills to organize their work, persuade stakeholders, and share their vision for the future. This collection offers instructors a variety of ways to introduce and explore the topic of business writing with their students.

Quick Tips for Business Writing

1139 word count

570 word count

769 word count

907 word count

Comprehensive Approaches to Business Writing

2 hours, 7 minutes

240 page(s)

Storytelling, Inspiration, and Persuasion

3 hours, 5 minutes

886 word count

1233 word count

1136 word count

954 word count

Writing and Leadership

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience, including personalizing content. Learn More . By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies and revised Privacy Policy .

87 Advanced Business Writing Tips [That Actually Work]

Table of Contents

1. know your audience, 2. prime questions, 3. think first, 4. most time is planning, 5. drafting is easy, 6. editing time, 7. plan first, then draft, 8. woody allen is right about writing, 9. concept maps are essential for business writers, 10. develop headings, 11. start where it's easiest.

• 12. How to jump in and out

13. Back up when you get stuck

14. hire a coach, 15. paragraphs seven lines or less online, 16. dangling expressions are funny but avoid them, 17. use regular words to avoid non-sexist writing, 18. headings will allow your readers to scan easily, 19. make it easy for your reader to scan, 20. use format to indicate hierarchy, 21. write to express, not to impress, 22. concise writing is skilled writing, 23. use short words, 24. use staccato short words to grab attention, 25. winston churchill wisdom, 26. verbs = energy, 27. use precise verbs, 28. don't smother verbs, 29. verbs used right bring clarity, 30. how to cut 20%–25% of bloat, 31. "take" near a verb is smothered, 32. "give" near a verb is smothered, 33. "have" near a verb is smothered, 34. "make" near a verb is smothered, 35. "conduct" near a verb is smothered, 36. "come" near a verb is smothered, 37. "-ion or -ment" near a verb is usually smothered, 38. avoid wimpy verbs, 39. avoid redundancy, 40. don't start sentences with "there is" or "there are.", 41. active voice is better than passive voice, 42. use reader-focused wording, 43. avoid jargon, 44. be polite. it echoes., 45. own your work, 46. use standard grammar, even when challenging, 47. how to dodge awkward his or her dilemma, 48. the right amount of information helps the reader and writer, 49. equal respect matters, 50. avoid exclusionary words, 51. confident tone tip, 52. take a course, 53. an exclamation point is already superlative.

• 54. Use clear words rather than emphasis punctuation

55. Editing first step

56. editing second step, 57. editing third step, 58. break paragraphs frequently, 59. paragraph length is varied, 60. designate an editor for group documents, 61. planning eases editing, 62. editing can't compensate for poor planning, 63. how to proofread a colleague's document, 64. punctuation matters, 65. avoid run-on sentences, 66. avoid sentence fragments, 67. use hypens correctly, 68. me, myself and i, 69. use clause commas correctly, 70. grammar errors are individual, 71. wide-ranging grammar training won't help, 72. best grammar resource, 73. best grammar analysis, 74. best business grammar resource, 75. oxford comma yes or no, 76. grammar rules are inflexible, 77. grammar rules are flexible, 78. my recommendation on the prescriptivist vs. descriptivist divide, 79. best grammar and editing tool, 80. cut the bloat, 81. best tool you already have, 82. tone analyzer, 83. jargon detector, 84. free concept mapping tool, 85. how to easily learn concept mapping, 86. hire the better writer, 87. subscribe to our blog, bonus: 19 actionable writing tips infographic.

I'm excited to share these top 87 business writing tips with you. They were honed while I studied English Literature and Rhetoric, taught writing at the university level, and worked with thousands of individuals and hundreds of companies to help people write better at work. Many of these tips come directly from our award-winning online business writing courses . 

My hope is these tips help you enjoy writing, improve your business communications, get ahead in your career, and grow your business!

Business writing is all about your reader. Your reader is your focus point, not what you know.

Before you write anything, ask yourself these two questions:

1. Who is my reader? 2. What do I want this reader to know or do?

If you can’t answer these two questions, stop. Don’t write the document because it has no purpose.

Business writing is just as much about thinking as it is about writing.

You should spend approximately 50% of your time planning a business document or email.

Drafting a document is the easiest part and should require approximately 20% of your time.

Allocate 30% of your time to editing.

Accept that you want to draft more than you want to plan a document or email. Everyone does. Drafting gives us a (sometimes false) sense of accomplishment. And, drafting is easier than planning.

Woody Allen calls the planning portion of writing the “pace the floor” part. If you are an analytical thinker, which many business writers are, this is natural for you, but accept that sometimes it makes your brain hurt as your mind has to figure out all the interconnections.

Mapping the structure of a complex document will make both planning and drafting much easier.

When you plan your documents, write a heading for each main section of your document. Don’t worry about the wording of the heading as you are planning to document, but verify that you can encapsulate the content of that section into a heading. If you can’t, your content is murky so fix it now before you waste time editing the language when the real problem is disorganization.

You don’t have to begin writing a document or email at the first sentence. The first sentence is often the hardest sentence to write. Instead, look at your document headings and write the section that is easiest or most interesting for you. Once you begin writing, the interconnectivity of thoughts will ignite, and the rest of the document will be easier to write.

12. How to jump in and out  

In real life, business writers don’t have the luxury of a half-day of uninterrupted writing time. To maximize your efficiency, refer to the map or outline you created, decide which section you can tackle in the time you have, and start drafting. Having a map and headings will prevent you from having to re-engage your thinking all over again each time you exit and enter the document.

The best recommendation given to me during my years of rhetorical studies was: “The secret of writing is knowing when to back up. Don’t try to edit and polish before something is fully drafted. Don’t try to draft before your thoughts are clear. When you get stuck, back up!” As a business writer, this has saved me lots of frustration.

Hire a business writing coach and receive personalized feedback. One-on-one sessions will help you gain confidence in your writing and communication skills.

In email or other documents that will be read online, be certain your paragraphs aren’t longer than seven lines. (Lines, not sentences.) Any longer than that and readability studies show that your readers just see a big block of text and jump over it.

Dangling expressions commonly creep in documents in bullets and when copying and pasting. 

Example: David Corcoran wrote the project plan while traveling to Atlanta on the back of an envelope.  (Who knew one could travel on an envelope?)

Get practical instructor feedback that takes your business writing to the next level.

Enroll in our Effective Business Writing Techniques course, and master your bedrock business writing skills today.

Avoid awkward non-sexist constructions like his/her and s/he. Instead, write out the actual words - his or her.

Using headings in email to highlight the organization will allow readers to scan the email more efficiently.

Add white space to your documents by using numbered and bulleted lists .

Indent paragraphs to visually indicate it is a subset of the information above.

Related: How to Format Your Business Document

In business writing, your goal is to easily transmit ideas and information, not to flaunt a big vocabulary. 

Concise writing is harder to craft than writing that has no length limit. Blaise Pasqual stated, "I apologize for the length of my letter. I did not have time to make it shorter."

I’ve long admired Richard Lederer’s writing on language. In his 1991 book, The Miracle of Language , Lederer sings the praises of the short word:

When you speak and write, there is no law that says you have to use big words. Short words are as good as long ones, and short, old words— like sun and grass and home—are best of all. A lot of small words, more than you might think, can meet your needs with a strength, grace, and charm that large words do not have.

Two tips on clarity I always highlight in our business writing courses : 

• Never use a big word when a small word will do.
• Any time a word is not truly needed, cut it.

To grab your reader’s attention at pivotal moments in a document, such as the recommendation or conclusion, deliberately shift one or two sentences to all single-syllable words. A break in varied syllable length has the same effect on reading a document that staccato notes have when listening to music. The short, staccato words subconsciously alert your reader that something has shifted, causing them to pay more attention.  

Winston Churchill wisely stated, “Big men use little words, and little men use big words.”

Verbs are the pivot point of a sentence. Strong verbs have real punch. Compare:

The famous strong verb example by Julius Caesar: “Veni, vidi, vici.” I came , I saw , I conquered .

Business-speak: I was in attendance, and I conducted a review of the situation and culture, and I made recommendations for acquisition.

To bring clarity to your writing, use precise and evocative verbs. Business writers tend to muddle verbs because imprecise verb use is so common in business writing that it sounds normal to our ears.

A common clarity problem in business writing is “smothered verbs,” which are verbs that were changed to nouns (called “nominalization”). For example, the verb decide is nominalized into the noun decision . These nominalized verbs require helping words around them that smother their impact, muddle the clarity of a sentence, and increase sentence length.

Enhance clarity by using a specific verb, instead of a smothered nominalized word.

Example: The core verb in this sentence is “decide:" We need to make a decis ion about hiring either Kevin or Kira. - smothered verb We need to decide about hiring either Kevin or Kira. - unsmothered verb

Cutting smothered verbs reduces document length by 20–25% in most business documents. None of the smothering words have any value. Unsmothering verbs is a very powerful clarity technique.

Watch out for the word take near the verb in a sentence or sentence clause . If take is next to a verb or nominalized verb phrase, it is smothered. 

Example: We need to take the data findings into consideration if we expand the product line. We need to consider the data findings if we expand the product line.

Watch out for the word  give near the verb in a sentence or sentence clause . If give is next to a verb or nominalized verb phrase, it is smothered.

Example: Let me give consideration to your muddled writing. Let me consider your muddled writing.

Watch out for the word have near the verb in a sentence or sentence clause . If have is next to a verb or nominalized verb phrase, it is smothered.

Example: I have a suspicion some of your verbs are smothered. I suspect some of your verbs are smothered.

Watch out for the word make near the verb in a sentence or sentence clause . If make is next to a verb or nominalized verb phrase, it is smothered.

Example: We promise to make an adjustment to your account by tomorrow. We promise to adjust your account by tomorrow.

Watch out for the word conduct near the verb in a sentence or sentence clause . If conduct is next to a verb or nominalized verb phrase, it is smothered.

Example: We’ll need to conduct a review of the data before the decision can be made. We’ll need to review the data before deciding. (Two smothered verbs corrected)

Watch out for the word come near the verb in a sentence or sentence clause . If come is next to a verb or nominalized verb phrase, it is smothered.

Example: We came to the conclusion that prices had to increase. We concluded that prices had to increase.

Look for words ending in -ion and -ment near the verb in a sentence or sentence clause . If -ion or -ment is next to a verb or nominalized verb phrase, it is likely smothered.

Example: Are we i n agreement that clarity matters? Do we agree that clarity matters? Extend an invitation to Karen and Sunita. Invite Karen and Sunita.

Avoid wimpy verbs that need a helping word to enable the verb to do its job in the sentence. 

Example: 

Dolores walked into the room slowly and quietly with her head averted, hoping no one would notice she was late.

Dolores slinked into the room, hoping no one would notice she was late.

Evan planned and worked on the technical aspect of the project plan.

Evan engineered the project plan.

Avoid redundant verb modifiers.

Example: Damian shouted loudly at Clarrisa after she missed the deadline. Damian shouted at Clarrisa after she missed the deadline. (Shouting, by definition, is loud, so no modifier is needed.)

Weak sentences frequently start with “ There is ” or “ There are .” Instead, cut to the chase. Find the real subject and start there.  Read more about There, Their and They're here.

Example: There was a strong disagreement between the divisions about the reorganization structure. The two sides strongly disagreed about the reorganization structure.

Active voice is more dynamic and lively than passive voice, typically.

To increase reader engagement, shift appropriately from writer-focused wording to reader-focused writing. Be judicious. An entire document written with reader-focus wording can feel smarmy or too much like a marketing pitch. Used judiciously, it’s very effective.

Example: We have decided to upgrade the features of our training course. You will automatically receive updated features in your training course.

Jason Fried, the CEO of 37 Signals , stated: “Jargon is insecurity.” I agree.

So often, I hear people within an organization parrot each other with phrases that have been used so much they have become meaningless.

• Lots of moving parts
• Think outside the box
• View more jargon examples to avoid

Bonus Tip: You can also use our free Jargon Grader to check your writing for over 700 jargon words and phrases.

Everything we write at work has a larger echo. This echo is both a worry and an opportunity to advance your career. For example, you may have to deny a funding request to present research at a conference, but the larger echo requirement is maintaining the drive to innovate and research at your company. Don't win a battle and lose the war.

Avoid “I think …” or “I suggest …” or “I wonder if we should …"

Instead, confidently write “I recommend ...” or omit the “I” lead statement and simply write “Merge the divisions.”

Subjects and verbs need to agree in number. In an attempt be non-sexist, some business writers recommend writing, “Each person did their work quietly.” Each is singular. Their is plural. It’s grammatically incorrect.

To dodge the awkward his or her dilemma, shift the subject to plural when possible: A manager is trained to support his or her employees. Managers are trained to support their employees.

A little extra information provided can resolve repeated questions: As noted on page four of the instruction booklet, photocopying on both sides requires two steps.

Use consistency naming people. Mr. Jones and Arlene Kelly should be referred to consistently as David Jones and Arlene Kelly or as Mr. Jones and Ms. Kelly.

Use neutral job titles that do not imply gender - chairperson, not chairman or chairwoman.

To instill a confident tone to your writing, shorten your sentences and avoid the common overuse of “, and” in sentences. Which statement sounds more confident to you?

Training with us is easy , and you can hand us the job and just walk away.  You won't worry about a thing , and you can get back to what you do best.  Relax knowing your project is moving seamlessly to completion , and you can simply calculate the savings. OR Training with us is easy.  Hand us the job and just walk away.  You won't worry about a thing. Get back to what you do best.  Relax knowing your project is moving seamlessly to completion. Simply calculate the savings.

Do you hear the difference in confident tone? The second statement sounds much less out-of-breath or desperate to please and more confident and competent. It is calmer and assuring.

Continue to hone your skills by taking an effective business writing course . A structured course can help you develop effective business writing techniques [ Learn More ].

Never use more than one exclamation point at the end of a sentence.

When I studied rhetoric in graduate school, my favorite professor shared this funny statement about using too many exclamation points in general.  “Too many exclamation points make a document feel as if it has been written by an unfocused over-caffeinated cheerleader.”

54. Use clear words rather than emphasis punctuation  

Exclamation points are often used in business writing to generate enthusiasm when the real problem is imprecise information. More accurate, clear information will generate reader engagement far better than trying to spice a murky document with exclamation points.

The first step in editing is verifying that content matches reader needs - not too much, and not too little.

The second step in editing is making sure the document is as easy to scan as possible. Add headings, bullet lists, appropriate bold text, and lots of white space.

The third step in editing is correcting grammar, sentence structure, and eliminating bloat.

Every new thought needs a new paragraph. When in doubt, break the paragraph.

A one-sentence paragraph is both correct and emphatic. Don't be afraid to write a one-sentence paragraph.

When a group writes a document, designate one writer as the final editor to ensure a coherent voice.

If you are spending too much time editing, you probably rushed the planning of your document.

Editing should need a dusting, not an editorial massacre.

If a colleague asks you to edit their document, you must ask them about both the purpose of the document and about the audience. Without this information, you can only clean grammar.

A woman without her man is nothing. A woman: without her, man is nothing.

The most common grammar error we see in client writing during business writing training is fused or run-on sentences.

The second most common grammar error we see in client writing is sentence fragments.

The third most common grammar error we see in client writing is hyphen errors.

The fourth most common grammar error we see in client writing is me, myself, and I errors. 

The fifth most common grammar error we see in client writing is introductory clause comma errors.

Everyone makes different grammar errors. Therefore, to improve grammar, the first step has to be an accurate diagnosis of an individual’s entrenched grammar errors.

A review of many grammar rules is ineffective in actually improving business writing sentence structure. More effective is focusing on what is incorrect.

By far, the best grammar resource on the Internet is Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab . It includes explanations and exercises. 

Grammar Girl is an excellent resource for current grammar use and rationale.

Instructional Solutions’ Business Grammar category in their Business Writing Info blog is an excellent resource for business-specific grammar use.

Grammarians will never agree about whether or not to use the Oxford Comma (also called a Serial Comma). I recommend that business writers use it because of its consistency and clarification advantages.

Grammarians who believe a grammar rule should never be broken are called prescriptivists.

Grammarians who believe language is more flexible, and grammar rules may be broken, are called descriptivists. 

In business writing, it’s best to stick with established grammar rules because a client or potential customer could see what they perceive as an error and believe your work is simply sloppy.

For all the best business writing tools check out our full article here . 

Grammarly is our top business writing tool recommendation. Use it as the last check before you send anything. It will also detect plagiarism. Don't forget plagiarism applies to text as well as images.

Hemingway is a free app that detects bloat in your writing.

Microsoft Readability Measurement Tool, already embedded in Word and Outlook, provides helpful  business writing clarity measurements . Grammarly is better.

Tone Analyzer assesses the tone of your business writing .

Unsuck It is a rude, but useful, tool that assesses business writing jargon .

Freemind is free mind mapping software that is very easy to use.

This tutorial will teach you to use Freemind in ten minutes.

In his insightful book, Rework , Jason Fried stated:

All things being equal, hire the better writer. Good writers know what to include and what to omit. They understand people and motivation. They can express complex information in a way it can be shared. Whether the position is sales, engineering, software development, or HR, always hire the better writer.

I agree with Jason Fried. However, business writing is a skill that can be honed. Since 1998, my company, Instructional Solutions, and I have helped thousands of individuals and hundreds of companies write better at work.

We wanted to add one last tip! If you liked this article you can subscribe to our blog here . We often write articles focused on helping you become a better professional writer. 

For a deeper dive into business writing and for even more tips, read our full Guide to Business Writing .

Share this infographic on your site

Interested in sharing this infographic? Just copy and paste the code below.

Please include attribution to www.instructionalsolutions.com .

Related Articles

19 of the best business writing tools [updated 2021], power of short words in business writing, how to improve business writing skills, get notified of new articles.

• Business Writing Skills (54)
• Business Grammar (52)
• Technical Writing (32)
• Business Writing Resources (26)
• Business Email Writing (17)
• Business Writing Training (12)
• Business Proposals (10)
• Business Report Writing (7)
• Business Proofreading (4)
• Sales Writing (3)
• Executive Summary Writing (2)
• Customer Support Writing (1)
• Bailey Lang (1)
• Elisabeth O'Quinn (14)
• Grace Cuddy (6)
• Haley Larsen (4)
• Kara Latz (10)
• Katie Almeida Spencer (31)
• Malcolm Stiefel (1)
• Mary Cullen (134)
• Samantha Taylor (2)
• Terrance Collins (1)
• Tom DuPuis (10)

• Work & Careers
• Life & Arts

Become an FT subscriber

Try unlimited access Only $1 for 4 weeks

Then $75 per month. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Cancel anytime during your trial.

• Global news & analysis
• Expert opinion
• Special features
• FirstFT newsletter
• Videos & Podcasts
• Android & iOS app
• FT Edit app
• 10 gift articles per month

Explore more offers.

Standard digital.

• FT Digital Edition

Premium Digital

Print + premium digital, digital standard + weekend, digital premium + weekend.

Today's FT newspaper for easy reading on any device. This does not include ft.com or FT App access.

• 10 additional gift articles per month
• Global news & analysis
• Exclusive FT analysis
• Videos & Podcasts
• FT App on Android & iOS
• Everything in Standard Digital
• Premium newsletters
• Weekday Print Edition
• FT Weekend newspaper delivered Saturday plus standard digital access
• FT Weekend Print edition
• FT Weekend Digital edition
• FT Weekend newspaper delivered Saturday plus complete digital access
• Everything in Preimum Digital

Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

• Everything in Print
• Everything in Premium Digital

Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

Terms & Conditions apply

Explore our full range of subscriptions.

Why the ft.

See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times.

International Edition

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content

FreelanceWriting

Established Since 1997

Freelance Writing Jobs

Writing contests, make money writing, hottest topics, we have 50 articles in business writing.

How to Write Your Fundraising Annual Appeal

When approaching development writing, whether it�s for a grant proposal, an annual appeal, a brochure, or an online appeal

Top 10 Tips to Convince Businesses to Outsource Freelance Work to You

Businesses will outsource work to you if you can prove that you can produce exceptional work; you meet deadlines; you can achieve what the client wants; you...

You Can Provide Ghostwriting Services Online

A ghostwriter is a person who writes for someone else for money and always stays in the background. When you are hired for a ghostwriting gig, you give up...

Why SEO Copywriting is the Perfect High-Paying, Work-from-Home Job With Huge Growth Potential

If you've ever considered starting a freelance writing career, or want to find an ideal work-from-home job that pays well, then consider SEO copywriting.

The Basics of Technical Writing

Technical writing is purposeful and usually intended to solve a problem for a specific audience.Learn about the seven principles of technical writing.

8 Tips For Writing an Excellent Travelogue

Spin a beautiful picture so as to make the reader want to visit that place. If you could get a picture of it then you can take its help to give an apt...

The Secret To Grant Proposal Writing Success

In my position working in programming for one of the country�s major foundations, I reviewed many many grant proposals.

10 Essential Qualities For Success in PR

The world of public relations is a lot like the world of advertising -- the more creative you are, the more successful you will be. Of course, more often...

The Art of Writing a Business Report

Can you imagine life without the printed word? Regardless of your profession, you frequently use documents and reports to base important business decisions

Technical Writing Exercises to Help You Sell it

A product has two basic qualities. It has features, and it has benefits. As Elmer so rightly realized, a consumer buys a benefit, not a feature. It doesn't...

Top 7 Ways to Attract New Clients For Your Freelancing Business

Although there are many perks working on the Internet, getting the word out and generating a steady supply of target traffic and potential new clients to...

Learning Communication Skills In the Military

I recently had the pleasurable challenge of working with seven Navy SEALs on communication skills. They were fine young men, and their writing and...

Magnetic Marketing Copy: Writing From a Position of Partnership

Do you ever feel sleazy or inauthentic when you write marketing or sales copy? Like you're pushing people, rather than pulling them in? I know I have.

Oil and Gas Writers: 4 Secrets For Success

Writing for the oil and gas industry is different than typical marketing or business writing for the following reasons:

Pick a Writing Niche, Any Writing Niche

Unless you've been working in a small town, doing bits and pieces of different types of legal work for everyone, it's quite likely you've become a specialist...

4 Guidelines to Power Social Brand Building

Public relations specialists were among the first few to understand the power of social media, making them leaders in the social space. Along with handling...

12 Job Application Tips for Copywriters

This article is for any writer - experienced or not - who plans to apply for a copywriting job. It presents 12 tips (in order of importance) on how to apply...

7 Important Tips in Business Writing

Letter writing is a form of communication. Thoughts, feelings, opinions and intentions are written clearly so that the reader will fully understand what...

How To Write Follow-Up Articles For News Outlets - 3-Step Guide

If you have a good story that is relevant to the issue, provides fresh perspective and is different from what the news outlet or any of their rivals are...

How I Became a Syndicated Columnist, And You Can Too!

When people ask me how I became a syndicated columnist, I usually say, it just snowballed. And basically that's what happened. Here's how you can do it too.

Grant Writing Jobs - A High Demand Writing Career

If you love to write, are highly organized, and enjoy working for a good cause, grant writing may be the perfect career for you. With more than 1.5 million...

Freelance Writing For Trade Magazines

Breaking into trade magazines as a freelance writer can be tricky. Many editors of trade magazines choose not to list their writer's guidelines

Freelance Writing Opportunities in Writing for the Trade Press

Trade publications attract writers from two primary sources. Trade editors actively seek out tradesmen and women and turn them into writers; and/or editors...

Writing for Local News Outlets

A very easy way for writers living in rural areas to increase their monthly income is to act as a local correspondent for different social media content...

Freelance Writing: Writing for Automotive Trade Journals

One requisite to break into this market is you must write with accuracy. Editors demand accuracy in all technical contributions. Most, if not all, freelance...

Writing E-mails to Editors: How to Pitch, Correspond, and Present Yourself Professionally

Just because you're working in a freelance creative profession instead of a corporate field, it doesn't mean your e-mails should be sloppy or casual. E-mail...

How to Get Clients in Less than an Hour for Your Writing Business

Are you looking forward to taking your freelance writing business to the next level by landing big time corporate clients? One of the most disturbing truths...

The Benefits of Writing about Charities

As a freelance writer for more than eight years now, I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to write about a wide variety of topics. One area in which...

How to Find Great Subject-Matter Experts for Your Articles

Journalists and nonfiction writers often need subject-matter experts (SMEs) to lend credibility to their content. I have interviewed experts as far ranging...

In this Business of Writing, One Opportunity Leads to Another

In my first eighteen years as a writer I feel like I made almost every mistake an author can make. I've been ripped off by vanity publishers, have paid more...

How to Write Web Copy that Sells!

You want to write web copy that grabs the reader's attention and sells something, whether that is a product or an idea, right? To achieve this, it could be a...

How to Write Authority Content for You and Your Clients

Your article's purpose may be to inform, educate, convince, or simply entertain. Crafting authority content helps you, your clients, and your audience.

Words Work: 7 Ways to Get Results in Business Writing

The effects of poor writing skills on businesses and even to individuals who want to excel in their fields can be painful. Miscommunication between employees...

How I Broke into Freelance Writing Based on One Idea

Everyone has a story about how they began their freelance writing career. Learn how to do the same from the experiences of one successful writer.

A Specialty in Freelance Real Estate Writing

National real estate writing and editing has been my specialty for nearly 10 years, but I have years of experience as a real estate agent and property...

Freelance Copywriting: Writing the Advertorial

Whether you are a copywriter, an article writer, or a journalist, you can easily grasp the mechanics of writing advertorials for clients. Without realizing...

Give Your Freelance Career a Boost by Breaking into the Financial Writing Niche

Do you want to know to land high-paying freelance gigs that average $0.10 to $0.20 a word? Consider writing about finance. You can leverage personal trading...

Blogging for Business: How to Use a Blog to Get New Clients

No one can undermine the effectiveness of word of mouth marketing and referrals, but nothing equals the effectiveness of blogging as a way to get new...

Write to Excite, Delight and Entice

When you do your business writing, consider incorporating the principle of Excite, Delight and Entice. What this means is that you emotionalize your writing

Business Writing - Discover 6 Challenging Steps to Excel at Business Writing

In this type of writing, there are so many factors that you need to take into consideration just to get your message across

Career Switch From Journalism to Public Relations - Research, Communication Skills Transfer Smoothly

Characterizing journalists as rigidly objective and solitary doesn't describe professionals accustomed to flexibility, point-of-view narratives and teamwork....

Getting it write: The ten most common business writing mistakes and how to avoid them

How many business documents do UK companies produce each week? Think about the countless emails; the proposals for clients; the reports for management

7 Tips to Become a Better Business Writer

Every sentence you put down on paper (or on a computer screen) identifies who you are and/or what your business offers. Here are 7 tips to improve your writing.

6 Effective Tips to Improve Copy on your Company's Blog

This article provides tips to write effective, attention-arresting blog copy and shows how you can develop reader and customer loyalty.

Tag, You're It! (Or, How To Write Slogans)

Taglines summarize in a very few words the essence of the thing they are promoting. They communicate a good, positive feeling or relationship to the product.

Improve Document Searches with Great Technical Writing

People use the words that they know when they speak, write, or search. It's folly to try to force the Reader to use the writer's terminology.

The Anatomy of a Proposal - Presenting the Solution

When writing a business proposal Executive Summary we suggest the following flow to the structure of this part of your sales document.

Top Reasons To Avoid Business Jargon

The heavy use of jargon leaves those who don't understand the terms feeling confused, while the ones who do understand might feel smug and in-the-know.

7 Ways to Increase Your Writing Range and Raise Your Income

Here are seven strategies you can use to increase your writing range and boost your income potential in the process.

Eleven Unusual Cures for Writer's Block That Actually Worked

Take a cue from famous and uncelebrated writers alike in adopting one of these unusual cures for writer's block that do actually work.

Submit New Contest

You can pick more than one

How can people enter your contest? Choose the best option.

Thanks for your submission!

FreelanceWriting.com hosts some of the most talented freelance writers on the web, so you’ve come to the right place to find contestants. We are proud to post your contest here, free of charge. Please come back and submit a new contest anytime!

Submit New Job

Choose the best option.

We only accept jobs that pay. When posting a job ad, you MUST include a salary, payment terms, or rate, otherwise we will reject your ad.

If you want make a change or wish to remove your job ad in the future, please email [email protected]

We strive to be the best source of freelance writing jobs on the web, and we maintain our quality thanks to employers like you. Please continue to submit jobs early and often!

Advertisement

Supported by

Poor Nations Are Writing a New Handbook for Getting Rich

Economies focused on exports have lifted millions out of poverty, but epochal changes in trade, supply chains and technology are making it a lot harder.

• Share full article

By Patricia Cohen

Reporting from London

For more than half a century, the handbook for how developing countries can grow rich hasn’t changed much: Move subsistence farmers into manufacturing jobs, and then sell what they produce to the rest of the world.

The recipe — customized in varying ways by Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and China — has produced the most potent engine the world has ever known for generating economic growth. It has helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, create jobs and raise standards of living.

The Asian Tigers and China succeeded by combining vast pools of cheap labor with access to international know-how and financing, and buyers that reached from Kalamazoo to Kuala Lumpur. Governments provided the scaffolding: They built up roads and schools, offered business-friendly rules and incentives, developed capable administrative institutions and nurtured incipient industries.

But technology is advancing, supply chains are shifting, and political tensions are reshaping trade patterns. And with that, doubts are growing about whether industrialization can still deliver the miracle growth it once did. For developing countries, which contain 85 percent of the globe’s population — 6.8 billion people — the implications are profound.

Today, manufacturing accounts for a smaller share of the world’s output, and China already does more than a third of it . At the same time, more emerging countries are selling inexpensive goods abroad, increasing competition. There are not as many gains to be squeezed out: Not everyone can be a net exporter or offer the world’s lowest wages and overhead.

There are doubts that industrialization can create the game-changing benefits it did in the past. Factories today tend to rely more on automated technology and less on cheapworkers who have little training.

“You cannot generate enough jobs for the vast majority of workers who are not very educated,” said Dani Rodrik, a leading development economist at Harvard.

The process can be seen in Bangladesh, which the World Bank’s managing director called “one of the world’s greatest development stories” last year. The country built its success on turning farmers into textile workers.

Last year, though, Rubana Huq, chair of Mohammadi Group, a family-owned conglomerate, replaced 3,000 employees with automated jacquard machines to do complex weaving patterns.

The women found similar jobs elsewhere in the company. “But what follows when this happens on a large scale?” asked Ms. Huq, who is also president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

These workers don’t have training, she said. “They’re not going to turn into coders overnight.”

Recent global developments have accelerated the transition.

Supply chain meltdowns related to the Covid-19 pandemic and to sanctions prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove up the price of essentials like food and fuel, biting into incomes. High interest rates, imposed by central banks to quell inflation, set off another series of crises: Developing nations’ debts ballooned , and investment capital dried up.

Last week, the International Monetary Fund warned of the noxious combination of lower growth and higher debt.

The supercharged globalization that had encouraged companies to buy and sell in every spot around the planet has also been shifting. Rising political tensions, especially between China and the United States, are affecting where businesses and governments invest and trade.

Companies want supply chains to be secure as well as cheap, and they are looking at neighbors or political allies to provide them.

In this new era, Mr. Rodrik said, “the industrialization model — which practically every country that has become rich has relied on — is no longer capable of generating rapid and sustained economic growth.”

Nor is it clear what might replace it.

There’s a future in service jobs.

One alternative might be found in Bengaluru, a high-tech center in the Indian state of Karnataka.

Multinationals like Goldman Sachs, Victoria’s Secret and the Economist magazine have flocked to the city and set up hundreds of operational hubs — known as global capability centers — to handle accounting, design products, develop cybersecurity systems and artificial intelligence, and more.

Such centers are expected to generate 500,000 jobs nationwide in the next two to three years, according to the consulting firm Deloitte .

They are joining hundreds of biotech, engineering and information technology companies including homegrown giants like Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and Infosys Limited. Four months ago, the American chip company AMD unveiled its largest global design center there.

“We have to move away from the idea of classic development stages, that you go from the farm to the factory and then from the factory to offices,” said Richard Baldwin , an economist at the IMD in Lausanne. “That whole development model is wrong.”

Two-thirds of the world’s output now comes from the service sector — a mishmash that includes dog walkers, manicurists, food preparers, cleaners and drivers, as well as highly trained chip designers, graphic artists, nurses, engineers and accountants.

It is possible to leapfrog to the service sector and grow by selling to businesses around the world, Mr. Baldwin argued. That is what helped India become the world’s fifth-largest economy .

In Bengaluru, formerly known as Bangalore, a general rise in middle-class living attracted more people and more businesses that, in turn, attracted more people and businesses, continuing the cycle, Mr. Baldwin explained.

Covid sped this transition, by forcing people to work remotely — from a different part of town, a different city or a different country.

In the new model, countries can focus growth around cities rather than a particular industry. “That creates economic activities which are fairly diverse,” Mr. Baldwin said.

“Think Bangalore, not South China,” he said.

Free markets are not enough.

Many developing nations remain focused on building export-oriented industries as the path to prosperity. And that’s how it should be, said Justin Yifu Lin , dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University.

Pessimism about the classic development formula, he said, has been fueled by a misguided belief that the growth process was automatic: Just clear the way for the free market and the rest will take care of itself.

Countries were often pressured by the United States and the international institutions to embrace open markets and hands-off governance.

Export-led growth in Africa and Latin America stumbled because governments failed to protect and subsidize infant industries, said Mr. Lin, a former chief economist at the World Bank.

“Industrial policy was taboo for a long time,” he said, and many of those who tried failed. But there were also success stories like China and South Korea.

“You need the state to help the private sector overcome market failures,” he said. “You cannot do it without industrial policy.”

It won’t work without education.

The overriding question is whether anything — services or manufacturing — can generate the type of growth that is desperately needed: broad based, large scale and sustainable.

Service jobs for businesses are multiplying, but many offering middle and high incomes are in areas like finance and tech, which tend to require advanced skills and education levels far above what most people in developing nations have.

In India, nearly half of college graduates don’t have the skills they need for these jobs, according to Wheebox , an educational testing service.

The mismatch is everywhere. The Future of Jobs report , published last year by the World Economic Forum, found that six in 10 workers will need retraining in the next three years, but the overwhelming majority won’t have access to it.

Other kinds of service jobs are proliferating, too, but many are neither well paid nor exportable. A barber in Bengaluru can’t cut your hair if you’re in Brooklyn.

That could mean smaller — and more uneven — growth.

Researchers at Yale University found that in India and several countries in sub-Saharan Africa, agricultural workers jumped into consumer service jobs and raised their productivity and incomes.

But there was a catch: The gains were “strikingly unequal” and disproportionately benefited the rich .

With a weakening global economy , developing countries will need to wring every bit of growth they can from every corner of their economies. Industrial policy is essential, Mr. Rodrik of Harvard said, but it should focus on smaller service firms and households because that is going to be the source of most future growth.

He and others caution that even so, gains are likely to be modest and hard won.

“The envelope has shrunk,” he said. “How much growth we can get is definitely less than in the past.”

An earlier version of this article misidentified the location of IMD. It is in Lausanne, not Geneva.

How we handle corrections

Patricia Cohen writes about global economics and is based in London. More about Patricia Cohen

Gig workers are writing essays for AI to learn from

• Companies are hiring highly educated gig workers to write training content for AI models .
• The shift toward more sophisticated trainers comes as tech giants scramble for new data sources.
• AI could run out of data to learn from by 2026, one research institute has warned. 

As artificial intelligence models run out of data to train themselves on, AI companies are increasingly turning to actual humans to write training content.

For years, companies have used gig workers to help train AI models on simple tasks like photo identification , data annotation, and labelling. But the rapidly advancing technology now requires more advanced people to train it.

Companies such as Scale AI and Surge AI are hiring part-timers with graduate degrees to write essays and creative prompts for the bots to gobble up, The New York Times reported . Scale AI, for example, posted a job last year looking for people with Master's degrees or PhDs, who are fluent in either English, Hindi, or Japanese and have professional writing experience in fields like poetry, journalism, and publishing.

Related stories

Their mission? To help AI bots "become better writers," Scale AI wrote in the posting.

And an army of workers are needed to do this kind of work. Scale AI has as many as tens of thousands of contractors working on its platform at a time, per the Times.

"What really makes the A.I. useful to its users is the human layer of data, and that really needs to be done by smart humans and skilled humans and humans with a particular degree of expertise and a creative bent," Willow Primack, the vice president of data operations at Scale AI, told the New York Times. "We have been focusing on contractors, particularly within North America, as a result."

The shift toward more sophisticated gig trainers comes as tech giants scramble to find new data to train their technology on. That's because the programs learn so incredibly fast that they're already running out of available resources to learn from. The vast trove of online information — everything from scientific papers to news articles to Wikipedia pages — is drying up.

Epoch, an AI research institute, has warned that AI could run out of data by 2026.

So, companies are finding more and more creative ways to make sure their systems never stop learning. Google has considered accessing its customers' data in Google Docs , Sheets, and Slides while Meta even thought about buying publishing house Simon & Schuster to harvest its book collection, Business Insider previously reported.

Watch: Nearly 50,000 tech workers have been laid off — but there's a hack to avoid layoffs

• Main content

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust

David Folkenflik

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust.

NPR's top news executive defended its journalism and its commitment to reflecting a diverse array of views on Tuesday after a senior NPR editor wrote a broad critique of how the network has covered some of the most important stories of the age.

"An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America," writes Uri Berliner.

A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, promoted by NPR's former CEO, John Lansing, has fed "the absence of viewpoint diversity," Berliner writes.

NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday afternoon that she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner's assessment.

"We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," she wrote. "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."

NPR names tech executive Katherine Maher to lead in turbulent era

She added, "None of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole."

A spokesperson for NPR said Chapin, who also serves as the network's chief content officer, would have no further comment.

Praised by NPR's critics

Berliner is a senior editor on NPR's Business Desk. (Disclosure: I, too, am part of the Business Desk, and Berliner has edited many of my past stories. He did not see any version of this article or participate in its preparation before it was posted publicly.)

Berliner's essay , titled "I've Been at NPR for 25 years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust," was published by The Free Press, a website that has welcomed journalists who have concluded that mainstream news outlets have become reflexively liberal.

Berliner writes that as a Subaru-driving, Sarah Lawrence College graduate who "was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother ," he fits the mold of a loyal NPR fan.

Yet Berliner says NPR's news coverage has fallen short on some of the most controversial stories of recent years, from the question of whether former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, to the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19, to the significance and provenance of emails leaked from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden weeks before the 2020 election. In addition, he blasted NPR's coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

On each of these stories, Berliner asserts, NPR has suffered from groupthink due to too little diversity of viewpoints in the newsroom.

The essay ricocheted Tuesday around conservative media , with some labeling Berliner a whistleblower . Others picked it up on social media, including Elon Musk, who has lambasted NPR for leaving his social media site, X. (Musk emailed another NPR reporter a link to Berliner's article with a gibe that the reporter was a "quisling" — a World War II reference to someone who collaborates with the enemy.)

When asked for further comment late Tuesday, Berliner declined, saying the essay spoke for itself.

The arguments he raises — and counters — have percolated across U.S. newsrooms in recent years. The #MeToo sexual harassment scandals of 2016 and 2017 forced newsrooms to listen to and heed more junior colleagues. The social justice movement prompted by the killing of George Floyd in 2020 inspired a reckoning in many places. Newsroom leaders often appeared to stand on shaky ground.

Leaders at many newsrooms, including top editors at The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times , lost their jobs. Legendary Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron wrote in his memoir that he feared his bonds with the staff were "frayed beyond repair," especially over the degree of self-expression his journalists expected to exert on social media, before he decided to step down in early 2021.

Since then, Baron and others — including leaders of some of these newsrooms — have suggested that the pendulum has swung too far.

Author Interviews

Legendary editor marty baron describes his 'collision of power' with trump and bezos.

New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger warned last year against journalists embracing a stance of what he calls "one-side-ism": "where journalists are demonstrating that they're on the side of the righteous."

"I really think that that can create blind spots and echo chambers," he said.

Internal arguments at The Times over the strength of its reporting on accusations that Hamas engaged in sexual assaults as part of a strategy for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel erupted publicly . The paper conducted an investigation to determine the source of a leak over a planned episode of the paper's podcast The Daily on the subject, which months later has not been released. The newsroom guild accused the paper of "targeted interrogation" of journalists of Middle Eastern descent.

Heated pushback in NPR's newsroom

Given Berliner's account of private conversations, several NPR journalists question whether they can now trust him with unguarded assessments about stories in real time. Others express frustration that he had not sought out comment in advance of publication. Berliner acknowledged to me that for this story, he did not seek NPR's approval to publish the piece, nor did he give the network advance notice.

Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues are responding heatedly. Fernando Alfonso, a senior supervising editor for digital news, wrote that he wholeheartedly rejected Berliner's critique of the coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, for which NPR's journalists, like their peers, periodically put themselves at risk.

Alfonso also took issue with Berliner's concern over the focus on diversity at NPR.

"As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity," Alfonso says. "These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done."

After this story was first published, Berliner contested Alfonso's characterization, saying his criticism of NPR is about the lack of diversity of viewpoints, not its diversity itself.

"I never criticized NPR's priority of achieving a more diverse workforce in terms of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I have not 'denigrated' NPR's newsroom diversity goals," Berliner said. "That's wrong."

Questions of diversity

Under former CEO John Lansing, NPR made increasing diversity, both of its staff and its audience, its "North Star" mission. Berliner says in the essay that NPR failed to consider broader diversity of viewpoint, noting, "In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans."

Berliner cited audience estimates that suggested a concurrent falloff in listening by Republicans. (The number of people listening to NPR broadcasts and terrestrial radio broadly has declined since the start of the pandemic.)

Former NPR vice president for news and ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin tweeted , "I know Uri. He's not wrong."

Others questioned Berliner's logic. "This probably gets causality somewhat backward," tweeted Semafor Washington editor Jordan Weissmann . "I'd guess that a lot of NPR listeners who voted for [Mitt] Romney have changed how they identify politically."

Similarly, Nieman Lab founder Joshua Benton suggested the rise of Trump alienated many NPR-appreciating Republicans from the GOP.

In recent years, NPR has greatly enhanced the percentage of people of color in its workforce and its executive ranks. Four out of 10 staffers are people of color; nearly half of NPR's leadership team identifies as Black, Asian or Latino.

"The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of America and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not?" Lansing, who stepped down last month, says in response to Berliner's piece. "I'd welcome the argument against that."

"On radio, we were really lagging in our representation of an audience that makes us look like what America looks like today," Lansing says. The U.S. looks and sounds a lot different than it did in 1971, when NPR's first show was broadcast, Lansing says.

A network spokesperson says new NPR CEO Katherine Maher supports Chapin and her response to Berliner's critique.

The spokesperson says that Maher "believes that it's a healthy thing for a public service newsroom to engage in rigorous consideration of the needs of our audiences, including where we serve our mission well and where we can serve it better."

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

Business writing

• Business communication
• Business management
• Managing yourself

How to Write Email with Military Precision

• Kabir Sehgal
• November 22, 2016

How Experts Can Help a General Audience Understand Their Ideas

• Nancy Duarte
• September 12, 2016

Writing About Business (Without Being a Bore)

• December 17, 2019

Tips for Cold-Emailing Intimidatingly Powerful People

• September 05, 2014

“What Do You Mean I Can’t Write?”

• John S. Fielden
• From the May 1964 Issue

Those Grammar Gaffes Will Get You

• Bryan A. Garner
• March 12, 2013

What You Miss When You Take Notes on Your Laptop

• Maggy McGloin
• July 31, 2015

How a Cartoon Caption Contest Can Make You a Better Writer

• Peter Boumgarden
• July 21, 2015

Five Ways to Improve Your Business Writing

• June 21, 2015

9 Words and Phrases You're Probably Using Wrong

• Ross and Kathryn Petras
• October 16, 2018

When Not to Tell ‘Em What You’re Gonna Tell ‘Em

• Jerry Weissman
• April 11, 2012

Are There Too Many Sources of Management Ideas?

• Thomas H. Davenport
• June 24, 2008

How to Email Someone You Haven’t Talked to in Forever

• Rebecca Zucker
• August 17, 2018

A Better Approach to Group Editing

• Joel Schwartzberg
• July 28, 2021

How to Improve Your Business Writing

• Carolyn O’Hara
• November 20, 2014

You Can Talk About Innovation Without Resorting to Cliches

• February 04, 2016

A Speech Is Not an Essay

• John Coleman
• September 11, 2014

Writing Your Résumé When Your Job Title Doesn’t Reflect Your Responsibilities

• Jane Heifetz
• May 16, 2017

High-Impact E-mail

• Harvard Business Publishing
• April 01, 2011

Stop Trying to Sound Smart When You're Writing

• Liane Davey
• October 05, 2016

Developing a Teaching Case (A): Virtualis Systems Case Background

• Michael J. Roberts
• July 08, 1999

Wastewater Recycling: Public Relations for a Controversial Technology

• Kenneth W. Shotts
• Ashish Jhina
• David W. Hoyt
• March 27, 2012

Developing a Teaching Case (B): Virtualis Systems

• Jay O. Light

HBR Guide to Better Recruiting and Hiring

• Harvard Business Review
• February 18, 2025

When the Tone of an Email Went Wrong

• Mukesh Kumar
• Archana Parashar
• Sanjeev Prashar
• May 18, 2016

Developing a Teaching Case (Abridged)

• June 28, 2001

Writing Skills

• September 14, 2014

HBR Guide to Better Business Writing

• January 29, 2013

Management Communication: A Self-Paced Learning Program

• William Ellet
• December 21, 2012

Strengthen Your Writing Skills

• May 15, 2016

How to Write an Action-Planning Memo

• Ryan L. Raffaelli
• Akshaya Varghese
• October 04, 2021

Next-Level Negotiating (HBR Women at Work Series)

• Deborah M. Kolb
• Suzanne de Janasz
• Deepa Purushothaman
• December 13, 2022

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn: The Power of Writing to Launch and Sustain a Movement

• Julie Battilana
• Lakshmi Ramarajan
• Michael Norris
• June 18, 2018

Developing a Teaching Case (C): Virtualis Systems Case Feedback

Writing Skills: Harvard ManageMentor Online Module

• June 30, 2010

Writing Cases: Tips and Pointers

• Jane Linder
• August 08, 1990

No One Understands You and What to Do About It

• Heidi Grant Halvorson
• April 14, 2015

Write Your First Draft

Twenty five questions to ask as you begin to develop a new case study.

• Mary Gentile
• August 13, 1990

Harvard ManageMentor v11: Writing Skills Module

• September 01, 2014

The HBR Guide to Better Business Writing: 11. Be Plain-Spoken: Avoid Bizspeak

Reporting business research.

• Dorinda Clippinger
• February 21, 2017

Popular Topics

Partner center.

• Election 2024
• Entertainment
• Newsletters
• Photography
• Personal Finance
• AP Investigations
• AP Buyline Personal Finance
• Press Releases
• Israel-Hamas War
• Russia-Ukraine War
• Global elections
• Asia Pacific
• Latin America
• Middle East
• Election Results
• Delegate Tracker
• AP & Elections
• March Madness
• AP Top 25 Poll
• Movie reviews
• Book reviews
• Personal finance
• Financial Markets
• Business Highlights
• Financial wellness
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Media

Kishida cracks jokes and invokes ‘Star Trek’ as he and Biden toast US-Japan alliance at state dinner

President Joe Biden listens as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks ahead of a toast during a State Dinner at the White House, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Joe Biden makes a toast with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a State Dinner at the White House, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Joe Biden, center right, and first lady Jill Biden, right, welcome Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, center left, and his wife Yuko Kishida for a State Dinner at the White House, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Kristi Yamaguchi, right, and Yukiko Saegusa arrive at the Booksellers area of the White House for the State Dinner hosted by President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden for Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and wife Kishida Yuko, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, arrive at the Booksellers area of the White House for the State Dinner hosted by President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden for Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and wife Kishida Yuko, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden pose for a photo with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his wife Yuko Kishida by the Grand Staircase in the Cross Hall of the White House during a State Dinner at the White House, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Evan Ryan, Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary, arrive at the Booksellers area of the White House for the State Dinner hosted by President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden for Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and wife Kishida Yuko, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Robert De Niro and Tiffany Chen arrive at the Booksellers area of the White House for the State Dinner hosted by President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden for Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and wife Kishida Yuko, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Tables are decorated during a press preview at the White House in Washington, Tuesday, April 9, 2024, for the State Dinner for Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

FILE - This April 2, 2012 file photo shows singer Paul Simon performing at Avery Fisher Hall in New York, April 2, 2012. Simon will sing for guests at Wednesday’s White House state dinner for Japan. The White House says he’s one of first lady Jill Biden’s favorite musicians. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File)

Former President Bill Clinton listens to toast by President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a State Dinner at the White House, Wednesday, April 10, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida exchanged warm toasts to each other and the close alliance between their nations as top figures from business, sports and politics looked on during Wednesday night’s state dinner.

Top figures from business, sports and politics turned up for a lavish state dinner honoring Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The White House on Wednesday served up a maximum dose of pomp to honor the close U.S. ally.

After a day of wide-ranging talks and a joint news conference, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden welcomed Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and wife Yuko Kishida back to the White House Wednesday evening for a lavish state dinner.

US President Joe Biden and visiting Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida enjoyed a dinner out in Washington DC on Tuesday evening.

• Copy Link copied

WASHINGTON (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida cracked jokes and invoked a touchstone of American culture as he quoted from “Star Trek” at Wednesday’s state dinner , telling guests at the White House that he hoped the “unshakable relationship” between his country and the U.S. would “boldly go where no one had gone before.”

“I would like to propose a toast to our voyage to the frontier of the Japan-U.S. relationship with this word: boldly go,” Kishida said, quoting the iconic opening monologue of the original “Star Trek” series.

Kishida, who spoke in English, and President Joe Biden exchanged warm toasts to each other and the decades-long, alliance between their nations as top figures from business, sports and politics — including an ex-president — looked on. The two leaders, who expressed a genuine friendship, pledged to continue to knit together their countries’ interests in the face of global challenges.

Biden , 81, said he and Kishida, 66, came of age as their countries forged a strong bond in the decades after they were pitted against each other in World War II.

“We both remember the choices that were made to forge a friendship,” Biden said. “We both remember the hard work, what it has done to find healing.”

“Tonight,” Biden continued, “We pledge to keep going.”

As the White House served up a maximum dose of pomp to honor its close U.S. ally, notable guests included Bill and Hillary Clinton, who were on familiar turf for the event. The former president declared it “feels great” to be back before casting an appreciative eye at a portrait of his wife from her first lady days that was on display nearby.

Guests in bright spring colors and lots of shimmery gowns chatted politics and talked shop as they strolled in — that meant eclipse chatter from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson (“fabulous” view in Ohio!) and an assessment of Biden’s electoral prospects in Wisconsin from Gov. Tony Evers (looking good!).

But on a day when the inflation news from Washington was less than encouraging, Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell shot past reporters without stopping to chat. Olympic figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi, in a purple gown, said she didn’t expect to be out campaigning for Biden but nonetheless seemed bullish on his reelection. Actor Robert De Niro supplied the night’s Hollywood quotient and seemed to channel one of his tough-talking characters when he was asked for his thoughts about the 2024 election.

“What do you think?” he retorted.

On a warm spring evening, the Bidens came stepped onto the North Portico to welcome Kishida and his wife, Yuko, who stood out in a flowing royal blue gown on the red carpet.

Inside, Jill Biden , wearing a beaded sapphire gown, had transformed the State Floor of the White House into what she called a “vibrant spring garden” for the evening. The floor of the famous Cross Hall was decorated with images giving the nearly 230 guests the feel of walking over a koi pond, a nod to fish that symbolize “friendship, peace, luck and perseverance,” the first lady said at a media preview Tuesday.

Guests at the head table with the Bidens and Kishidas included the Clintons, De Niro and Japanese pop duo Yoasobi.

Kishida, in his toast at the dinner, enthused over the splendor.

“First and foremost, to be honest my breath is taken and I’m speechless in front of such a huge number of prominent American and Japanese guests,” he said.

A state dinner is a tool of U.S. diplomacy, an honor doled out sparingly and only to America’s closest allies. In the case of Japan, the president has granted that honor for just the fifth time to an ally that he sees as a cornerstone of his policy toward the Indo-Pacific region.

Kishida is on an official visit to the United States this week. The state dinner is Biden’s first this year.

The guests included plenty of Biden family members, including granddaughter Naomi and her husband, Peter Neal. Business moguls also were in force, including JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Labor luminaries United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain and United Steelworkers President David McCall were also in attenddance. Both unions have endorsed Biden for reelection.

Dry-aged rib eye steak, cherry blossoms and the music of Paul Simon were also part of the evening. Simon opened his after-dinner performance by playing guitar and singing two of his major hits, “Graceland” and “Slip Slidin’ Away.”

Guests dined on a meal that was designed to highlight the “bounty of spring” in Japan and the United States: a first course of house-cured salmon that was inspired by a California roll and an entree of rib eye with shishito pepper butter, fava beans, mushrooms and onions. Dessert was salted caramel pistachio cake with a matcha ganache and cherry ice cream.

Some of Jill Biden’s favorite flowers, including sweet peas, roses and peonies, were arranged alongside imported cherry blossoms to decorate a mix of round and rectangular dinner tables in the East Room in shades of pink. A few floral centerpieces topped out at 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall.

Tables were set with a mix of place settings representing the administrations of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush. Glass and silk butterflies danced over the tables.

Simon is one of Jill Biden’s favorite artists, the White House said, adding that she chose him as a special tribute to Kishida because the prime minister also admires his music.

Simon’s career spans six decades, including performing as part of a duo with his childhood friend Art Garfunkel. The 82-year-old New Jersey native has earned numerous accolades, including multiple Grammys and a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Kishida is the fifth world leader Biden has honored with a state dinner following counterparts from France , South Korea , India and Australia .

Become a Member

Problem Solving

The Science of Strong Business Writing

Bill Birchard

September 29, 2021

Whether you’re crafting an email to a colleague or an important report for the board, you can write in a way that delights readers on a primal level, releasing pleasure chemicals in their brains.

Brain scans are showing us in new detail exactly what entices readers. Scientists can see a group of midbrain neurons—the “reward circuit”—light up as people respond to everything from a simple metaphor to an unexpected story twist. The big takeaway? Whether you’re crafting an email to a colleague or an important report for the board, you can write in a way that delights readers on a primal level, releasing pleasure chemicals in their brains.

Bill Birchard is an author and writing coach who’s worked with many successful businesspeople. He’s drawn on that experience and his review of the scientific literature to identify eight features of satisfying writing: simplicity, specificity, surprise, stirring language, seductiveness, smart ideas, social content, and storytelling. In this article, he shares tips for using those eight S’s to captivate readers and help your message stick.

Strong writing skills are essential for anyone in business. You need them to effectively communicate with colleagues, employees, and bosses and to sell any ideas, products, or services you’re offering.

Many people, especially in the corporate world, think good writing is an art—and that those who do it well have an innate talent they’ve nurtured through experience, intuition, and a habit of reading often and widely. But every day we’re learning more about the science of good writing. Advances in neurobiology and psychology show, with data and in images, exactly how the brain responds to words, phrases, and stories. And the criteria for making better writing choices are more objective than you might think.

Good writing gets the reader’s dopamine flowing in the area of the brain known as the reward circuit. Great writing releases opioids that turn on reward hot spots. Just like good food, a soothing bath, or an enveloping hug, well-executed prose makes us feel pleasure, which makes us want to keep reading.

Most of the rules you learned in school—“Show, don’t tell” or “Use the active voice”—still hold. But the reasons they do are now clearer. Scientists using MRI and PET machines can literally see how reward regions clustered in the midbrain light up when people read certain types of writing or hear it spoken aloud. Each word, phrase, or idea acts as a stimulus, causing the brain to instantly answer a stream of questions: Does this promise value? Will I like it? Can I learn from it?

Kent Berridge, a pioneering University of Michigan psychologist and neuroscientist, notes that researchers originally believed that the reward circuit largely handled sensory cues. But, he explains, “it’s become clear in the past 50 years from neuroimaging studies that all kinds of social and cultural rewards can also activate this system.”

Whether it’s a succinct declarative statement in an email or a complex argument in a report, your own writing has the potential to light up the neural circuitry of your readers’ brains. (The same is true if you read the words to an audience.) The magic happens when prose has one or more of these characteristics: It’s simple, specific, surprising, stirring, seductive, smart, social, or story-driven. In my work as an author and a writing coach for businesspeople, I’ve found those eight S’s to be hallmarks of the best writing. And scientific evidence backs up their power.

“Keep it simple.” This classic piece of writing advice stands on the most basic neuroscience research. Simplicity increases what scientists call the brain’s “processing fluency.” Short sentences, familiar words, and clean syntax ensure that the reader doesn’t have to exert too much brainpower to understand your meaning.

By contrast, studies have shown that sentences with clauses nested in the middle take longer to read and cause more comprehension mistakes. Ditto for most sentences in the passive voice. If you write “Profits are loved by investors,” for example, instead of “Investors love profits,” you’re switching the standard positions of the verb and the direct object. That can cut comprehension accuracy by 10% and take a tenth of a second longer to read.

Tsuyoshi Okuhara, of the University of Tokyo, teamed with colleagues to ask 400 people aged 40 to 69 to read about how to exercise for better health. Half the group got long-winded, somewhat technical material. The other half got an easy-to-read edit of the same content. The group reading the simple version—with shorter words and sentences, among other things—scored higher on self-efficacy: They expressed more confidence in succeeding.

Even more noteworthy: Humans learn from experience that simpler explanations are not always right, but they usually are. Andrey Kolmogorov, a Russian mathematician, proved decades ago that people infer that simpler patterns yield better predictions, explanations, and decisions. That means you’re more persuasive when you reduce overdressed ideas to their naked state.

Cutting extraneous words and using the active voice are two ways to keep it simple. Another tactic is to drill down to what’s really salient and scrap tangential details. Let’s say you have researched crossover markets and are recommending options in a memo to senior leaders. Instead of sharing every pro and con for each market—that is, taking the exhaustive approach—maybe pitch just the top two prospects and identify their principal pluses and minuses.

Specificity

Specifics awaken a swath of brain circuits. Think of “pelican” versus “bird.” Or “wipe” versus “clean.” In one study, the more-specific words in those pairs activated more neurons in the visual and motor-strip parts of the brain than did the general ones, which means they caused the brain to process meaning more robustly.

Years ago scientists thought our brains decoded words as symbols. Now we understand that our neurons actually “embody” what the words mean: When we hear more-specific ones, we “taste,” “feel,” and “see” traces of the real thing.

Remarkably, the simulation may extend to our muscles too. When a team led by an Italian researcher, Marco Tettamanti, asked people to listen to sentences related to the mouth, hand, and leg—“I bite an apple”; “I grasp a knife”; “I kick the ball”—the brain regions for moving their jaws, hands, and legs fired.

Using more-vivid, palpable language will reward your readers. In a recent letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos didn’t say, “We’re facing strong competition.” Channeling Tettamanti’s research, he wrote, “Third-party sellers are kicking our first-party butt. Badly.”

Another specificity tactic is to give readers a memorable shorthand phrase to help them retain your message. Malcolm Gladwell coined “the tipping point.” Management gurus W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne came up with “blue ocean strategy”; essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “black swan event.”

Our brains are wired to make nonstop predictions, including guessing the next word in every line of text. If your writing confirms the readers’ guess, that’s OK, though possibly a yawner. Surprise can make your message stick, helping readers learn and retain information.

Jean-Louis Dessalles, a researcher in artificial intelligence and cognitive science at Télécom Paris, conducted an experiment that demonstrated people’s affinity for the unexpected. He asked participants to read short, unfinished narratives and consider different possible endings for each. For example, one story read: “Two weeks after my car had been stolen, the police informed me that a car that might be mine was for sale on the internet….The phone number had been identified. It was the mobile phone number of….” The choices were (a) “my office colleague,” (b) “a colleague of my brother’s,” or (c) “someone in my neighborhood.” For 17 of 18 stories, the vast majority of people preferred the most unexpected ending (in this example, the work colleague). They didn’t want a story that fulfilled their predictions.

So reward your readers with novelty. Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman, of the Wharton School, saw the impact of surprising content when they examined nearly 7,000 articles that appeared online in the New York Times . They found that those rated as surprising were 14% more likely to be on the newspaper’s “most-emailed” list.

Readers appreciate unusual wordplay, too. A good example is John McPhee’s characterization of World War II as a “technological piñata.” Or consider how a Texas-based conglomerate described itself in its 2016 shareholder letter: “Think of Biglari Holdings as a museum of businesses. Our preference is to collect masterpieces.”

Stirring Language

You may think you’re more likely to persuade with logic, but no. Our brains process the emotional connotations of a word within 200 milliseconds of reading it—much faster than we understand its meaning. So when we read emotionally charged material, we reflexively react with feelings—fear, joy, awe, disgust, and so forth—because our brains have been trained since hunter-gatherer times to respond that way. Reason follows. We then combine the immediate feeling and subsequent thought to create meaning.

How sensitive are we to emotion? Experiments show that when people hear a list of words, they often miss a few as a result of “attentional blinks” caused by limits in our brain processing power. But we don’t miss the emotionally significant words. With those there are no blinks.

When we read emotionally charged material, we reflexively react with feelings—fear, joy, awe, disgust, and so forth. Reason follows.

So when you write your next memo, consider injecting words that package feeling and thought together. Instead of saying “challenge the competition,” you might use “outwit rivals.” In lieu of “promote innovation,” try “prize ingenuity.” Metaphor often works even better. Canadian researchers Andrea Bowes and Albert Katz tested relatively bland phrases like “What a very good idea!” and “Be careful what you say” against more-evocative expressions like “What a gem of an idea!” and “Watch your back.” Readers reacted more strongly to the latter.

Just a small touch can drive the neural circuits for emotion. So before you start composing, get your feelings straight, along with your facts. Zeal for your message will show through. And if you express your emotion, readers will feel it.

Seductiveness

As humans, we’re wired to savor anticipation. One famous study showed that people are often happier planning a vacation than they are after taking one. Scientists call the reward “anticipatory utility.” You can build up the same sort of excitement when you structure your writing. In experiments using poetry, researchers found that readers’ reward circuitry reached peak firing several seconds before the high points of emphatic lines and stanzas. Brain images show preemptive spikes of pleasure even in readers with no previous interest in poetry.

You can generate a similar reaction by winding up people’s curiosity for what’s to come. Steve Jobs did this in his famous “How to Live Before You Die” commencement address to Stanford University’s class of 2005. “I never graduated from college,” he began. “Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.” Are you on the edge of your seat to hear what the three stories are?

So start a report with a question. Pose your customer problem as a conundrum. Position your product development work as solving a mystery. Put readers in a state of uncertainty so that you can then lead them to something better.

Smart Thinking

Making people feel smart—giving them an “aha” moment—is another way to please readers. To show how these sudden “pops” of insight activate the brain, researchers have asked people to read three words (for example, “house,” “bark,” and “apple”) and then identify a fourth word that relates to all three, while MRI machines and EEGs record their brain activity. When the study participants arrive at a solution (“tree”), brain regions near the right temple light up, and so do parts of the reward circuit in the prefrontal cortex and midbrain. The readers’ delight is visible. Psychological research also reveals how people feel after such moments: at ease, certain, and—most of all—happy.

How can you write to create an aha moment for your readers? One way is to draw fresh distinctions. Ginni Rometty, formerly IBM’s CEO, offered one with this description of the future: “It will not be a world of man versus machine; it will be a world of man plus machine.”

Another strategy is to phrase a pragmatic message so that it also evokes a perennial, universal truth. The late Max De Pree, founder and CEO of the office furniture company Herman Miller, had a knack for speaking to employees this way. In Leadership Is an Art he wrote: “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor.” That’s wisdom not just for business managers but for parents, teachers, coaches—anyone in a guiding role.

Social Content

Our brains are wired to crave human connection—even in what we read. Consider a study of readers’ responses to different kinds of literary excerpts: some with vivid descriptions of people or their thoughts, and others without such a focus. The passages that included people activated the areas of participants’ brains that interpret social signals, which in turn triggered their reward circuits.

We don’t want just to read about people, though—we want to understand what they’re thinking as quickly as possible. A study led by Frank Van Overwalle, a social neuroscientist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, found that readers infer the goals of people they’re reading about in under 350 milliseconds, and discern their character traits within 650 milliseconds.

One way to help readers connect with you and your writing is to reveal more traces of yourself in it. Think voice, worldview, vocabulary, wit, syntax, poetic rhythm, sensibilities. Take the folksy—and effective—speeches and letters of Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. His bon mots include “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago,” “It’s only when the tide goes out that you discover who’s been swimming naked,” and “Beware of geeks bearing formulas.”

Remember also to include the human angle in any topic you’re discussing. When you want to make a point about a supply-chain hiccup, for example, don’t frame the problem as a “trucking disconnect.” Write instead about mixed signals between the driver and dispatcher.

Another simple trick to engage readers is to use the second person (“you”), as I’ve done throughout this piece. This can be particularly helpful when you’re explaining technical or complicated material. For example, psychologist Richard Mayer and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, ran experiments with two versions of an online presentation on the respiratory system. Each included 100 words of spoken text paired with simple animations. But one version used the impersonal third person (“During inhaling, the diaphragm moves down, creating more space for the lungs…”), while the other was more personal (“ your diaphragm” and “ your lungs…”). People who listened to the latter scored significantly higher than their counterparts on a test that measured what they had learned.

Storytelling

Few things beat a good anecdote. Stories, even fragments of them, captivate extensive portions of readers’ brains in part because they combine many of the elements I’ve described already.

Research by Uri Hasson at Princeton reveals the neural effect of an engaging tale. Functional MRI scans show that when a story begins, listeners’ brains immediately begin glowing in a specific pattern. What’s more, that grid reflects the storyteller’s exactly. Other research shows that, at the same time, midbrain regions of the reward circuit come to life.

Experiments by behavioral scientists at the University of Florida produced similar results. Brain images showed heightened activity in reward regions among people who read 12-second narratives that prompted pleasant images. (A sample narrative: “It’s the last few minutes of the big game and it’s close. The crowd explodes in a deafening roar. You jump up, cheering. Your team has come from behind to win.”)

When you incorporate stories into your communications, big payoffs can result. Consider research that Melissa Lynne Murphy did at the University of Texas, looking at business crowdfunding campaigns. She found that study participants formed more-favorable impressions of the pitches that had richer narratives, giving them higher marks for entrepreneur credibility and business legitimacy. Study participants also expressed more willingness to invest in the projects and share information about them. The implication: No stories, no great funding success.

The eight S’s can be your secret weapons in writing well. They’re effective tools for engaging readers because they trigger the same neural responses that other pleasurable stimuli do. And you probably understand their value intuitively because millions of years of evolution have trained our brains to know what feels right. So cultivate those instincts. They’ll lead you to the writer’s version of the Golden Rule: Reward readers as you would yourself.

Bill Birchard is a business writer and writing coach. His sixth book, tentatively titled Eight Secrets from Science for Aspiring Writers, is in progress. His previous books include Merchants of Virtue, Stairway to Earth, Nature’s Keepers, and Counting What Counts.

Copyright 2021 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

Action Orientation

Self-Awareness

Recommended Reading

How Fast Should Your Company Really Grow?

Collaboration is Key: How to Streamline and Automate Healthcare Administration

Professional Capabilities

“Profiles in Success”: Certified Physician Executives Share the Value and ROI of their CPE Education

The Leadership Odyssey

Self-Management

Escaping the Tyranny of Academic Writing for the Narrative

Emotional Intelligence: Three Pivotal Points for Effective Physician Leadership

Career & Learning

Leadership library, membership & community, for over 45 years..

The American Association for Physician Leadership has helped physicians develop their leadership skills through education, career development, thought leadership and community building.

The American Association for Physician Leadership (AAPL) changed its name from the American College of Physician Executives (ACPE) in 2014. We may have changed our name, but we are the same organization that has been serving physician leaders since 1975.

CONNECT WITH US

Looking to engage your staff.

AAPL providers leadership development programs designed to retain valuable team members and improve patient outcomes.

American Association for Physician Leadership®

formerly known as the American College of Physician Executives (ACPE)

Privacy Policy | Advertising Kit | Press Room

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.