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The purpose of writing is to communicate – at least two people are involved: a writer and a reader. The writer’s aim is to get a message across to a reader with as little effort on the reader’s part as possible. The best way to write effectively is to use correct, plain English. This means having a firm grasp of grammar, spelling and punctuation; and it means using words and structures that you are comfortable with because you use them every day in speech. Writing is an art. Very few people are born writers – we all have to learn how to do it effectively. The good news is that you can learn, and it’s never too late.

This book is about plain English – it is about writing working documents effectively, whether you are in an office job or working from home, and whether you compose documents on a computer or a smart phone. By ‘working documents’ I mean those documents that have to do a job for you, such as minutes, emails, letters, webpages and reports. It is not about abbreviated messages such as SMS, Tweets and so on which have limited use in business and are not part of a business’s records. Nor is it a cookbook of formulas for writing documents. Rather, it is a guide to putting together sentences and paragraphs so that they will be as plain as possible. You can then apply what you learn to any documents you have to write – pamphlets, forms, speeches and reports, as well as emails, presentations, essays, theses, articles and even stories – and be sure that you are getting your message across.