The ‘business language’ used in reports is different to the ‘journalese’ used in other aspects of PR, but skilled copywriters can do both. Garnett Keeler writes complex business proposals for clients, and many other internal company documents.
Most articulate, literate business leaders can write business reports; few have the time to do so. Professional copywriters - people who write for a living, day in and day out, year after year - can produce, amend, and edit copy in a timescale that non-professionals may find dizzyingly fast.
From a brief provided by the client, copywriters can also:
- Make suggestions about structure, style, and presentation, which may lift a report from the mundane to the exceptional.
- Deliver key messages with elegant precision.
- Craft fluent and convincing advocacy.
- Marshall, and deploy, detailed evidential facts without making ‘heavy weather’ of them.
- Demolish counter-argument (so called ‘inoculation’ or ‘prebuttal’) before it has got off the ground.
- Render difficult-to-read copy into something which is easily absorbed and understood.
In these circumstances, professional business writers are able to master the jargon of a particular industry quickly, make sound judgements about when it should be used, and even stretch the boundaries of the jargon - coining new phrases which have the ring of the genuine item - which can help clients to seize control of the language of their industry, enhancing the perception of leadership.
It’s all about ‘writing for the audience’.