When you run a business, demonstrating credibility and persuading others are your primary goals. You can’t do that without great business writing. But strong writing is easier discussed than accomplished. And it takes more than Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. From universal writing rules to advice that will change your process and your results, here are eight books (in no particular order) to make your writing better.

Whether you just returned from a two-week vacation or a two-day weekend, you probably logged on to your laptop to find a full inbox. Responding to email – and generating email for our own projects – consumes much of our workdays; we spend more than a quarter of our workweeks on email. If you’re overwhelmed by your inbox or just frustrated it’s preventing you from getting to other tasks, try these five strategies to clarify your emails and spend less time in your inbox.

Transition words are often a sign of disjointed and clunky writing. They’re attempts to create flow where none exists. Our impulse to insert overused and artificial transitions is no surprise: We learned to use them in grade school before we could recognize and reproduce higher elements of good writing. My English teachers loved transitions. I remember doing worksheets on them and writing papers where I was specifically instructed to use transitional words and phrases at the beginning of every sentence. If I did that now, my editors would ask if I was feeling okay.

While “legalese” may be the punchline for jokes about bad writing, the problem isn’t confined to the legal profession. Bad business writing is widespread and costs American companies an estimated $1.2 trillion per year. That may be a conservative estimate: a 2023 survey estimates that ineffective communication is costing American businesses $2 trillion each year. Let’s look at how unsatisfactory writing has affected businesses and why we should improve our writing skills.

In a blog titled “Words That Can Ruin Your Sentence,” Dictionary.com calls the unnecessary words we speak “crutch words.” In a recent tweet headlined “Words de Doom,” Appellate Twitter calls unnecessary words we write “verbal tics.” Whatever we call them, we use unnecessary words for a reason: when speaking, it’s to give ourselves time to think about what we want to say next—so, well, actually—when writing, it’s usually because we don’t know they’re unnecessary.

The best way to build a strong resume is to update it regularly, not just when you’re looking for a new job. Whether you're applying for your first job or your fourteenth, we have nine tips to ensure your resume is updated, concise, and well-formatted.

With the near ubiquity of spell-checkers across all platforms, many people no longer worry about correct spelling. Let the spell-checkers handle it! And they do—mostly. But spell-checkers don’t care about context; if we spell the word correctly, they’re happy. So, “I here you” has spell-checkers turning cartwheels.

According to Forbes, business professionals average 6.3 hours a day reading and responding to 123 emails. That’s a staggering amount of time and energy we could use on other projects. Most of us can’t get rid of email completely, but we can all lessen its monopoly on our work lives.

WordRake helps us write clearly and concisely, but removing useless words and phrases is only part of writing. These are our favorite pieces of software for brainstorming, researching, and drafting.

A few years ago, one of the WordRake founders was on a plane to Los Angeles, sitting next to a senior engineer at McDonnell Douglas. Their conversation turned to writing, and the engineer said that his primary mission was impressing upon new engineers its importance. “I tell them, but I don’t think they hear it. Then three years later they complain to me they’re not being promoted. I remind them that their writing skills are not good enough to move them into a managerial position. So they get stuck in their career because they can’t communicate with the written word.”

WordRake and McDonnell Douglas aren’t the only companies that need their engineers to know how to write. A National Association of Colleges and Employers survey found the ability to create and edit written reports is one of employers’ top ten criteria when hiring recent college graduates. Here are four reasons writing is critical for engineers.