No doubt you will have seen that Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg issued his new staff with a style guide for their use when corresponding from his office. At least one thing he said was right.
I've no desire to give Jacob Rees-Mogg any more credence or oxygen than his carefully choreographed, news-friendly content of a 'leaked' style guide gave him or his trending status on social media. Commanding that his staff revert to imperial measurements. I mean, come on.
But one aspect of his style guide did hit home, because it's a piece of advice I offer in my Business Writing Skills course. Which is to stop using words like 'hopefully'.
A style guide is a really useful piece of kit for a business or organisation, and if yours doesn't have one you should consider adopting one or creating one yourself. The aim is to ensure that all employees speak with a similar tone of voice when they communicate, thus clearly representing your organisation and its ethos. It can help create a really coherent and recognisable style and brand when people speak or send emails or other written content out to your audience.
Perhaps therefore the most useful takeaway from my course is a style guide for every participant. It's adapted from one I found in the web pages of a local authority and it offers guidance that ensures consistency for employees when writing dates, numbers, job titles and so on. It also gives definitions for some tricky homophones* and homonyms** and similar words where people get confused as to which one is the right one: like effect and affect for example.
It also talks about certain grammar traps which we may or may not have been taught about at school (I wasn't as a child of the 70s), but which are useful to be reminded of because they tend to slip into common use and they make your business writing long-winded and sluggish.
'Hopefully' is one of these words. It's the sort of thing we include out of British politeness or a desire not to come across as too strident. Or perhaps if we're fudging somewhat. 'The accounts will hopefully be produced within the month', 'the meeting will hopefully be set in the near future', 'we look forward to seeing you hopefully at the next conference'... Hopefully is an adverb like 'clearly', 'potentially', 'possibly' and in business writing they should be avoided as much as possible a) because they're unnecessary padding and b) because they make you sound doubtful. Good business writing should be persuasive and impactful and you need to sound confident delivering it. Who will have faith in you or your organisation if you're always thinking 'maybe', 'possibly', 'hopefully'?
There are many more useful tips and guidelines in my style guide which will help ensure your business writing is clear, sharp and dynamic. You should definitely investigate if your company has one and if not, suggest they get one. A good go-to reference is the Guardian's style guide. Check it out here: https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a.
* Homonym: words that sound alike but have different meanings. (e.g. pen)
**Homophone: a type of homonym that also sounds alike and has different meanings, but have different spellings. (e.g. there, their)