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When my daughter started secondary school this year, girls and parents were given one piece of advice: please don’t write anything on Facebook or in texts that you would not be prepared to say aloud.

Good advice for teens and pre-teens. It’s also good advice for anyone who ever needs to write anything for business.

We all know the problem of policemen’s (or policewomen’s) language: “I was proceeding in a northerly direction along the principal thoroughfare …” Most of us have probably suffered from a minor version of the affliction when asked to speak in a formal situation or write something unfamiliar. We forget our natural voice, and start using language that belongs on the pages of Dickens or, even worse, an IT manual.

There’s lots of advice and training given about how to write for business. On the one hand, trainers advocate Plain English; on the other hand, people want to sound cleverer, more informed and more intelligent than their listeners or readers. Consultants, for example, fear they would have to drop their day rate if they spoke in intelligible English.

The problem with the Plain English vs jargon debate is that it obscures a more important element in how to write well for business: the importance of retaining your own voice. This applies even when you work for a company that has its own ‘tone of voice guidelines’.

It’s a pity so many communication trainers neglect to teach people about finding their own voice because it’s so easy to do. All you have to do is read your writing aloud (whisper it to yourself silently, if necessary, but do actually say the words and move your lips) – whether it’s a blog, a brochure, a letter to a customer, or anything else. If it doesn’t feel right when you say it, then you should probably rewrite it.

When you read your work to yourself, look out for a number of elements:

• Do you run out of breath before you reach the end of a sentence or clause? If so, you need shorter phrases.
• On the other hand, are your sentences so short that they sound staccato, as if you’re barking orders? Then you need some longer sentences, trying to introduce some variety and flow as you do this.
• Also try to spot the tongue twisters – phrases or sentences that trip up the reader because the sounds don’t fit together.
• Have you used jargon or management speak (probably taken from someone else’s written materials) that you wouldn’t dream of saying out loud to a colleague, customer or friend?
• Finally, does your writing sound natural? Does it sound like a call centre script, or the words of someone much older or younger that you? If so, try to bring your words closer to the personality that you and your business would project to someone if you were meeting in person. Forget the piece of paper or computer in front of you, and think how you would express something if you were saying it to someone on the phone or at a meeting. There: you have your voice.

Using your speaking voice in your writing does not mean dumbing down your words, being entirely colloquial and street in the way you write. Please, please do aim for interesting words and phrasing in your writing, and add colour through the language you use. Just make sure that the colour you add is a colour that suits you.

You wouldn’t wear the clothes of a middle-aged, 1970s detective (unless you are one, of course) or of a Dickensian clerk, so don’t adopt their writing style either. Write as yourself. Lose the stiffness of old-fashioned business writing. And don’t press the Send button on anything that you wouldn’t be prepared to say out loud. Your audience will thank you for it, and your market efforts will gain from it.

Now, I just need to get my daughter and her friends to follow the rule too ….

Sarah Burnett is a copywriter and editor based in Edinburgh:
www.sarahburnettwriter.co.uk