Outline: Edit mercilessly. For business letters, an outline shouldn’t be needed. The admonition to be brief is really important. In business time really is money. Cut to the chase. You need to use as few words and sentences as are necessary to get your point across.

Troubleshooting:

Use your Free Writing tool freely. It will be useful at any stage of your task. It can help any time your ideas are muddy or you’re not sure what happens next. It can also help with (sinister music rises in background) writers’ block. Scary as it sounds, writers’ block can be overcome. It occurs when frustration sets in, the task seems overwhelming and you can’t think of another word. Or you look at the mess you made and can’t think how to organize it. You freeze. You think of your deadline and you freeze more solidly. STOP. Get up. Do something else. When you feel more relaxed, come back and re-read what you’ve written. If you have the time, wait overnight. SLEEP ON IT has always been good advice.

Read or re-read your work aloud. Mistakes our eyes miss as we skim over words emerge easily when spoken aloud. Don’t worry about them – just correct them. If you got confused and had to skip or go back to make sense of what you were reading, that is a clue you need to fix your organization. Sometimes it helps to read your work out loud to someone else. In a pinch, the family cat will do, but a discerning, patient, trusted friend or relative may be even better.

Check for remaining grammar and spelling errors last. You will already have discovered many of these as you read through it for more substantive edits. Do not rely on spellcheckers in a computer. It will miss errors that involve real words and most electronic grammar checkers are too literal. They can help you find obvious problems, but don’t stop there. Use a dictionary, Strunk & Whites Elements of Style, and/or the Chicago Manual of Style. Sometimes the person you are writing for will recommend one or the other.

If you can find someone trustworthy that is helpful and knowledgeable enough to actually go through and edit your work, so much the better. It’s simply a second pair of eyes. I’ve worked in offices where the policy was that NO paper, whether report, public service announcement or letter left that office before two pairs of eyes had edited it. It was a good policy and saved much confusion and embarrassment.