Reader-Friendly Reports: A No-nonsense Guide to Effective Writing for MBAs, Consultants, and Other Professionals

RIGHT AND WRONG, BOSS AND BOOK

For some reason, questions of writing style and correctness bring out people’s most mule-headed private opinions. A boss who doesn’t know anything about calculus or linear programming would never think of overruling a subordinate on one of those subjects. But just let that same subordinate do something contrary to what the boss’s ignorant sixth-grade teacher said—some asinine rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition or not starting one with and or because—and the boss will pounce with fangs bared.

Such a situation is much more political than it is intellectual, and the moral to be drawn from it is that if somebody is paying your salary, you should write the way that person wants. Writing is far less often ...