Personal vs Business: What’s the Difference

The best practices in language, style and content for a business document in the professional world.

Writing for business and writing for personal purposes are two completely different things. In any kind of medium or length there are differences in the style, format and tone of the overall composition. When writing a business email, white paper, blog or memo the author must take into consideration their intended audience, the goal of the writing and design of the paper.

The online university, Purdue, states, “Business writing is action-oriented, rhetorical, and user-centered. It aims to effect positive change, through both persuasive and informative strategies.” This need for the writing to “effect change” is probably the biggest difference between personal and business writing.

So far, in the class we have compared blogs, written longform narratives and personal professional biographies. Each piece gave us the opportunity to add our own personality in it with a heavy use of the word “I” as we expressed our styles. This included using quotes from friends and family and using simple vocabulary that were improper at times because it added to the story. We also had a lot of freedom when it came to the composition of the final piece. The graphics, the titles, and the sub headers.

The tone of a business piece is very important. The way the author conveys their tone is the equivalent to how they would speak in person. When writing for a personal purpose the tone could be whatever you want, but in business the author wants to always try to sound “confident, courteous, and sincere”. When writing in business, you don’t always know who is going to read it. It could be your boss, their boss, your co-workers or even your competition, so making sure the tone of your paper sets you up to be confident, kind and well educated is important.

Another very important part is the overall composition or “look” of the writing. In personal writing almost any type of artwork or style choice is fair game, but in business writing a clean and organized paper with only relevant artwork/media is necessary. 

Purdue states a very similar thing about the design of a document. “A clean, correct, and professional-looking document portrays you as professional. Effective document design increases the usability and persuasiveness of your communication and highlights important information,” In business, people are trying to get something from your writing. If the piece is disorganized or too heavy with text, it’s going to deter readers and ultimately effect your productivity in the workplace.           

Both personal and business writing need strong introductions, a clear focus, good grammar, but overall, they are different. Personal writing has a lot more creative freedom. Business writing needs to be clear to everyone who reads it so the company can accomplish their goals. The most important aspect of writing for business is to have a professional, clean and concise document that displays the best side of you as an employee.