Bryan A. Garner's HBR Guide to Writing for Business: Improve Your Communication and Get Results

Sergey: Meets description and expectations

Canada on Nov 05, 2023

Diana: The book provides direct and concise guidance and steps to assist you in a variety of writing mediums.

United States on Aug 13, 2023

Sarah: I had to buy this book for a class, and it has been extremely useful! I use it almost weekly as a reference for business writing. I highly recommend grabbing this book to keep on hand.

United States on Jun 09, 2023

Al: Each corer is like a nugget of a point without elongation or over emphasising. Just as well given the subject matter. I may not absorb all of it but I have absorbed enough and expect to retread it to keep refining

United Kingdom on Nov 27, 2022

AAP: pretty good but pricey

United States on Oct 01, 2022

Eleonora: Mudou a minha percepção sobre a necessidade de escrever, com um conteúdo acessível e imediatamente útil. Eu diria que é um ouro para quem deseja evoluir a escrita e comunicação no ambiente executivo.

Brazil on Sep 26, 2022

Anastas1osAnastas1os: It is an amazing written book with detailed directions, not only for business writing but also for thinking before write. It is portable, 200 pages with exactly what you need to learn.
The book is mandatory to have in your bag.

United States on May 18, 2021

Amazon Customer: Hard to believe how outdated most business writing books have become. Checking descriptions & publish dates carefully, I finally ordered this one. Wow, it has every topic I needed for my Business English class. The advice is relevant to today's business style. Thank you for including so many real world samples - and each sample is relevant in the larger corporate environments. The appendices are priceless. Easy to read. Great price.
The only CON is the smaller book; perhaps a larger 'workbook' size, resulting in fewer pages? But that is just my personal preference - more room for notes.

United States on Sep 16, 2016

Mike Eccles: I really enjoyed reading this straightforward and helpful volume, in the most part. I especially liked the Betty S. Flowers' model quoted and described in Chapter 3: Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge. That made so much practical sense to me.

I qualified my first sentence with the phrase: "in the most part". That is because the book seemed to break its own guidance on language. Chapter 2 focuses on understanding your readers: they may not have technical understanding. That understanding of language was a major block to me when it came to Appendix B concerning grammatical rules. I regard myself as being a literate person with a reasonably sound knowledge of English grammar. This appendix demonstrated to me that there is a lot of technical language concerning grammar that I do not understand. Some examples are: "appositive","correlative conjunctions", and "illusory compounds". To be fair to the author, the terms are defined, but for me the flow of the book dried up at this point. A pity.

I still com

United Kingdom on Mar 07, 2016

Ganesh: This is one of the best books around - Ones that you get to the end of and realize rereading it will never provide the same sense of pleasure. And it covers what most would consider a fairly dry topic.

For me, the book was more than worth its money. As a consultant, writing is a significant area of my job and i found atleast three a-ha moments:
1. There is process to writing. I would often merge content creation with edit. As the book argues, this tends to slow you down. The 4 Phases process of writing is great. It helps you go past the writer's block. An it lets you do this efficiently and comprehensively.
2. Grammar is very well covered. There are always those little things that confuse you even if your basics are clear. This book does a great job covering a lot of basic rules that you need to get right.
3. We get a definitive opinion on writing style. Ever wondered why NYT articles are a breeze? so did I. Reading the transitions chapter answered the question for me. Now, editing is about trying to make sentences flow together.

Cannot really fault the book in any way - it will be on my Kindle PC application handy for when I write the next proposal or...

United Kingdom on Mar 03, 2013