In 2020, I ran a Better Business Writing course based on a book I had written on the subject. The course was designed to help people communicate more effectively with colleagues, customers and other businesses.
Six years later, business writing has changed considerably.
Artificial intelligence can now produce a polished email, rewrite a report, summarise a document or turn a few rough notes into something that looks remarkably professional. What once required considerable writing skill can now be produced in seconds.
So does better business writing still matter?
I think it matters more than ever.
The difference is that business people now need to understand not only how to write, but also how to use AI without handing over their judgement, their responsibility or their human voice.
Start with the purpose
The most important question in business writing has always been remarkably simple:
What are you trying to achieve?
Before writing an email, memo, report or letter, ask what you want the reader to know, understand, decide or do.
Perhaps you want somebody to take action. Perhaps you need to provide information. You might want to raise morale, explain a difficult decision, resolve a problem or persuade somebody to consider your proposal.
Sometimes the purpose is more human.
A colleague’s partner has died. Someone in the company has become seriously ill. A member of staff is retiring after many years. The appropriate communication may be sympathetic rather than commercial, and getting the tone right matters enormously.
Or perhaps you are writing to a potential customer to persuade them to attend a meeting where you can present your proposal.
The writing will be very different in each case.
That is why good business writing isn’t simply about grammar and spelling. It starts with understanding the purpose of the communication and the result you want from it.
There isn’t one style of business writing
Business writing takes many forms.
An email may need to be short and direct because the reader simply needs to know what has happened and what action is required.
An internal memo may need a more formal structure because it communicates a decision or instruction to employees.
A report requires a different discipline. It may contain evidence, analysis, findings and recommendations, and the reader needs to be able to follow the argument.
A company newsletter can be more relaxed and interesting. Its purpose may be to inform employees while also creating a sense of connection within the organisation.
A letter to a customer requires clarity and courtesy, particularly when dealing with a complaint or a difficult commercial issue.
A proposal has to do more than provide information. It has to make a convincing case.
Instructions and procedures have another requirement: ambiguity can be costly, so they need to be exceptionally clear.
And then there are more advanced forms of business writing, particularly copywriting, where the objective is often to sell a product, service or idea. That introduces another set of skills involving headlines, benefits, persuasion, audience psychology and calls to action.
The underlying principles remain the same, but the writer needs to understand the particular job the piece of writing has to do.
Clear writing comes first
Whatever the form, business writing should be clear.
That doesn’t mean every sentence must be short or that every piece of writing should sound like a set of instructions. It means the reader should not have to struggle to discover what you mean.
Good business writing respects the reader’s time.
It avoids unnecessary jargon and corporate language. It puts important information where the reader can find it. It uses paragraphs and headings sensibly. It distinguishes facts from opinions and makes the writer’s argument easy to follow.
And clarity doesn’t mean dullness.
You can be clear and interesting. You can be persuasive without becoming pushy. You can be professional without sounding like a robot.
The reader matters
One of the basic principles I taught was to consider the person who would actually read what you had written.
A senior executive may need the conclusion and the implications before the supporting detail.
A customer may need to understand what is in it for them.
An employee may need a clear explanation of why management has made a particular decision.
A colleague may simply need to know what you want them to do and by when.
The writer knows the background. The reader often doesn’t.
That distinction is responsible for a great deal of poor business writing.
Then along came AI
This is where the subject becomes particularly interesting in 2026.
AI is an extraordinarily useful business-writing tool. There is no reason to reject it simply because it can produce prose.
Used properly, it can help a writer organise rough notes, suggest a structure, identify repetition, improve clarity, shorten an overlong email, check grammar, suggest alternative wording or help turn a first draft into something more coherent.
It can also act as a useful critic.
You might give AI your draft and ask:
Where is this unclear?
What questions might the reader still have?
Have I repeated myself?
Does the argument follow logically?
Is the tone appropriate for the audience?
Those can be more useful questions than simply asking AI to “write this for me”.
Don’t outsource your judgement
The danger comes when the writer hands over the thinking as well as the writing.
AI can produce a beautifully constructed paragraph that isn’t what you meant.
It can make an unsupported assertion sound authoritative. It can introduce information that wasn’t in your original notes. It can make an ordinary email sound like a corporate announcement.
And it can produce something that is grammatically impeccable but says very little.
That is why business people still need to understand the basics of writing. You need enough knowledge to judge what AI has produced.
AI can help you write. It cannot take responsibility for what you are saying.
The person whose name appears at the bottom of the email, memo or report remains responsible for it.
Keep your human voice
There is another danger: everything starts to sound the same.
If every employee asks AI to turn their rough thoughts into “a professional email”, businesses could end up with hundreds of communications written in the same bland corporate voice.
Good business communication doesn’t require everybody to sound identical.
A finance director, salesperson, engineer, human-resources manager and chief executive may all have different voices. Professionalism does not mean eliminating personality.
Sometimes the best use of AI is therefore not:
“Write this for me.”
It is:
“Here are my notes. Help me organise them, but retain my direct style.”
Or:
“I’ve written this email. Tell me where it is unclear, but don’t rewrite it.”
Or:
“Check this report for repetition and gaps in the argument.”
That keeps the human being in charge of the communication.
The old problems haven’t disappeared
When I wrote about business writing in 2020, I argued that poor writing could damage relationships and lead to costly mistakes.
That hasn’t changed.
An ambiguous instruction can still result in an expensive error.
A badly worded email can still offend a customer.
A poorly structured report can still obscure an important issue.
An insensitive message about a bereavement can still cause unnecessary hurt.
And now there is an additional problem: an AI-generated message can look professional enough to escape scrutiny even when the underlying thinking is poor or the facts are wrong.
The technology has changed. The responsibility hasn’t.
Better business writing is about thinking
Perhaps this is the biggest change in my thinking since I ran that course six years ago.
Business writing isn’t primarily a language exercise.
It is a thinking exercise.
Before you put your fingers on the keyboard, you need to know what you are trying to achieve, who you are addressing, what they need to know and what you want them to do as a result.
Then you choose the appropriate form, tone and level of detail.
AI can help with much of what comes afterwards.
But it cannot replace the need to think. That is why better business writing still matters.
