Best Free Business Writing Resources & Tutorials

In any economic climate, professionals, especially beginning ones, may be wary of spending money on a business writing course. Although a class will require paying tuition, that will be your only cost in learning business writing, assuming you have a computer equipped with email and word-processing software. If you don’t want to (or can’t) outlay the money for a class, the good news is that there are a lot of free resources available, most of them online, and these can certainly get you started on your journey towards accomplished writing for the workplace. Keep reading for details on the kinds of free resources available to people interested in learning to write for business.

What is Business Writing?

Business writing is a specialized writing style for written communication, both internal (inside your own company) and external (as with a client.) It’s a very different discipline than academic writing (let alone any other writing in which personal style is paramount), substantially limited in the creativity department, and designed to make practical points as quickly and straightforwardly as possible.

The qualities upon which business writing today most depends are concision and clarity. Learning to express oneself within those confines is an invaluable workplace skill, given that email has become the preferred inter-office communication method. There’s no office worker who doesn’t have to read and write emails; a study quoted by GreggU calculated that the average businessperson has to deal with a whopping average of 80 emails daily. And that’s just email: there are business letters, memoranda, reports, and proposals that all need to be written in business language as well.

Read more about what business writing is and why you should learn to do it.

What Can You Do with Business Writing?

Business writing is, in today’s commercial landscape, inescapable. Consider its most frequently encountered application, the email. A generation ago, people made internal calls for quick inter-office communication. They used to have secretaries who could return calls at the recipient’s convenience. Today, those calls have all but been replaced by internal email. Whether or not you perceive that as faster or slower, it’s an inevitable fact of life. Suddenly, people must be able to write in the language of business.

Above and beyond, emails, memoranda, reports, and client proposals all call for business writing that can impress the recipient. Little can make you look better today than being able to write well in the idiom of commerce. Learning how to write a good piece of business English has several other advantages. It will teach you how to organize your thoughts, which, in turn, will help you when it comes to oral presentations. You’ll also become a better writer in general: your social media posts will improve in quality and correctness, and who knows? You may even be able to write a convincing love letter that will capture the person of your dreams.

Free Short Videos

You’ll find a confusingly large number of short videos about business writing on YouTube. Many of these offer good little tips and tricks, and the investment of time to watch them is very small. Just remember that just because someone makes a video doesn’t necessarily make them an expert, so a grain or two of salt is necessary to go with some of these videos. Check them against your common sense (and maybe check the comments section if you like reading YouTube comments) before putting these tips and tricks into practice.

Free Introductory Seminars

Many schools offer free introductory lessons to their paid classes online, frequently on YouTube. The best of these teach quite a bit of information, although no school will give all its secrets away for free. These seminars can take two different forms: either pre-recorded versions of classes that were once live (so you can get a taste of what live online learning is like), or simply the first episode in a series of classes. Either way, they give you an idea of what the schools’ instructors are like, what the formats of the classes are, and whether you can commit to the whole class. Even if you choose not to invest in an entire class, you can still pick up quite a bit from these videos, which, after all, seek to be informational and an effective sales pitch.

You can also look beyond YouTube for free tutorials. Udemy, for example, offers some free classes in business writing that tend to run under an hour. Coursera offers a free audit-like option for its business writing classes. This enables students to access on-demand learning materials but doesn’t put them into contact with a live teacher or other participation in the class.

Other Tutorials

Video isn’t the only way you can learn business writing for free. Some people learn much better if they can read rather than listen. For these people, there are written resources available on the internet that teach business writing. A search for “business writing course .pdf” will bring up various options that expand the possible horizons encountered with video tutorials. You will also find several books on the subject available for Kindle on Amazon for no cost.

Learn Business Writing with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

An excellent way to learn business writing is to take an in-person course such as those offered by Noble Desktop, a tech and IT school in New York City that offers in-person and online classes. Noble provides its students with expert and experienced instructors who are always ready to answer students’ questions, whether they’re posed in the physical classroom or online. 

Noble Desktop’s classes offer several features, including small class sizes that guarantee you’ll receive ample attention from the instructor. The curriculum is hands-on, meaning that you’ll be making practical use of what you’re being taught while you’re still in class with exercises that allow your instructor to check on your progress. There is also a free retake option that enables you to repeat the class at no charge within a year of your first taking it. Far from just a means for those who fell behind to catch up, the free retake option makes it possible to cement what you’ve learned firmly in your mind. Classes are fast-paced, and you’re likely to discover that there’s some handy detail you missed the first time around.

Noble offers a Business Writing Bootcamp that begins by reviewing key points of grammar over which people are wont to stumble today. The course then delves into the hows and whys of written business communication in the contemporary world, be it for emails, reports, or other essential documents. And be aware that business writing is only one aspect of the business training classes offered by Noble Desktop.

Key Insights

• There is no shortage of free resources for learning business writing.
• Some of these are brief video tutorials; longer tutorials and free seminars are also available.
• Free print resources also exist for those who’d rather read the book than watch the teacher.
• Noble Desktop offers an in-depth Business Writing Bootcamp that culminates in a certificate that you may add to your resume and online profiles.