Avoiding the Negative in Your Writing

When writing emails or letters it is good to avoid negative writing, which only serves to create a bad impression. These are some strategies for avoiding negative writing.

1. Ignore stupid ideas.

If somebody suggests an unworkable idea, there is no need to criticise it saying things like ‘That’s a complete waste of time’. If things are a waste of time they will fail of their own accord.

2. Use Positive Phrases

Compare these words:

• activity, evolving, good question, helpful, join us, develop potential, productive, solve, together, useful.

• I can’t, I won’t, forget it, impossible, never, stupid, unavailable, waste, too busy.

The words reflect your attitude to life; they also reflect your attitude to the person you are writing to.

3. Encourage Good Qualities

If you are writing to someone, try to encourage their good aspects. Don’t focuses on all their weaknesses. You will not be able to change their bad qualities; but, you can encourage their good qualities.

Compare these sentences

• To be honest, I think it’s a stupid idea. It would be a complete waste of time to try and build your wiggly widgets and anyway we have the much more important project of the frogly widget.
• Thanks for your suggestion about the wiggly widgets. At the moment, we are focusing our attention on building the frogly widgets. Perhaps, we can use some of your ideas for wiggly widgets to develop the jolly widgets to its full potential.

Related

• Avoid the Double Negative