Adding some levity in your professional business writing can give you a critical edge. But it can be a dangerous play as well. The following points can help you be more effective.
* Write for a bigger audience than anticipated. It’s easy to add in some humor that will work for a few people you know on an internal memo...but what if the distribution widens? Suddenly, that inside joke or inter-department jab might not help much.
* Humor in business writing is a lightening agent: in other words, it’s sugar to help the rest of your article go down. Keep this in mind when you make your edits. It’s a seasoning, not a main ingredient.
* Whenever you add humor to a piece of business writing, try to make the humor work for people who are outside your usual readership. If you do your job correctly, you’ll get those readers.
* Self-deprecation is an excellent tool, but be careful to use it in moderation. If the end result of your piece is to make your reader think you a clown, rather than a gifted writer who is fun to read, that’s not exactly what you were aiming for.
* Make an accurate assessment of the intellectual level of your audience. Arcane references might slay people with your education and expertise, but they’ll just leave unconnected readers cold.
* Humor frequently comes through recognition, which is why repetition can be your friend. So if you’ve got a good joke or humor element, don’t be afraid to use it several times in your piece. Just make sure that it’s truly effective...or you will wind up provoking repeat groans, rather than repeat chuckles.
* Absurdity can be devastatingly effective. Consider bringing in some left-field references or turns to your writing. Getting in something unexpected can work wonders.
* In general, avoid sarcasm or cynicism. While it may indeed be funny, it also can leave a bitter taste or feeling in the reader and paint the writer as a malcontent. This is a hard one for many people to avoid, but if you can be funny without being overly dependent on negativity, your writing will be much more effective.
* Humor works extremely well in places where formulaic writing predominates. Adding small asides and other humorous material in places like fine print, footnotes, etc., can be deadly.
* Confident people are funny people. If you aren’t reasonably sure how your attempts will be received, error on the side of caution.
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