WorkKeys Business Writing common mistakes
WorkKeys Business Writing · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Burying the main point under a wind-up paragraph - e.g., three sentences about the company's long-standing commitment to service before finally writing 'I am writing to request a refund on order 4821' in paragraph two.
Candidates default to the essay habit of building up to a thesis, and they draft chronologically from the prompt instead of deciding what the reader needs first.
What to do instead
Draft the purpose sentence before anything else and place it in the first or second sentence of the body. Apply the one-line test: if the reader stopped reading after the first sentence, would they still know the request, the decision, or the news?
Leaving out a concrete fact the prompt supplied - the deadline, the invoice number, the representative's name, the date the item shipped - so the letter is readable but does not actually resolve the scenario.
Candidates draft from a general impression of the situation ('angry customer wants a replacement') and never return to the prompt as a source of checkable details.
What to do instead
Before writing, make a checklist of every name, number, date and constraint in the prompt. After writing, tick each one off against the finished draft; any unticked item must be added or the draft is incomplete.
Register whiplash within a single message - 'Pursuant to your correspondence of the 14th, we are in receipt of your inquiry' followed two sentences later by 'No worries at all, we'll get that sorted!'
Candidates patch in phrases they have seen in templates or email examples without deciding on one consistent level of formality.
What to do instead
Choose a register up front (neutral-professional works for almost every WorkKeys prompt) and rewrite any sentence that could not plausibly sit beside the rest. Reading the whole message aloud catches the abrupt shifts quickly.
Blaming the reader in a bad-news message: 'You failed to send your receipt, so we cannot process your claim' or 'You should have read the policy.'
Candidates concentrate on conveying the policy accurately and never consider how the sentence lands on the person receiving the refusal.
What to do instead
Name the situation, not the person, using passive or neutral phrasing ('Because a receipt was not included with the request...'), and pair every refusal with what the reader can do next so the message does not read as a dead end.
Comma splices and run-ons that string independent clauses together - 'The shipment was delayed, we apologize for the inconvenience, your new date is March 3.'
Candidates transcribe spoken rhythm onto the page; in speech those clauses are separated by pauses that feel like sufficient punctuation.
What to do instead
For each candidate clause, confirm it has its own subject and verb. Then separate independent clauses with a period, a semicolon, or a comma plus a coordinating conjunction - or subordinate one clause so it becomes dependent.
Agreement errors caused by words between the subject and verb, or by collective and indefinite subjects - 'The team of representatives are reviewing it,' 'Each of the employees must submit their form.'
Writers match the verb to the nearest noun rather than the actual subject, and singular indefinite pronouns feel plural because they refer to many people.
What to do instead
Cross out any prepositional phrase sitting between subject and verb, then read subject and verb together. For singular indefinite subjects (each, every, anyone, nobody), use a singular verb and either 'his or her' or recast the sentence in the plural.
Real-word wrong-word errors that spellcheck cannot catch - their/there/they're, affect/effect, ensure/insure, complimentary/complementary, 'irregardless', 'could of'.
Candidates rely on the spellchecker as their proofreading step, but every one of these misspellings is a valid dictionary word.
What to do instead
Keep a short personal list of the ten pairs you actually miss and run a dedicated pass looking only for those words. Reading the message aloud, or backwards sentence by sentence, exposes wrong-word substitutions that silent reading glosses over.
Mechanical slips that recur throughout the message - plurals used as possessives ('three customer's'), missing apostrophes in contractions, job titles and department names capitalized in one line and lowercased in the next, a missing comma after an introductory phrase.
Candidates proofread for grammar and content at the same time, so small mechanical categories never get undivided attention and the same error repeats.
What to do instead
Run separate single-category proofreading passes - one pass only for apostrophes, one only for capitalization, one only for commas after openers. Fixing one category at a time is faster and catches more than a general read.
Skipping the conventions of the requested medium: no date or inside address on a letter, no subject line on a memo or email, 'Dear Sirs' when the prompt names a specific correspondent, no sign-off or signature block.
Candidates treat the task as 'write the content' and go straight into the body, so the framing elements never get drafted.
What to do instead
Build the skeleton before the body - date, recipient, salutation, subject line if the medium calls for one, body, closing, name and title - and match each element to the medium named in the prompt.
Under-development: a body of three one-sentence paragraphs, an unexplained decision, and a closing that says only 'Thank you' with no next step or contact route.
Candidates write the minimum that acknowledges each prompt point and stop, mistaking coverage for development and underestimating how much a scorer weighs a usable close.
What to do instead
For each key point, add a because-clause that gives the reason and a sentence that says what happens next. Close with a specific action, deadline or contact method so the reader knows exactly what to do.