Tone is the attitude communicated by our words in both speaking and in writing. Just like in speaking, the tone we use in writing has a direct effect on the success of our communication.

When someone reads your words, they cannot see your face or hear your real tone, so they will interpret your tone based on your words only. Therefore, you need to make sure that the tone of your writing is correct for the message you want to send. You need to think about whether the tone you have used is likely to help you achieve what you want to achieve in the piece of writing. 

I recommend that as a business writer, you should try to use a confident, courteous, and sincere tone. Here are three ways you can do this:

• Be positive.

Try to use positive words or phrases in your writing like ‘do’, ‘can’ and ‘able to’ rather than the negative ‘do not’, ‘can not’ and ‘unable to’.  For example, you could write ‘We can deliver the product to you on Friday’ instead of ‘We cannot deliver the product to you until Friday’. 

• Stress the benefits for the reader.

Write from the reader's perspective. Write in a way that emphasises what will happen for the reader. Otherwise, you could end up giving a self-centred tone to your writing, which might put distance between you and the reader. For example, instead of, 'I am processing your order tomorrow', you could write something like, 'Your order will be available in...'.

• Be polite.

It might be old-fashioned, but try to be polite. A please or thank you always helps set a respectful and appreciative tone. Also, the way you phrase a request can often hugely influence the way someone interprets it, and whether they will do it for you without hesitation or decide to resist. So, consider if it might be more appropriate, for example, to write 'Would you mind spending five minutes checking this over for me? It needs to be done by 2pm and I'd love your feedback by 1pm', rather than 'I need you to check this for me and provide your feedback by 1pm because it's due at 2pm'. This, of course, depends on the individual preferences of the receiver, but that is where you as a skilled writer must make a judgement.

In conclusion

There is so much more to say about this topic, but in short, successful business writers always read over their words and think about how the reader might interpret those words, and make any relevant changes, before they send anything.