If I had a dollar for every time I’ve received an email that concludes with “please don’t hesitate to contact me,” I’d be a rich woman. It’s such a popular way to end a business email. Yet, it always rings a little false. For one thing, it’s an unnecessarily complicated way of saying “I’d be happy to hear from you.” For another, it turns a positive into a negative — the implication is that the recipient is hesitating and needs to be cajoled into doing otherwise!

This same principle — words matter — is also true when it comes to business communication. The words you choose to act as a medium for your thoughts. Moreover, a badly or thoughtlessly chosen word may have a very negative impact on your audience. To compound this problem of poorly chosen words, people all too frequently design their communications with themselves in mind, rather than on the audience they’d like to engage.