On Your Computer
There are some resources on your computer that can help you with your business writing efforts. Most computer programs, and especially those for word processing, have tools to assist you with writing letters, memorandums, and other documents. When you are in the program and need help, you usually can go up to the "help" tab and click to get the help box to come up. From there you can type in what you have a question about and the system will offer some suggestions. This is helpful if you are unsure how to do things, such as format your document or set your margins. Additionally, programs usually have templates, which are predeveloped generic slates that you can use to create your own letters, memos and faxes. By choosing a template in the computer program, you simply need to fill in your information and save it as you go along.Once you start typing a letter in the program, the software often will give you suggestions, such as salutations. This can assist you in your letter writing process. Always be sure to take advantage of the spell-check tool to go over your work and see if there is anything you agree that should be changed at the program's suggestion. Most programs also have a thesaurus readily available. This is handy when you are seeing a repetition of words. Simply select the word that you would like to replace and click on "thesaurus" to see other suggested words that can replace it.
Another good tool on the computer is to click on the print preview button to see what your work looks like before printing it. This will give you a good idea of how it will look and if you should make adjustments to the margins or in other areas.
Be sure to save all your work frequently while you are creating a document. If you wait until the end, you risk losing it if there were a power disruption or something happened to the computer and it shut off. Ideally getting into the habit of hitting the save button after each paragraph is recommended. If something happened to the computer, then at the most you would need to only do the last paragraph over, rather than an entire document. Save your work frequently.
Online Tools
The Internet has a wide variety of tools that you can use to help with business writing. Just doing a Google.com search for "business writing" will net a lot of helpful responses. It would be helpful to write these links down, or print the page out, and when you have time visit each link to see what it offers. Once you find a few that seem to be especially helpful to you, just bookmark them or add them to your favorites. Then when you have questions, you can refer back to the page easily, without having to search for it again.
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