One line of prior research has focused on the effect of style on readers’ ability to comprehend or willingness to engage with a message. A separate line has illuminated the effect of errors on the impressions readers form about writers, identifying potentially serious consequences (e.g., the willingness to accept the writer as a coworker or to fund the writer’s business pitch). To date, few studies have investigated the effect of style on the impressions readers form of business writers. In this paper, we report a study of the relationship between business writer attributions and word- or sentence-level style features often emphasized by advocates of plain style. Using data from 614 respondents, we found statistically significant evidence that business writers conveyed (a) confidence by avoiding non-requisite words, jargon, and nominals and by using standard connotations and grammar, and (b) professionalism by avoiding non-requisite words and hedges and by using standard homonyms.

先前的一项研究侧重于风格对读者理解或愿意参与信息的能力的影响。另一行阐明了错误对读者对作家的印象的影响，确定了潜在的严重后果（例如，愿意接受作家作为同事或为作家的商业宣传提供资金）。迄今为止，很少有研究调查风格对商业作家读者印象的影响。在本文中，我们报告了对商业作家归因与平淡风格倡导者经常强调的单词或句子级风格特征之间关系的研究。使用来自 614 名受访者的数据，我们发现了具有统计学意义的证据，表明商业作家通过避免不必要的词、行话、