Essentials of Business Writing
Does you career depend on your ability to write? It could! Nearly every profession requires you to have strong, effective writing skills. Through this workshop, you’ll develop skills to write over a dozen types of formal documents including: memos, letters, email, goodwill messages, news releases, reports, proposals, collection letters, grant applications, and sales and fundraising letters. You can also write better with collaborative groups.
Course level: Beginner / Intermediate
Required Book: Business Writing: What Works, What Won’t by Wilma Davidson
Workshop Length: 6 weeks
Tuition: $290.00 ($261 for VIP)
Start Date: View Essentials of Business Writing Course Schedule
Course Structure
The workshop will consist of six one-week sessions, each of which includes online lectures (text based) as well as creative and practice exercises. Each session, you’ll submit an assignment to the instructor for private review. Optional writing assignments will be posted for group review and feedback. You will be able to evaluate your own progress with online, self-graded “tests.” Throughout the workshop, you will be able to participate in asynchronous lecture discussion. That means that you don’t necessarily have to do it at any specific time, purely when it’s convenient to you. You will be encouraged to take advantage of ongoing informal discussions and self-directed writing exercises. You will receive personalized feedback from the instructor every week. (1.2 CEUs)
You will learn:
- How to overcome mental blocks, especially those due to fear and anxiety
- How to avoid common mistakes of punctuation, grammar and usage
- How to present ideas logically and persuasively
- How to write with a group, and to edit the writing of others to have a common voice
- The most up-to-date rules of layout and design
- The writing, review and editing process
Who should take this course:
- Writers who want to develop the skills for producing business level documents that have clarity and impact
- Individuals who want to learn how to overcome mental blocks and write persuasively
- Writers who want a Published Author to help them improve and hone their business writing skills
Course Outline
Session One: Quick Review of Grammar and Style
- Learn the common business writing mistakes and how to avoid them.
- Review style guides, especially those used in business writing.
Writing Assignment:
Part I
Read the following paragraph. The parentheses note possible problems of grammar, usage or punctuation. Number your page and write the word that immediately precedes the parentheses, followed by a comma, followed by the correct word.
When you write technical reports, we (1) must all be exact in our (2) writing. Be careful that any data you use is (3) absolutely correct. Doublecheck (4) your numbers, especially summed columns. Checking numbers is a common step in the proofreading stage which (5) people often forget. I once found a sum of the numbers ’3′ (6) and “5″ written as “eight”. (7 and ’8) When I found the mistake, I asked the writer, “Are you crazy”? (9) I was so upset that I had to go lay (10) down and take a nap. I was awakened by my boss asking me if I felt well. (11)
Part II
Write one paragraph about the grammar, usage or punctuation problem that has caused you the most consternation in your career. Look up the problem in the Davidson text. If she doesn’t discuss it, try looking in one of the other references listed below. (Most are commonly available at any public library; many have Internet sites.) Write the answer or “rule” for the problem in your own words. Then try to write a mnemonic (a memory trick) to help you remember. For example, I used to have trouble remembering how many “c”s and “m”s were in the word “accommodate.” Then I taught myself that “accommodate” makes more room for all the double letters.
Optional Writing Assignment For Lesson One
Take “The Spell Checker Poem,” as it appears on page 196 in Davidson’s text. Correct all the words that are spelled wrong.
Session Two: Writing and Editing Style
- Learn business style in general; it’s not as pompous as many seem to think.
- Learn how to edit and proofread — your own work as well as that of others.
Writing Assignment:
Part I
Pretend that you are reviewing a co-worker’s memo and read the following paragraph. Using the proofreaders’ marks available at http://www.merriam-webster.com/mw/table/proofrea.htm, first mark up the paragraph. Then actually rewrite the paragraph to correct it. (In the first part, you are acting as editor/proofreader. In the second step, you are acting as author.)
Won of the problems facing today’s business professionals is that were ly to much on our computer’s specll checkers. Many mistakes will pass a work processors’ spell and gammar check, but are still wrong. For example, words that are spelled write but used wrong. I lick too use other people to reed my riding to assure that I have not misspelled anything or use d a word wrong somewhere. Now here do I find it as useful to know you’re grammar and usage as when I’m proofreading other’s writing. You have to no in your gut when something isn’t write. Then you learn to avoid the mistakes in the first place and don’t have to catch anything during the editing procces. If you can save yourself or your company ten cents aday by avoiding mistakes, you’ll save more than $50 yearly!
Part II
Tell me about the last meeting you attended at work, in as many words as you want to take. Now, rewrite it so that it is 150 words or fewer. Finally, rewrite it as if it were going to the company president.
Optional Writing Assignment For Lesson Two
- Go to the following Merriam-Webster website http://www.merriam-webster.com/mw/table/proofrea.htm and look at the proofreaders’ marks. Make a note of those marks you think you might use in your writing and editing (or those that might be used on your writing by others).
- Go to the following website from the Youngstown State University Writing Center: http://www.as.ysu.edu/~english/FRAG1.pdf. Print out the paragraph, and then proofread it using the proofreaders’ marks in
activity 1, above.
Session Three: Formats and Functions, Part I
- Learn how to create the most common business documents: the memo, letter, and e-mail.
- Learn the easiest type of business writing, as defined by purpose: goodwill messages.
Writing Assignment:
- Write me a letter introducing yourself to me. Tell me about your greatest achievements and your goals for the next five years. Make the letter no more than 500 words long. Tell me what format would most represent the type of person you think you are. Note: don’t be concerned if your formatting changes when you post your assignment.
- Write a memo to your boss telling him or her of a suggestion you have for improving the morale in the office. You can decide later whether you want to ever send this one!
- Pretend that you have been offered a job, which you are going to decline. Write a letter to the person who made you the offer, telling him you are turning down the job. You can make up the reason for turning the job down.
Session Four: Formats and Functions, Part II
- Learn some more challenging types of business documents: news releases and reports.
- Learn the second purpose behind business writing: to inform.
Writing Assignment:
- Look up the manufacturer of your favorite packaged food. Using both primary and secondary research, write a 250-word report on the history of that food product. You may, if you choose, also include a brief overview of the company that sells the product.
- Choose both a positive and a negative event in the news this week. Write a news release for each item, as if you were the public relations person who gave the item to the newspapers.
Session Five: Formats and Functions, Part III
- Learn the most challenging types of business documents: proposals, collection letters, grant applications, and sales and fundraising letters.
- Learn the third purpose behind business writing: to persuade.
Writing Assignment: Choose a company, product or service you wish to focus on. Think of a product or service that you think this company should provide and does not provide currently. (Make it a service or product that is NOT being done by some other company, either.) You are going to propose to this company that it should provide your proposed product or service. For this assignment, you will pick a real company and do some research on that company and its market. You will need to look at areas like the following:
- Background/situation/problem
- Company
- Product (idea, description)
- Competition
- Sales/use of similar products or services
Now, based on your research, go ahead with a proposal to whomever in a different company you think would be in a position to authorize proceeding with your idea. You may propose your idea to a company for whom you either do or do not currently work.
You do not have to actually conduct surveys and such. (And much of the data you would want to show are not readily available from companies.) Make up the types of surveys you would use or sales figures (for example) and the numbers of responses you would need. I want to see how you would choose to display this information.
This assignment should be about 1750 to 2000 words long.
Session Six: Working with Other People
- Learn how to work most efficiently with groups of people.
- Become comfortable with editing the work of others, such as when you need to compile and issue a document that sounds as if it were written by only one person.
- Learn how to efficiently and cooperatively collaborate with other writers.
Writing Assignment:
- Rewrite any document you have written in the past, whether it’s a document you wrote for this online course or a document you had to write for your job. Give me both the original and your rewrite. Limit the document to about 1,000 words (about four pages). Tell me what you hoped to achieve with your rewrite.
- Take the following four separate paragraphs and merge them into one short report. Edit them for consistency. (They are knock-offs from an article I wrote for Writer’s Digest, called “Drawing the Line.” There. I gave myself credit.)
Paragraph One:
As a professional writer, one frequently faces decisions where there are no formal rules, where one’s intuition and one’s bank account do not necessarily agree. Ethics has become such a hot topic that the Society for Professional Journalists (S.P.J.) has even set up a telephone “Ethics Hotline” (765-653-2070 x208) to get assistance with ethical dilemmas. In these situations, one needs to examine one’s own standards and morals and draw one’s lines in the sand.
Paragraph Two:
One writer — author of several nonfiction books — says an editor buddy once sent him an article (that had been submitted by someone else) wondering if he could do better. “I didn’t challenge his ethics in doing so, but should have,” he said in an anonymous e-mail, but noted that he didn’t accept the assignment, either. Duh!
Paragraph Three:
The Society for Technical Communication (STC) has a regular ethics column in Intercom, the society’s magazine, edited by John G. Bryan. STC is often confused with the Society for Professional Journalists (SPJ). Anyway, in one issue of STC’s magazine, a new writer was shocked and dismayed that he was being asked to “spin” the same information differently for two different audiences: such as a report to senior management and a newsletter given to the hourly employees. Man did he get an earful! The letters to the editor for months carped about how common and acceptable a practice this is. Many respondents felt it amounted to good business — and if the writer couldn’t do this, he needed to find another career.
Paragraph Four:
Your decisions can extend beyond the writing itself. For example, one client’s process flow in giving me assignments was inefficient. I would write the copy, email it to my client, who then gave it directly to the design agency. Any changes then involved both writing and design changes. I pointed this inefficiency out to my client, who politely ignored me. Subsequently, I decided to use this client’s payments as “mad” money, not to be factored into my budget. Predictably, my contract was put on hold after a few months due to lack of funds.
Optional Writing Assignment for Lesson Six
- Write a thank-you note to your supervisor in which you summarize the positive and negative points of this online course.
- What questions do you still have? What topics did we not discuss that you wish we had covered?
