Business Writing
Workshops:
We understand
that being able to write in a clear and professional style
is important to your business. That is why we have developed
the Business Writing Institute
and the Effective
Business Writing workshop. This practice-driven
business writing
workshop
will significantly improve your ability to write in English,
so that your readers will receive a clear, concise, effective
message. Most professionals spend at least 15-20% of their
time writing for business; emails, memos, business
letters, reports
and other business correspondence. Our customized
approach guarantees an improvement in
business communication skills
that will increase your productivity, success and job satisfaction.
Learn more about our
business writing workshops
here, or contact us for more
information.
Benefits of business writing
training workshops:
- learn how to write a business letter
- discover the skills of writing a
business letter
- learn to create clear business
correspondence
- understand the difference of writing
for business
- improve overall business
communication
"Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph." -- Anonymous business writing high school essay. It's impossible to know whether that young man or woman will ever make a dime at the craft of business writing, but you have to appreciate the precision, don't you? Pithy analogies clearly aren't his or her strength, but details matter a lot.
Those are the sorts of young business writing minds I had the pleasure of working with recently at the Energy Department in Washington, D.C. As brand-new hires, six scientists and engineers spent two days with me in business writing workshops and classes on the basics of clear, concise business plan writing. Not a one of them had had a business writing class in college, but along the way they reinforced a valuable business communications lesson when it comes to putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.
First, in the business writing course we had to get over a looming obstacle - what to write about. Business letter writing seminar exercises are most productive and least daunting when the workshop topic is familiar to writing for business participants. At settings like the Energy Department's Environmental Management and Business Writing Office, which supervised their business letter writing class training, that would mean business writing about cleaning up radioactive waste sites.
The problem in the classes and seminars on how to write a business letter was that these recent college graduates knew virtually nothing about the specifics of the jobs that awaited them after leaving DC. All they had was a location, like Idaho Falls or Oak Ridge, Tennessee, or Cincinnati. So what, I asked myself, could I expect them to write about?
My concerns were short-lived. College had filled their heads with so much useful business writing knowledge that all I had to do was prompt them to view me, the reader, as a lay person (a congressional aide, perhaps) who'd asked a question about a technical business writing matter with far-ranging policy implications.
As they began to develop that idea on writing a business letter , I told them to fill in with details, following the "show don't tell" precept that governs any worthwhile explanatory business letter writing: Don't tell me that the groundwater has been contaminated by radioactive waste. Show me with details about type of waste, measurements that depict degree of damage, cause of damage - all of which set the stage for what environmental clean-up types love to call "remediation."
Framed by a four-stage business writing process - exploratory, draft(s), edit/revise and publish/send - the young business communications professionals followed the three guidelines of successful business writing, whether a project report, a technical evaluation, a follow-up sales pitch or a brief e-mail.
The result was a revelation to each of the students in the course in how to write a business letter who'd begun the first day telling each other that they found writing intimidating.
A Peruvian-born business writing lady who had so little faith in herself and her command of English did a bang-up job describing vitrification - turning nuclear waste into glass. A young engineer in the workshop from Michigan wrote an unambiguous business communications argument for an employee drug-testing program and described how a hypothetical small business writing with potentially dangerous substances could put it in place. What lubricated the process for him was calling on details he'd picked up in a college class and putting himself in the place of the hypothetical reader - in this case a business writing owner who was skeptical about workshop drug testing.
"The best business writing style is the style you don't notice." That's how the novelist Somerset Maugham described business writing that works. The world of business communications is no different. Effective business communications writers get their points across concisely without calling attention to the way they write. The reader understands what is being conveyed - questions, answers to questions, a call to action, a persuasive point - in one reading.
Source: Lynn Gaetner Johnson
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Related Terms:
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