Business Writing Tips from The Writing Center
Effective Business Writing - An Introduction
May 10, 2007
This week marks the start of a fresh
series adapted from our best-selling course, Effective Business Writing.
Writing effectively is a critical business skill that
contributes to success on the job. Effective Business Writing is a
four-module program that guides students through practical techniques to
efficiently produce clear, well-organized, and professional memos,
letters, reports and e-mail.
You will learn quite a bit by reading this newsletter
over the next year or so. What you won't get is the hands-on practice
provided in the course's numerous exercises. And while the course work
can be completed in six hours, students retain access to the material
for six months. Listen to this short introduction.
Our first strategy is to eliminate wordiness. The proliferation of
personal computers and word-processing programs has done little to
improve the general quality of writing in our world. Spelling and
grammar checkers offer false hope to many. Effective business
writing is concise and to the point. And the best news is that it can be
learned. Our first lesson reviews five steps
to eliminate wordiness.
What is wordiness?
William Strunk, Jr., in The Elements of Style, reminds us:
"A sentence should contain no unnecessary words --
a paragraph no unnecessary sentences -- for the same reason that a
drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary
parts."
Good business writing is concise and efficient, conveying maximum information in minimum space.
How do you ensure that your documents contain no unnecessary words? Use
these five steps for eliminating wordiness:
- Eliminate words that don't add meaning.
- Eliminate meaningless introductory phrases.
- Eliminate unnecessary repetition.
- Compress phrases with unnecessary words.
- Combine sentences that repeat elements.
We'll explore those five steps beginning with next week's newsletter.
This edition was adapted from our Effective
Business Writing Program. Previous editions
may be read at
http://www.uliveandlearn.com/newsletters/index.cfm.
To receive this free weekly newsletter via e-mail, go to
http://www.uliveandlearn.com/userjoin.cfm and select the newsletter option.
Return now to the Business
Communications Library
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