Professional Business Writing Skills

Introduction

Course Objectives

At the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Structure your business documents effectively
• Avoid common grammatical mistakes
• Write in clear, concise style
• Get your message across convincingly
• Organize and structure ideas logically with appropriate language structures to convey the ideas with clarity and reader-friendly
• Understand style and tone strategies appropriate to the audience
• Give your business documents that final polish before sending to the audience.

Key Content

Module 1: General Principles of Writing

• Clarifying your objective - know where you're going and you'll know when you've arrived
• Quick and clear messages - six questions to clarify your thinking
• Who is going to read your documents? Knowing your reader helps you pitch your message

Module 2: Good Writing Techniques for Business Correspondence

• The best sequence of delivery reflects your contents
• Structuring your text - layouts to support content and draw the reader in
• How to ask for things without starting a long sequence of replies to replies
• How to give bad news - being up-front and empathising
• Responding to complaints
• Writing letters of complaint

Module 3: Writing Emails

• Why have email etiquette?
• Email etiquette for header fields
• Technical issues - signature files, attachments, elaborate fonts
• Choosing the right structure for your content and objectives
• Email style counts 
• Sending the right message
• How to minimize flaming by recognizing ambigious content

Module 4: Editing Your Work

• A top down approach to improving text
• Effective transition
• Tips to maximize impact
• Polising the words - poppy cock and commonly confused words
• Polishing your grammar and punctuation
• Spelling
• Infinitives
• Proofing your work