Methods of Teaching Business Communication

‘Tis the season for out-of-office emails!

Yes, with all the holiday planning of feasts and gifts and decorations, there is also the important task of drafting your holiday auto-responder text. You need to let your colleagues and clients know that you’ll be away from your desk celebrating the spirit of the season (and not reading their emails!).

Earning more business starts most often with an effective proposal. Preparing a winning proposal means writing for the client and providing a clear, valuable solution to their problem.

The world of business writing can seem vast. Each office seems to have variations of documents, each with their personalized templates and industry focus. Varying scenarios require varying forms of business writing. However, the innumerable documents can be distilled into to four main categories.

Since 2010, the Center for Plain Language annually judges the quality of content produced by US government agencies. The results for 2017 are shown below. I love these report cards for several reasons but chief among them is that they use an evidence-based approach. On a shoestring budget. Most complaints about content quality are vague. But the…

“The employee believed their safety could not be guaranteed.”

Business emails are a pillar of modern communication. On any given day, the average office worker receives over 80 emails.

This post is a response to comments from readers about my use of “insure” in Editors insure content matches audience readiness for it. I’m using this as a teaching moment for my technical editing students so it might be too long for others. Skip ahead if you just want to get to shibboleths or white…

I led a class for a group of writers who respond to citizen complaints about airplane noise. The writers cannot make the planes quieter, and they can’t make them go away. What can they do? They can respond in ways…