Methods of Teaching Business Communication provides unique insights into how to teach your business communication or business writing course more easily and successfully.

Business Communication Textbooks: Finding the Right Fit for Your Course

As the only business communication series with three distinct textbooks, the Bovée-Thill series offers you more choices for a better fit with your unique needs—whether you focus on writing fundamentals, interpersonal communication, or contemporary media skills.

Read more

A New York Times Lesson for Business Writers

As an online subscriber and recipient of Sunday delivery, I enjoy the excellent writing in The New York Times. The paper often uses a powerful technique to meet readers’ needs: listing and answering the readers’ questions. For decades I’ve been…

Read more

Natural English Rhythm: Abbreviations, Numbers, Names

The key to more natural English rhythm is understanding what is emphasized and what falls into the background. In this lesson, I’ll share 7 tips to help you sound more natural in your daily conversations when using abbreviations as well as sharing numbers and names.”

Read more

How Jeff Bezos Turned Narrative into Amazon’s Competitive Advantage

"Bezos is Amazon's chief writing evangelist, and his advocacy for the art of long-form writing as a motivational tool and idea-generation technique has been ordering how people think and work at Amazon for the last two decades—most importantly, in how the company creates new ideas, how it shares them, and how it gets support for them from the wider world."

Read the full article . . .

What Is the Best Quarter Abbreviation Format? (Q1, First Quarter, IVQ, 1st qtr)

As we kick off the first quarter of 2019, many of us are planning work and strategies across the year. Business typically breaks years down by quarters as we plan that work. A client from one of our courses recently asked a good question:

Read more

A Large Amount of Mistakes

Today I was reading an article online in Forbes. I expect Forbes to produce error-free articles, but an error popped out in this sentence: When you stop to think about it, the sheer amount of websites can also confuse and…

Read more

Does Humming Attract Birds? A Punctuation Problem

My friend Eric W., a great sign spotter, sent me this photo for your enjoyment. He asks, “What does it hum?” I ask you, “What is the problem with the heading below?” It’s an easy problem for a snowy Monday…

Read more

Business English for Discussing Solutions to a Problem (2)

"Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone just wants to complain about a problem? And maybe they criticize every solution that is suggested? Well, if that’s all you do, the problem will never be solved."

"Discussing solutions is all about figuring out what might actually work. It’s about finding the best solution, even if it’s not the perfect solution. So you need to learn how to agree with people’s ideas, either strongly, or with conditions. In other words, you might agree but only if something else can happen."

Listen to the podcast . . .

Acronyms and SMEs–Help!

Tim wrote today with an acronym situation he would like to resolve. What do you think about his desire to spell out acronyms and initialisms, even when writing for SMEs (subject-matter experts)? Here is his message: I read your blog…

Read more

Want to Sound More Native? Do This! Common Contractions in English Part 1: IS ARE AM

"If you really want to sound more natural and native in your spoken English you have to use contractions. I know it can seem counterintuitive, but contractions are essential in mastering the rhythm and flow of spoken English. In this lesson, part 1 in a 3-part series, we will practice contracting IS, ARE and AM. Stay tuned for the next 2 lessons in this series helping you to become aware of, and practice, the MOST common contractions in English."

Watch the video by Keenyn Rhodes (photo, left) . . .
Page 3 of 2412345...1020...Last »
625