Effective Business Writing Skills - Basic

Introduction

Lern how to create business documents that say what you mean and achieve the results you want. This course covers the basics of how to improve your writing skills but also how to achieve the right result from your written correspondence.

This two days workshop includes supplementary content and gives you opportunity of working on real documents. Participants practice writing effective business correspondence, learning the techniques through group discussion and exercises.

Course Objective

After completing the training, you should be able to:

• Structure your business documents effectively
• Avoid common grammatical mistakes
• Write in clear, concise style
• Get your message across convincingly
• Give your business documents that final polish before you send them

Key Content

Module 1: General Principles of Writing

• Clarifying your objective
• Quick and clear messages
• Who is going to read your document? 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 
• How to ask for things without starting a long sequence of replies to replies
• How to give bad news
• Responding to complaints
• Writing complaint email

Module 3: Writing Emails

• Why have email etiquette
• Email etiquette for header fields - subject lines, content, forward and reply
• Technical issues - signature files, attachments, elaborate fonts can work for or against you
• Choosing the right structure for your content and objective
• Email style counts
• Sending the right message
• How to minimize flaming by recognising ambiguous content and knowing when to use the phone instead

Module 4: Editing Your Work

• A top-down approach to improving text
• Effective transitions - holding the flow of thought
• Tips to maximize impact
• Polising the words
• Polising your grammar and punctuation
• Spelling
• Infinitives
• Proofing your work

Target Audience