Brochure Assignment
The Scenario: You are opening your own dream business and want to get your message out to
the world! Using figure 13.1 on pg. 244 of your textbook as your guide, create a brochure to
promote your business.
Microsoft Word has several two-fold brochure templates that you can find from simply searching
“brochure” on the create a new document page. However, be sure to use different pictures,
symbols, language, etc. to ensure you will have an original document.
Rubric:
Meets the front panel placement and appropriately achieves attention.
Meets the 2nd panel placement and appropriately achieves interest.
Meets the 3rd panel placement and appropriately achieves additional interest.
Meets the 4th panel placement and appropriately achieves interest and/or desire.
Meets the 5th panel placement and appropriately achieves desire.
Meets the 6th panel placement and appropriately achieves action.
/5
/10
/10
/10
/10
/5
/50
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“Business and Professional Writing provides a solid overview of key topics related to business
communication. Clear, concise chapters teach students about plain language, format, and grammar,
and highlight the most common forms of business communication such as letters and memos.
What makes this book stand out from the competition is its focus on news releases, brochures,
and promotion on the web. Detailed instructions on how to construct an effective brochure are
especially helpful to students who often struggle with this format.”
— Precious McKenzie, Rocky Mountain College
Straightforward, practical, and focused on realistic examples, Business and Professional Writing: A
Basic Guide is an introduction to the fundamentals of professional writing. The book emphasizes
clarity, conciseness, and plain language. Guidelines and templates for business correspondence,
formal and informal reports, brochures and press releases, and oral presentations are included.
Exercises guide readers through the process of creating and revising each genre, and helpful tips,
reminders, and suggested resources beyond the book are provided throughout.
Paul MacRae is an instructor in business and professional writing at the University of Victoria.
ISBN
978-1-55481-220-2
Cover image: © Snehitdesign | Dreamstime.com
Business and Professional Writing A Basic Guide
“Paul MacRae’s Business and Professional Writing delivers on its promise to provide a basic breadand-butter guide to workplace writing. Whereas other books combine practical writing instruction
with communication theory, MacRae’s background as a journalist comes through in his concise
approach: he hones in on the core genres and skills that all professional writers must develop as
part of their writing repertoires. This book practises what it teaches. Concepts are explained and
illustrated clearly and efficiently. The strong section on grammar clearly explains the basics that
need to be in every professional writer’s toolkit. The book’s brevity, conciseness, and to-the-point
approach make it a practical, accessible textbook that would be a great resource for any student.”
— Kelly Belanger, Virginia Tech
MacRae
“Paul MacRae’s Business and Professional Writing is an excellent new entry in the field of writing
textbooks. MacRae clearly has years of experience teaching writing: he knows what students
need, and he knows how to convey that information in an accessible, almost conversational way.
This is a practical, no-nonsense approach to professional writing. What the reader will find here
is everything he or she needs to know to be an effective communicator, from a foundation in
grammar and basic precepts, including the importance of document design, to how to write in
specific professional genres, including persuasive letters, résumés, and reports. Rather than being
relegated to an appendix, grammar is foregrounded, along with the ‘seven Cs of good professional
communication.’ The coverage is thorough yet concise, and even experienced writers will find the
text to be a valuable resource.”
— Michael Fox, Western University
Business and
Professional Writing
A Basic Guide
Pen Macro Photo. Designed by Chris Rowat
Design, Daiva Villa
ISBN978-1-55481-220-2
978-1-55481-220-2
ISBN
broadview press
www.broadviewpress.com
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broadview
Paul MacRae
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“Business and Professional Writing provides a solid overview of key topics related to business
communication. Clear, concise chapters teach students about plain language, format, and grammar,
and highlight the most common forms of business communication such as letters and memos.
What makes this book stand out from the competition is its focus on news releases, brochures,
and promotion on the web. Detailed instructions on how to construct an effective brochure are
especially helpful to students who often struggle with this format.”
— Precious McKenzie, Rocky Mountain College
Straightforward, practical, and focused on realistic examples, Business and Professional Writing: A
Basic Guide is an introduction to the fundamentals of professional writing. The book emphasizes
clarity, conciseness, and plain language. Guidelines and templates for business correspondence,
formal and informal reports, brochures and press releases, and oral presentations are included.
Exercises guide readers through the process of creating and revising each genre, and helpful tips,
reminders, and suggested resources beyond the book are provided throughout.
Paul MacRae is an instructor in business and professional writing at the University of Victoria.
ISBN
978-1-55481-220-2
Cover image: © Snehitdesign | Dreamstime.com
Business and Professional Writing A Basic Guide
“Paul MacRae’s Business and Professional Writing delivers on its promise to provide a basic breadand-butter guide to workplace writing. Whereas other books combine practical writing instruction
with communication theory, MacRae’s background as a journalist comes through in his concise
approach: he hones in on the core genres and skills that all professional writers must develop as
part of their writing repertoires. This book practises what it teaches. Concepts are explained and
illustrated clearly and efficiently. The strong section on grammar clearly explains the basics that
need to be in every professional writer’s toolkit. The book’s brevity, conciseness, and to-the-point
approach make it a practical, accessible textbook that would be a great resource for any student.”
— Kelly Belanger, Virginia Tech
MacRae
“Paul MacRae’s Business and Professional Writing is an excellent new entry in the field of writing
textbooks. MacRae clearly has years of experience teaching writing: he knows what students
need, and he knows how to convey that information in an accessible, almost conversational way.
This is a practical, no-nonsense approach to professional writing. What the reader will find here
is everything he or she needs to know to be an effective communicator, from a foundation in
grammar and basic precepts, including the importance of document design, to how to write in
specific professional genres, including persuasive letters, résumés, and reports. Rather than being
relegated to an appendix, grammar is foregrounded, along with the ‘seven Cs of good professional
communication.’ The coverage is thorough yet concise, and even experienced writers will find the
text to be a valuable resource.”
— Michael Fox, Western University
Business and
Professional Writing
A Basic Guide
Pen Macro Photo. Designed by Chris Rowat
Design, Daiva Villa
ISBN978-1-55481-220-2
978-1-55481-220-2
ISBN
broadview press
www.broadviewpress.com
Business Writing cover (FA).indd 1
broadview
Paul MacRae
2015-01-29 8:10 AM
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Business and
Professional Writing
A Basic Guide
Paul MacRae
broadview press
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© 2015 Paul MacRae
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written
consent of the publisher –– or in the case of photocopying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
MacRae, Paul, 1946-, author
Business and professional writing : a basic guide / Paul MacRae.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55481-220-2 (pbk.)
1. Business writing. 2. Business report writing. 3. Business communication. I. Title.
HF5718.3.M32 2015
808.06’665
C2014-908238-X
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Contents
Acknowledgements 11
Preface 13
Introduction to Business and Professional Writing
15
Part I The Basics of Strong Writing
Chapter 1 Plain Language
23
25
Business Communication versus Academic Writing
Plain Language 27
Exercises 32
25
Chapter 2 The Seven Cs of Good Professional Communication
Introduction 33
1. Clear 34
2. Concise 39
3. Concrete and Specific
4. Complete 44
5. Courteous 45
6. Coherent 48
7. Constructive 55
Conclusion 58
Quiz on the Seven Cs 60
42
Chapter 3 The Eighth C: Learning Grammar Language
Introduction 61
Grammar Language
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contents
Parts of Speech 64
Sentences and Clauses 66
Conjunctions 73
Clauses and Conjunctions Determine Punctuation
Punctuation 81
Grammar Odds and Ends 90
Conclusion 93
Quiz #1 on Grammar 93
Quiz #2 on Grammar 94
Chapter 4 Copy-Editing
78
95
Introduction: What Is Copy-Editing? 95
Using Spellcheck 98
Other Copy-Editing Tasks 99
Copy-Editing Symbols 99
Using a Word Processor for Copy-Editing
Conclusion 103
Copy-Editing Exercise 104
Part II Document Design
Chapter 5 Basic Document Design
101
105
107
Introduction: The Importance of Good Document Design
Modular Design 108
Lists 112
Headings 117
Graphics 122
Summing Up 130
Chapter 6 Formatting for Correspondence
Introduction 133
Memos and Emails 134
Letters 138
Correspondence Review
Introduction
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133
147
Part III Correspondence
Chapter 7 Emails and Memos
107
149
151
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contents
7
Emails and Memos 152
Emails 152
Memos 155
Faxes and Scans 157
Chapter 8 Letters: Good News, Neutral, and Bad News
Good-News and Neutral Letters
Bad-News Letters 162
Chapter 9 Persuasive Letters
160
175
Introduction 175
Three Rhetorical Techniques 176
AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action)
Exercise 188
Part IV Writing for a Job
Chapter 10 Cover Letters
178
189
191
Introduction 191
The Cover Letter
Conclusion 200
Exercise 201
Chapter 11 Résumés
192
203
Introduction 203
Reverse Chronological Résumé 206
Functional Résumé 209
Combined Chronological and Functional Résumé
Scannable Résumé 216
Conclusion 220
Exercises 220
Part V Promotional Materials
Chapter 12 News Releases
212
221
223
Introduction 223
News Releases 223
Follow-up Questions and Exercises
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contents
Chapter 13 Brochures
235
Introduction 235
Brochures Are AIDA Documents
Conclusion 241
Exercises 242
Chapter 14 Promotion on the Web
Introduction 243
Creating a Website
Social Media 245
Exercise 248
243
244
Part VI Oral Presentations
Chapter 15 Individual Oral Presentations
Introduction 251
Individual Presentations 252
Individual Presentation Checklist
Exercises 265
Chapter 16 Group Presentations
251
264
270
273
Chapter 17 Informal Reports
275
Introduction 275
Progress Reports 276
Problem-Solving Reports
Incident Reports 287
Proposal Reports 290
Conclusion 296
Discussion Questions 296
Exercises 296
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249
267
Introduction 267
Preparation 267
Content 269
Delivery 269
Group Presentation Checklist
Exercise 271
Part VII Reports
235
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contents
Chapter 18 Formal Reports
9
299
Introduction 299
Formal Report Design 300
Formal Report Formatting 302
Surveys 316
Minutes 321
Conclusion 326
Formal Report Checklist 328
Discussion Questions 329
Exercise 329
Chapter 19 Formal Report Example
Appendix A Answers to Exercises
331
351
Introduction 351
Chapter 1 353
Chapter 2 353
Chapter 3 356
Chapter 4 363
Chapter 5 364
Chapter 6 366
Chapter 8 369
Chapter 12 371
Index
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Acknowledgements
No work appears out of a vacuum, and this book is no exception. Since 2005, I have
taught a course on business and professional writing, English 225, at the University
of Victoria. I inherited that course from professors Claire McKenzie and Norma
Depledge; I also inherited from them many of the key concepts in this book, including the eight Cs of good professional writing, the AIDA format for persuasive writing,
and the format for “bad news” letters, among others. I am sincerely grateful to them.
I’d like to acknowledge University Canada West, a private university now in Vancouver but originally based in Victoria. I taught several courses, both in-classroom
and online, at UCW, and designed two of the courses: one on writing for the media
and a second on writing for business and the professions. Business and Professional
Writing: A Basic Guide is based on the online textbook I wrote for UCW’s businesswriting course, and I am grateful to UCW for agreeing to allow Broadview Press to
publish this version of it.
I would like to thank Broadview Press for taking this book out of the online world
and putting it into actual print, and particularly Don LePan and Marjorie Mather.
Broadview editor Karen Taylor went well beyond what I would consider the call of
duty in editing the manuscript and I am very grateful to her for her many suggestions and corrections. And many thanks, as well, to my wife Sheila, who carefully
and kindly proofread the manuscript and made many, many helpful suggestions.
Finally, I would like to thank the hundreds of University of Victoria students I
have had the pleasure of teaching over the past decade. I have learned as much from
them as, I hope, they have learned from me.
When I began to teach writing in 2005, after more than 30 years in journalism,
I made a startling discovery: I didn’t know what my students didn’t know about
writing, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know about teaching writing.
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12
acknowledgements
As a former journalist, I often assumed at first that my students knew more about
writing than they actually did. But I also often assumed I knew more about what
students needed than I actually did. I quickly learned that what was obvious to me
wasn’t obvious to my students, and what was obvious to my students wasn’t obvious
to me. And so, over the years, my course materials and teaching evolved to fill the
gaps in both my students’ knowledge and my own.
Business and Professional Writing: A Basic Guide is the result of this learning
process. This book contains everything that, I believe, students need to know to
become strong writers in the professional and business world. But I have also tried
to include background material that, based on a decade’s teaching and learning, I
found most students didn’t know.
Above all, I hope this book will be useful to you, both in your writing for university or college and after you leave university for the world beyond. I wish you the
best of luck! But, in university and in the work world, “luck” is almost always based
on hard preparatory work.
So let’s get started . . . .
—Paul MacRae
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Preface
Welcome to Business and Professional Writing: A Basic Guide. It’s called a “basic”
guide because that’s what it is. It’s what you need to know, without a lot of bells and
whistles, for your first few writing assignments in the real world.
The bells and whistles in a textbook are cool, but as a student you’re juggling
course work and probably a part-time job, while still trying to have a social life. Do
you really have time to read more than what you absolutely need to know?
Also, in the real, working world, you aren’t going to be handed a major assignment, like a news release or formal report, without some previous training and
knowledge learned on the job. In addition, in your first real-world writing assignments, you’ll almost certainly have co-writers who are more experienced to train
and guide you.
That said, being familiar beforehand with how to structure and format a formal
report, say, or how to write a strong news release, or how to send an angry customer
a “bad news” letter that won’t lose the customer’s goodwill, means you won’t look
like a complete newbie, and might even impress the boss!
So, in this book, we’ll keep it simple. We’ll be looking at some basic formats for
correspondence, promotional materials (brochures, news releases, and the like),
informal reports, and formal reports. We’ll look at how to design attractive documents. And we’ll look at how to make your writing as powerful, persuasive, and
grammatically correct as possible.
Incidentally, “professional” writing in this book refers to writing within the
professions like law, medicine, architecture, business, government, and so on, not
“professional” writing in the sense of publishing your writing for money. However,
the writing taught in this book is practised by professional writers.
Let’s discuss grammar for a moment. The grammar section is Chapter 3. If you
are already terrific at grammar, then by all means skip that chapter. But if your
13
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14
preface
grammar, spelling, and general written communication skills are even a bit dodgy,
then you should spend quite a bit of your precious study time working on making
your grammar perfect. Why?
It’s not hard to learn the various professional writing formats—letters, brochures,
news releases, reports, and so on, that we cover in this book. But if the writing you
put into the formats isn’t good—which means grammatically correct, easy to read,
and clear—then your efforts will not succeed as you’d hoped.
Also, you want to write well because, as we’ll discuss in more detail later, your
writing reflects you. If your writing has grammatical and spelling errors or is hard
to read, the literate reader will assume you aren’t careful and detail oriented. They
might also think you aren’t too bright. In other words, you may look uneducated
or sloppy or both. And that means you may not get the job you applied for, or gain
the customer you hoped to persuade, or win the voters you hoped would elect you
or your candidate, or clinch the commission you were counting on. So always keep
this in mind: the quality of your writing reflects the quality of you to the world.
But good writing isn’t just a matter of how you appear to the world; the quality
of your writing also influences the quality of your thinking. Clear writing shows
clear thinking; muddled writing reflects a muddled mind. It’s obvious which type
of mind employers, clients, and customers prefer. Fairly or not, they will judge your
mind based on the quality of your writing.
Therefore, this book aims above all to give you the tools you need to become a
fine writer. Then you can apply that fine writing to any task at all, from writing Aunt
Mary to applying for your dream job to writing a formal report that will knock the
socks off your boss or clients.
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Introduction to Business and
Professional Writing
After studying this chapter, you will be aware of
• the importance of good professional communication and
• what the text will cover.
The Importance of Good Communication
We live in what has been called a “post-literate” age. Before television, radio, movies,
and the Internet, reading was the major source of information and entertainment
for most educated (i.e., literate) people. As a result, even if these literate people never
took a grammar course (although many of them did), in their extensive reading they
“absorbed” the rules of good writing and followed those rules in what they wrote.
They were excellent writers almost by default.
However, when television appeared in the 1950s, computers and video games in
the 1980s, and the Internet in the 1990s, the emphasis shifted from written media
to visual and aural media for both entertainment and information. In schools, the
importance of accurate spelling and grammar has given way to encouraging “creativity.” For many years, “progressive” educators have believed that forcing students to
learn the persnickety rules of writing, spelling, and grammar would hamper their
ability to express themselves freely and creatively.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, without a thorough knowledge
and mastery of the rules underlying any discipline, creativity is impossible. And in no
other discipline but English writing are the underlying principles of that discipline
so thoroughly ignored.
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16
introduction to business and professional writing
For example, physicians aren’t allowed to do surgery “creatively”; they need to
have a detailed knowledge of the various parts of the human body and how those
parts all work together. Architects and engineers don’t design buildings and bridges
without learning the basic, persnickety principles of construction and materials.
Nobody in these professions believes that mastering the basic rules of anatomy and
the tensile strength of materials will hamper professionals’ “creativity.”
Quite the opposite: mastery of the basics is the essential ingredient for creativity. And yet, many school systems have decided that budding writers can produce
creative work without a thorough grounding in the basic rules of English grammar,
spelling, and syntax.
The result of this flawed educational philosophy, plus the move away from print
toward visual and aural media, has been several generations of students—not all
students, for sure, but far too many—who, when they write, often can’t spell, who
don’t know the fine points of grammar, and who, contrary to the educators’ expectations, can’t clearly express themselves in print, much less create great written work.
From the point of view of professional and business communication, all this
would be unfortunate but not disastrous if professional communication had also
moved away from written to visual and aural media. In fact, quite the opposite has
occurred. The Internet and visual media may have helped to kill good writing, but
the Internet and visual media have also made clear and accurate written communication in business and professional life more important than ever.
As a company vice-president has noted, “One of the most amazing features of the
information revolution is that the momentum has turned back to the written word.”
And the need for clear written communication is true not just for business but for
virtually all the professions. As one analyst has written, “Engineers tell us that they
spend 20 to 40 per cent of their work time writing memos, letters, emails, reports,
and proposals.” So, even if our schools—not all but many—no longer emphasize
correct and clear writing, this kind of writing is not just expected but demanded in
the world of work communication.
Our Communication Says Something about Us
Not only is good written and spoken communication as important as it ever was
but, as noted in the Preface, how well you communicate reflects heavily on you, as
an individual, company, or organization.
For example, a company website may be visually pleasing. But if the page is
riddled with grammatical errors that company will lose credibility with potential
customers and, therefore, sales as well. For example, look at the following web-page
advertisement for a car-rental company (the company name has been changed to
protect the grammar-challenged):
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o u r c o m m u n i c at i o n s ay s s o m e t h i n g a b o u t u s
17
Thank you for asking XXX Car Rentals to quote for your car rental requirements. We are pleased to say XXX Car Rentals has invested many manhours, in gearing our whole rental operation to work for our customers. We
pride ourselves on the high level of customer service we achieve, we are
also sure you will find us good value for money.
At XXX Car Rentals we are aware that car rental can be a stressful
time for the best of us, that’s why we have made our service very easy
to use. In fact we call it hassle free. So allowing you to start enjoying
your holiday the moment you drive off in your rental car, or even getting
to that all important business meeting faster. If you need to cancel your
trip for any reason, XXX Car Rental will refund your money back in full,
with no penalties. We are sure once you have tried our service; you will
be delighted and will never look back.
Think of all the extras you are getting with XXX Car Rental, and when
comparing quotes from other rental agencies, check that they include all
that we offer, at no additional cost to you.
The advertisement is riddled with small grammar and wording errors. Later in this
chapter, you will be asked, as an exercise, to find the errors and correct them to
produce the advertisement as it should have been written.
For now, ask yourself this question: would you feel confident renting a car from
this company? If XXX Car Rental can’t get the small details of its web advertising
right, will it get the details of car rental and auto mechanics right? Perhaps the
company is superb at renting top-quality, perfectly running cars in a timely fashion.
That doesn’t matter if poor writing undermines the company’s credibility with the
firm’s target audience—the people (usually literate) who can afford to rent a car
for a holiday.
So our communication, in business, in the professions, in government, even
just with work colleagues and friends, tells our audience a great deal about us. If we
care about the details of our communication, probably we’ll care about the details
of our work as well. Therefore, to show ourselves in the best possible light, we need
to write well and accurately.
And, in business and the professions, we do most definitely want to show ourselves
in the best possible light. Why? If for no other reason, the financial success of the
business or profession we work in—and therefore our livelihood—depends on the
confidence clients and customers place in us.
Reputation is hugely important in business and the professions, in part because
large sums of money are often involved, in part because much of business and professional communication is persuasive: we are trying to persuade someone or some
group to perform an action we desire.
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introduction to business and professional writing
[16] Personal income by prose literacy proficiency
Thousands of dollars
50
40
42.2
36.7
30
29.0
20
20.7
10
0
Poor
(Level 1)
Weak
(Level 2)
Adequate
(Level 3)
Strong
(Level 4)
Figure I.1 Prose Literacy and Personal Income
Source: Adapted from TD Bank Financial Group, Literacy Matters: A Call for Action (Toronto: Toronto Dominion Financial Group, 2006), 12,
http://www.brantskillscentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Literacy-Matters-TD.pdf.
We want our audience to buy something from us, sign a contract with us, vote for
us, agree to an action we desire. Because most people’s first impulse is to resist this
kind of persuasion, we need every tool at our disposal if we want to succeed. One of
those tools is excellent communication.
There are added benefits to learning to write well—a higher income and increased
chances of finding a job.
A report by the TD Bank on literacy notes that those with high literacy skills earn,
on average, $42,239 a year, based on 2003 figures from Statistics Canada. This is
double the $20, 692 average income of those with poor literacy skills (see Figure I.1).1
The report also observes that those with strong literacy skills are more likely to
find a job than those who don’t write well (see Figure I.2).
1 TD Bank Financial Group, Literacy Matters: A Call for Action (Toronto: Toronto Dominion Financial Group, 2006), 12, http://www.brantskillscentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/LiteracyMatters-TD.pdf. Figures in the TD report were taken from Statistics Canada data.
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there are no shortcuts to good writing
19
[13] Employment rate by literacy proficiency
Per cent
100
80
76.4
81.0
70.2
60
57.0
40
20
0
Poor
Weak
Adequate
Strong
Figure I.2 Literacy and Employment Rate
Source: Adapted from TD Bank Financial Group, Literacy Matters: A Call for Action (Toronto: Toronto Dominion Financial Group, 2006), 11,
http://www.brantskillscentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Literacy-Matters-TD.pdf.
There Are No Shortcuts to Good Writing
In the good old days, top business executives and professionals didn’t need to write
well or correctly—they had secretaries to do that. Today, thanks to computer word
processing, even executives and CEOs now need to do at least some of their own
writing and proofreading.
These communications might be emails to a superior or to employees, letters
to clients, or reports to higher management or to a client. Writing errors in any of
these documents might make the recipient wonder about your or your company’s
basic competence.
Ah, you might say, but computers have spellcheck and grammar check. Unfortunately, although useful tools, spellcheck and grammar check won’t catch errors
such as the following: “We where gang to the stair for a battle of milch.” All of these
words are spelled correctly; they’re just the wrong words, so spellcheck won’t catch
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introduction to business and professional writing
them. And grammar check, too, is at best a fallback tool—it’s no substitute for actually knowing good grammar.
So, by all means, use spellcheck and grammar check to double-check your writing—these tools will definitely catch some errors. But they won’t catch all of the
errors by a long shot, and they may even create new errors by substituting the wrong
word, such as “defiantly” instead of “definitely,” or “costumer” instead of “customer,”
or “grate” instead of “greet.” As a result, instead of your email reading “I will definitely be at the meeting to greet the customer,” spellcheck might have produced “I
will defiantly be at the meeting to grate the costumer.”
Totally, 100 per cent correct spelling and grammar are two human skills that
computers still can’t quite master. That means you—yes, you—need to know how
to write with perfect grammar and spelling.
What We Will Learn
Quite simply, one of the most useful skills you can learn in your education, whatever
your discipline, is good communication, written and spoken. Why? Regardless of
what profession you ultimately choose, you will almost certainly be using these skills
every single day, both on the job and off. The better you use these skills, the more
successful you will be.
In a college or university setting, written and spoken material is graded, with “A”
being very good, “B” pretty good, “C” marginal, “D” bad, and “F” fail. In the world
of business and the professions, however, there are no Bs, Cs, and Ds. In the work
world, anything less than an “A”—and preferably an “A+”—is an “F.” It’s something
to think about. Communication is one of the constants of business and professional
life, and it’s in your interest to make all of your communication as close to perfect
as possible.
In Business and Professional Writing: A Basic Guide, we’ll be looking at the following topics in this order:
• Plain language (also called plain English): making your writing as clear, concise, concrete and specific, and coherent as possible.
• The seven Cs of good professional writing: writing prose that is clear, concise,
concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive.
• The eighth C, correct: using proper grammar, the foundation of good writing.
• Copy-editing: putting the finishing touches on your written work so it’s
perfect.
• Document design: making your written material as attractive to readers as
possible.
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• Business and professional correspondence: using various letter formats and
conventions, with an emphasis on persuasive letters and “bad-news letters”—
letters that tell clients or customers that you can’t do what they are asking
while keeping their good will. (Unless you choose a line of work that involves
almost no writing at all you will be writing letters.)
• Job-search letters and résumés: writing effective cover letters and résumés.
These are among the most important documents you will ever write, as they
might (or, if poorly done, won’t) land you the job of your dreams.
• Promotional materials: producing brochures and press releases (chances are
very good you will be writing a press release or two in your working life, so this
is worth knowing) and writing for social networking sites such as Facebook
and Twitter.
• Public speaking: making an effective oral presentation—chances are very
good that, at some point in your career (and maybe quite often), you will need
to speak in public.
• Group tasks: giving group talks and taking minutes.
• Informal reports: structuring and writing these indispensable tools of business and professional life—luckily, this lesson is relatively easy to learn.
• Formal reports: producing these significant documents, just in case a reportwriting task comes your way.
And, throughout the book, in the text boxes, you’ll find various tips and tricks to
improve your communication.
This book aims to give you the basic written and verbal skills you need to walk
into any professional job and succeed, at least as far as written and spoken communication is concerned.
In the next chapter, we’ll look at one particular and vitally important feature of
good business and professional communication: plain English.
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introduction to business and professional writing
Exercise
Rewrite the car rental ad below, fixing the grammatical errors and making
the ad more concise and direct. Can you identify the grammatical problems
by name? One possible answer is at the end of the book, but don’t peek
until you’ve done the exercise.
Thank you for asking XXX Car Rentals to quote for your car rental
requirements. We are pleased to say XXX Car Rentals has invested
many man-hours, in gearing our whole rental operation to work for our
customers. We pride ourselves on the high level of customer service we
achieve, we are also sure you will find us good value for money.
At XXX Car Rentals we are aware that car rental can be a stressful
time for the best of us, that’s why we have made our service very easy
to use. In fact we call it hassle free. So allowing you to start enjoying
your holiday the moment you drive off in your rental car, or even getting
to that all important business meeting faster. If you need to cancel your
trip for any reason, XXX Car Rental will refund your money back in full,
with no penalties. We are sure once you have tried our service; you will
be delighted and will never look back.
Think of all the extras you are getting with XXX Car Rental, and when
comparing quotes from other rental agencies, check that they include all
that we offer, at no additional cost to you.
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Part I
The Basics of Strong Writing
After studying Part I, you will be aware of
• The
• The
• The
• The
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difference between professional writing and academic writing,
seven Cs of good writing,
importance of correct grammar, and
importance of accurate copy-editing.
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Chapter 1
Plain Language
After studying this chapter, you will be aware of
• The difference between academic and business writing and
• The importance of writing in plain language.
Business Communication versus Academic Writing
The Preface briefly discussed the formats we will learn in this book—correspondence, report formats, and the like—but also the importance of good writing within
each format. If the writing in a report, say, is inferior, that report will fail no matter
how well it’s formatted. So in Chapter 1 and 2 we’ll discuss how to develop strong
writing, and Chapter 3 will be all about grammar.
To be a good communicator in business and the professions, you may have to
unlearn some of the techniques that might have made you a good academic writer.
Here is what happens in good academic writing.
• The information is often highly complex.
• The language is often highly specialized.
• Sentences tend to be long and complex, in keeping with the complex subject
matter.
• Paragraphs are long enough to explore each complex idea deeply.
• The style is formal—it avoids “I” and “you,” although “we” is sometimes
acceptable, and it doesn’t use contractions (e.g., you will write “does not”
instead of “doesn’t”).
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plain language
• Academic citation and works-cited styles, like APA, MLA, or other academic
formats, are highly detailed and strictly followed.
• Grammar rules are strictly followed (e.g., the “Oxford” comma is preferred,
colons are used after full sentences and before lists, and so on. We’ll discuss
these rules in Chapter 3.).
Most professional, non-academic writing, on the other hand, is very different.
• Ideas are expressed as simply and concisely as possible.
• Specialized words and jargon are avoided if possible (it’s not always possible,
and specialized language may be necessary for some audiences).
• Sentences have one main idea, with perhaps one or at most two supporting
ideas.
• Paragraphs are short—four to eight lines would be typical.
• The style is more informal than in academic writing; first (“I,” “me,” “we”),
second (“you”), and third person (“he,” “her,” “they,” etc.) are all allowed, as
are contractions (“don’t” rather than “do not” is acceptable).
• Grammar rules are (slightly!) relaxed (for example, sentence fragments are
sometimes allowed for rhetorical effect, but in moderation, comma use is not
rigid, and so on).
Academic and business writing styles are different because they have different audiences. The academic writer and reader is a specialist in a particular discipline, and
specialized language is part of that discipline. The audience for a business or professional document is more often a generalist, and this audience calls for a less specialized vocabulary and less complex set of concepts.
But, more importantly, the business or professional audience doesn’t want to
spend a lot of time figuring out what the wording in a particular report or memo
is trying to say—time is money! The meaning of professional writing should be
immediately clear, unlike academic writing, which is sometimes obscure.
On the page, too, academic writing looks different from business and professional
writing. An academic essay or published article may consist of page after page of
print, in long, grey paragraphs, perhaps broken by the occasional picture, chart,
or diagram. As a visual experience, an academic essay can be hard going; however,
the hard going is, the academic writer hopes, rewarded by the essay’s stimulating
intellectual content.
A business or professional document aims to be much more attractive, visually
speaking. That means using white space, lists, pictures, charts and graphics, headings and subheadings, and many other techniques for easy readability that we will
be discussing below in this chapter on plain language and in Chapter 5 on document design.
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plain language
Plain Language
Business, legal, government, and professional writing can, over
time, sink into a morass of technical jargon and convoluted syntax that is almost unintelligible to the general public. In other
words, this writing has become the communication of experts
for other experts. This bureaucratese wouldn’t be a problem if
these documents didn’t have to be read by non-experts, but that
is often not the case.
For example, legal documents such as contracts, mortgages,
and wills need to be both read and understood by people who
aren’t lawyers. Government communications often contain
important information about laws and regulations on everything from legal business practices to the size and type of pipe
fittings in a new house. If the business owners and tradespeople who have to follow building regulations, for example, can’t
understand the regulations—and they often can’t—then there’s
a problem.
In short, hard-to-read texts cause more
•
•
•
•
•
misunderstandings
errors
complaints
enquiries
staff time lost to problem solving.1
Therefore, many businesses and governments around the world
are moving to put their communications into what is called plain
language or plain English.
Features of Plain Language
What is plain English? It has a number of features:
• It uses concrete and specific examples rather than abstractions to be as clear as possible.
1 Plain Language Online Training Program, “Introducing Plain Language,” PlainTrain, http://www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/plaintrain/
IntroducingPlainLanguage.html. The PlainTrain website is an excellent
resource on plain language and its application. The British passport office
and Royal Mail examples come from an article at www.plainenglish.co.uk
entitled “Chrissie speaks out for women in plain English.”
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Worth Knowing
The British passport
office found that 52
per cent of passport
applicants couldn’t
complete the form
properly. When the
form was rewritten
in plain English, 97
per cent of applicants
were able to fill it out
correctly, for a saving
of 370,000 hours of
administration time
per year. Similarly, the
UK’s Royal Mail used
mail-forwarding forms
that had an 87 per cent
error rate among users
and cost £10,000 a
week for corrections.
When the forms were
rewritten the error rate
fell and the Royal Mail
saved £500,000 in only
nine months.
Additional Resources
The following websites
offer useful information
on plain language:
1. US federal
government writing
guidelines:
http://www.plain
language.gov/index.cfm
2. PlainTrain, a
Canadian government
website teaching plain
language:
http://www.
plainlanguagenetwork.
org/plaintrain/index.
html
3. George Orwell’s
essay “Politics and
the English Language”
on the need for plain
language:
http://wikilivres.ca/
wiki/Politics_and_the_
English_Language
4. Centre for Literacy:
http://www.
centreforliteracy.qc.ca/
node/188
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plain language
• It avoids unfamiliar words and technical jargon. For example, it prefers “know”
to the jargonistic “fully cognizant.”
• It uses active rather than passive verbs for clarity, directness, and conciseness.
Active verbs use fewer words: “The man ate the sandwich” (five words) versus
“The sandwich was eaten by the man” (seven words).
• It avoids wordy expressions (“in order to do business” = “to do business”; “at
the present time” = “now”).
• It avoids repetitiveness (“will be an extremely lucrative endeavour” = “will be
lucrative” or just “will make money”).
• It avoids nominalizations—verbs used as nouns. So, instead of “He gave an
introduction to the next speaker,” you would write “He introduced the next
speaker.” In the first example sentence, “introduction” is a nominalization.
Chapter 2 has more on nominalizations.
Plain language also aims to make text as easy to read as possible by
•
•
•
•
using white space to make documents more readable;
making document-design elements easy to read;
using headings and well-labelled graphics, if appropriate; and
using easy-to-read lists, tables, and indexes whenever possible.
In the next section we’ll look at examples of how plain language can make communication clearer.
Examples of Plain Language
The government of British Columbia has for several years been rewriting cumbersomely worded and sometimes incomprehensible legislation into language the
average person can understand. The result? The government saves time and money
because civil servants don’t have to field so many calls and letters asking what the
laws and regulations mean.
Here’s how the BC government described this effort:
Why is it important to use plain language? . . . It is more efficient, more effective, and better public relations. Less time is needed to find and understand the
information, less time is needed to deal with people who did not understand
the information, and fewer errors are made.
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Plain language
• Improves compliance, which reduces enforcement costs.
• Expresses thoughts clearly, which reduces the likelihood of a legal challenge.
• Responds to the needs of the audience—people don’t feel their time is unnecessarily wasted.
• Ultimately reduces costs for the public.2
The American government’s website on plain language states the benefits of plain
language as follows:
•
•
•
•
fewer calls from customers (by about 80%),
less time for users to solve a problem (about half the time),
fewer errors by customers (from 40% to 20%), and
higher rates of compliance with government regulations (more than twice as
high).3
For example, a 1992 Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report originally
read like this:
Economic espionage may be defined as the illegal or clandestine acquisition of
critical Canadian economic information and technology by foreign governments or their surrogates.
Here is this sentence rewritten in plain English:
Economic espionage means foreign governments or their agents illegally
obtaining critical Canadian economic and technological secrets.4
Here is another example, from a last will and testament. The first version is in legalese; the second version is in plain language.5 Which is easier to understand?
2 Government of British Columbia, “Key elements of plain language,” http://www.regulatoryreform.
gov.bc.ca/resources/toolkit2.htm. This URL is no longer accessible, but it has been quoted in
this presentation: Minnesota Hospital Association. Plain Language Emergency Overhead Paging:
Implementation Toolkit (St. Paul MN: Minnesota Hospital Association, November 2011), 22.
3 See Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN). “Plain Language: The Bottom Line,”
Plain Language.gov: Improving Communication from the Federal Government to the Public, http://
www.plainlanguage.gov/whyPL/benefits/bottomline.cfm.
4 Plain Language Online Training Program, “Using appropriate words,” PlainTrain, http://www.
plainlanguagenetwork.org/plaintrain/UsingAppropriateWords.html.
5 Adapted slightly from David C. Elliott, “Writing Wills in Plain Language” (paper, Canadian Bar
Association, Alberta Branch, Wills and Trusts Section, June 1990).
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plain language
Version 1
(d) if my spouse should predecease me or should survive me but die within
a period of thirty days after my death:
(i) subject to the rights under the Exemptions Act, to pay out of the capital of
my general estate my legally enforceable debts, funeral and all expenses
in connection with the administration of my estate and the trusts created by my Will charging first the residue, then specific bequests, then
devises. My Trustee shall also pay all estate, income, inheritance and
succession duties or taxes whether imposed by Alberta or Canadian law
or by any other jurisdiction that may be payable in connection with any
property passing or deemed to pass by any governing law on my death or
in connection with any insurance of my life or any gift or benefit given
or created by my Will conferred by me either during my lifetime or by
survivorship or by this Will and whether such duties or taxes be payable
in respect of estates or interests which fall into possession at my death or
at any subsequent time. Such payments shall be made at such time and in
such manner and subject to such security as my Trustee in my Trustee’s
discretion determines.
Version 2
If Mary dies before or within 30 days after I do, I want John to
(a) pay out of the capital of my general estate
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
my legally enforceable debts,
my funeral expenses,
the expenses incurred in administering my estate,
the trusts created by this Will (charging first the residue then specific
bequests, then devises) and
(b) pay any tax or duties which my estate is liable to pay.
Businesses, too, are finding that contracts and documents in plain English save them
time and money and their customers and clients time and hassle. For example, an
insurance company announcement used to read as follows:
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31
We have recently implemented an enhancement to our computer system that
will enable us to provide better service to our valued customers. This has
resulted in a slight delay in the processing of your renewal. The difference you
will notice is in the payment schedule. Your annual policy premium has been
divided over 11 (eleven) months, and as a result your monthly payment will
have increased due to the reduced number of monthly instalments.
Here it is in plain language:
We are a little late in sending your renewal documents because we have made a
change in our computer system in order to provide better service. Your annual
premium will now be divided over 11 months instead of 12, so the monthly
payment will increase slightly.6
The first sentence of the announcement could be even more conQuick Tip
cise: “Your renewal documents are slightly delayed because we
If your reader has
to read what you’ve
have changed our computer system to provide better service.”
written more than once
As you can see, in all cases the plain language version is both
to get the meaning, it’s
not plain language.
more concise and much more readable. All of these elements of
plain language—both the writing and the presentation—should
be part of any business or professional communicator’s toolkit.
How to employ this toolkit is discussed further in Chapter 2 on the seven Cs.
Meanwhile, here’s a rule of thumb for plain language: If your reader has to read
what you’ve written twice to get the meaning, it’s not plain language.
6 Plain Language Association International, “Samples of Plain Language rewrites and organizational
change,” http://www.plainlanguagenetwork.org/Samples.
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plain language
Exercises
1. Look at the example of the will, above. What are the key differences
between the original will and the rewritten version?
2. Rewrite the following paragraphs into plain English.7 Rewritten versions
are available in “Appendix A: Answers,” but don’t peek until you’ve tried
the exercise.
a. When in the process of freeing a vehicle that has been stuck
results in ruts or holes, the operator will fill the rut or hole created
by such activity before removing the vehicle from the immediate
area.
b. After notification of NMFS, this final rule requires all CA/OR DGN
vessel operators to have attended one Skipper Education Workshop after all workshops have been convened by NMFS in September 1997. CA/OR DGN vessel operators are required to attend
Skipper Education Workshops at annual intervals thereafter, unless
that requirement is waived by NMFS. NMFS will provide sufficient
advance notice to vessel operators by mail prior to convening
workshops.
c. Investigators at the contractor will review the facts in your case
and decide the most appropriate course of action. The first step
taken with most Medicare health care providers is to re-educate
them about Medicare regulations and policies. If the practice continues, the contractor may conduct special audits of the provider’s
medical records. Often, the contractor recovers overpayments to
health care providers this way. If there is sufficient evidence to
show that the provider is consistently violating Medicare policies,
the contractor will document the violations and ask the Office
of the Inspector General to prosecute the case. This can lead to
expulsion from the Medicare program, civil monetary penalties,
and imprisonment.
7 These examples come from PlainLanguage.gov. See Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN). “Before-and-After Comparisons,” Plain Language.gov: Improving Communication
from the Federal Government to the Public, http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/
index.cfm.
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Chapter 2
The Seven Cs of Good
Professional Communication
After studying this chapter, you will be able to
• Write clearly,
• Write concisely,
• Write concretely and specifically,
• Write completely (include all necessary information),
• Write with courtesy (including gender neutrality),
• Write coherently,
• Write constructively,
• Identify four types of sentence structure,
• Join sentences correctly for variety, and
• Use punctuation correctly.
Introduction
The eight Cs are a checklist of the qualities of good professional and business communication that you should apply to your writing. They are another, more detailed
way of approaching plain English.
In this chapter we will look at seven of the eight Cs: how to write in a way that is
1. clear,
2. concise,
3. concrete and specific,
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t h e s e v e n c s o f g o o d p r o f e s s i o n a l c o m m u n i c at i o n
4.
5.
6.
7.
complete,
courteous,
coherent, and
constructive.
The eighth C, grammatically correct, is discussed in Chapter 3. One thing to notice
from the start: the Cs overlap. Writing that is clear is also coherent and concrete
and specific, and vice versa. The rest of this chapter describes the seven Cs in detail.1
1. Clear
Another word for “clear” is “transparent.” Good writing is transparent: the audience
never, ever, has to go back over a sentence or paragraph to puzzle out what the writer
meant because the material is always clearly and logically, (i.e., coherently,) presented
(see “Coherent” below). How do we do this? There are six basic ways:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Avoid jargon and technical or obscure words.
Make your writing concrete and specific.
Use active rather than passive verbs.
Avoid long strings of prepositional phrases (“word salads”).
Make pronoun references crystal clear.
Avoid dangling and misplaced modifiers.
I. Avoid Jargon and Technical or Obscure Words
Do you know what “alembic” means? Probably not, and few readers will have this
word in their vocabulary. Yet “alembic” appears in the novel Charlie Johnson in the
Flames, a thriller written for general readers by academic and former Canadian
politician Michael Ignatieff. “Alembic” refers to the tube between two retorts in a
chemistry experiment, although Ignatieff was using the word in a more metaphorical sense.
How about “eponymous,” a word that occasionally appears in writing for the
general public? Is “eponymous” part of most readers’ vocabularies? Likely not. An
eponymous hero is one whose name is also the title of a work, such as, Tom Sawyer.
There was a time when parents and teachers would say, “Look it up in the dictionary” if you asked the meaning of a word. However, as popular culture moves away
1 Much of the material in this chapter is adapted from APT to Do Anything: Workplace Communication, 2014, by Norma Depledge, Claire McKenzie, and Paul MacRae, a course pack prepared for
business-communication classes at the University of Victoria.
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1. clear
35
from print toward visual media, most readers of today have smaller vocabularies
than their better-educated grandparents, and business and professional writers today
must accept this limitation. Most readers don’t want to consult the dictionary every
few paragraphs just because a fancy word (like “alembic” or “eponymous”) makes
the writer appear intelligent.
As for jargon, technical terms, and the like, if you must use them then you must
also define them, unless you are sure your audience is completely familiar with these
terms. Never assume your readers know what an unusual word means—chances
are, they don’t. Keep it simple.
II. Make Your Writing Concrete and Specific
No writing technique is more powerful than being concrete and specific. For example, look at this sentence:
Federal MP George Smith made an exciting speech in Parliament yesterday.
What does this tell us, concretely and specifically, about Smith’s speech? Nothing.
We don’t even know what he was speaking about.
If Smith made an exciting speech, then the writer should be concrete and specific
about what Smith said and what made his speech exciting. How about this:
Slamming his fist on his desk, face red with outrage, MP George Smith accused
the government of covering up allegations that Afghani prisoners of Canadian
forces were abused while in custody.
There’s more on concrete and specific writing in Section IV of this chapter. Meanwhile, note that the more concrete and specific a piece of writing is, the clearer it
is as well.
III. Use Active Verbs
Active verbs have the subject of the sentence doing the action, as in “The rabbit [subject] ate [action] five carrots [object].” Passive verbs have the doer of the action as
the object of the sentence: “Five carrots [subject] were eaten [action] by the rabbit
[object, but doer of the action].”
The “natural” or default order for English sentence structure is doer (subject)
and what he/she/it did (verb), then the object (what the rabbit ate, in this example).
So, the natural order for an English sentence uses an active verb.
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t h e s e v e n c s o f g o o d p r o f e s s i o n a l c o m m u n i c at i o n
Note that the active verb structure also uses fewer words than
Worth Remembering
the passive structure (which includes added words, usually a form
The “natural” order of
an English sentence is
of the verb “to be”). In the carrot example above, the active sentence has five words; the passive sentence has seven. Active verbs
Subject + Verb + Object.
are, therefore, not only clearer than passive verbs but also more
concise.
In karate training, students are told that their fists must be tightly clenched when
they throw a punch; if the fist isn’t tight, the bones of the hand will break. The same
is true of writing: tight, concise writing is punchy, powerful writing. That means
most of your verbs should be active except when
• you want to introduce variety in sentence structure;
• the doer of the action isn’t precisely known (e.g., “Three people were admitted to
hospital yesterday with severe burns”); and
• the doer of the action isn’t as important as the action itself (e.g., “Interest rates
were raised half a point yesterday”).
While we’re on the subject of active verbs, your verbs should
Worth Remembering
Active verbs really
also be active in the sense of colourful, exciting, and appealing
should be “active”!
to the senses whenever possible. “He ate the orange” is correct
as a sentence, but “ate” is a pretty boring verb. How about “He
devoured the orange”? Or “He munched the orange with gusto”? Similarly, “He
drank his glass of cola quickly” is ho-hum. Better: “He gulped down his glass of cola.”
If you can find a more colourful form of a familiar verb, while keeping it active,
your writing will be stronger and more interesting. That said, don’t go so overboard
on description that you end up with the kind of purple prose found in, for example,
Harlequin romances and bad adventure novels.
IV. Avoid Strings of Prepositional Phrases (the “Word Salad”)
Prepositions are short (usually) linking words, such as “in,” “on,” “with,” “over,” and
so on, that begin a prepositional phrase. The following sentence has four prepositional phrases (in italics with prepositions underlined):
The results of the chemistry tests of the students at the University of Toronto
were excellent.
Any sentence with a long string of prepositional phrases could be called a word salad;
the sentence’s meaning gets buried in a jumble of unnecessary words.
The sentence can be rewritten to reduce the number of prepositional phrases
from four to two:
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Student chemistry test results at the University of Toronto were excellent.
That’s 11 words instead of 16 (and therefore also more concise); it’s also easier to
understand (clear). Note that most prepositional phrases can be turned into words
that function as adjectives (by modifying or describing nouns). In the example
above, instead of “the results of the tests,” you can write “the test results.”
However, be careful you don’t create a word-salad string of adjectives (or of nouns
modifying other nouns) instead. If the example sentence had been rewritten as “The
University of Toronto student chemistry test results were excellent,” you’d have a
word salad of modifiers (they are underlined) before the subject (which is “results”).
In general, more than three modifiers before the noun they modify creates an adjectival word salad, and you need to reintroduce a prepositional phrase or two.
Incidentally, not all prepositional phrases can be shortened. For example, “University of Toronto” shouldn’t be reduced to “Toronto University” because “University
of Toronto” is the institution’s proper name.
V. Make Pronoun References Crystal Clear
Look at this sentence: “The manager asked her executive assistant to finish the report
before she left for the day.” To whom does the pronoun “she” refer? Is the report
needed before the manager leaves for the day, or before the executive assistant leaves
for the day? The sentence’s meaning is not clear because the pronoun reference “she”
is not clear.
Pronouns are place-keeper words; they stand in for (the Latin “pro” means “for”)
a noun. As such, they are generic but often very convenient. For example, “it” could
refer to literally any single thing, from a nation to an atom. “They” could refer to
literally any number of things (as long as that number is more than one), from the
three people in a musical trio to all the soldiers in a nation’s army. And so on.
As a writer, you must make sure that, if you use a pronoun as a place keeper, readers never, ever have to puzzle about who or what that pronoun refers to. If in doubt,
repeat the noun: “The manager asked her executive assistant to finish the report
before the assistant left for the day.” The grammar language term for this problem,
by the way, is unclear pronoun reference.
Similarly, what’s wrong with the following sentence? “Each cabinet minister must
be responsible for the security of their briefcase”? This construction is used (or, more
accurately, misused) so often that it’s—almost—considered correct grammar. But
it’s not correct, and here’s why.
The pronoun (“their”) is plural, but the noun the pronoun refers to (“minister”) is singular. In grammar language, this problem is called faulty noun-pronoun
number agreement.
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The rule is that pronouns must always agree in number—singular or plural—
with the nouns they refer to. Why? A sentence must be explicit, leaving no room for
doubt. To avoid doubt, pronoun references must be crystal clear.
What about this fix? “Each cabinet minister must be responsible for the security
of his briefcase.” It’s got the correct pronoun number, but many cabinet ministers
these days are women, so using “he” is not gender neutral (something we’ll discuss
in detail in the “Courteous” section).
To fix the noun-pronoun number-agreement problem, you have three options:
• make the noun plural (“Cabinet ministers must be responsible for the security
of their briefcases”),
• make the pronoun singular (“Each cabinet minister must be responsible for the
security of his or her briefcase”), or
• take out the pronoun entirely (“Briefcase security is every cabinet minister’s
responsibility”).
VI. Avoid Dangling and Misplaced Modifiers
A dangling modifier is a word or phrase that modifies (gives additional information
about) a subject that doesn’t exist in the sentence, as in “Flying into Vancouver, the
mountains were beautiful.” As written, the sentence implies it is the mountains that
are flying into Vancouver!
What the sentence intends to mean is that “we” thought the mountains were
beautiful as we flew into Vancouver, but it’s missing the “we,” the subject who is
“flying into Vancouver.” The fix for a dangling modifier is to add the proper subject,
a noun that could be in an airplane admiring the view: “Flying into Vancouver, we/
Simon/the passengers thought the mountains were beautiful.”
A misplaced modifier is a word or phrase that, because it is poorly placed in the
sentence, appears to modify the wrong noun.
An example: “I have a treaty signed by Napoleon in my office.” Obviously, because
he’s long dead, Napoleon didn’t sign the treaty in the speaker’s office (unless it’s an
office from the early 1800s, when Napoleon was alive, which is unlikely). Therefore,
“in my office” is a misplaced modifier.
To avoid sounding ridiculous, the sentence should read, “In my office, I have a
treaty signed by Napoleon” or “I have in my office a treaty signed by Napoleon.” The
fix for a misplaced modifier is to move it closer to, and preferably next to, the noun
or pronoun it actually modifies.
Dangling and misplaced modifiers are often amusing, and sometimes laugh-outloud funny (“I came across a family of raccoons in my pyjamas”). But in a business
or professional context, a misplaced or dangling modifier may not be so funny, and
it will cost you credibility if you’re trying to be serious.
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Review
Clear writing
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
vi.
avoids jargon and unfamiliar words,
is concrete and specific,
uses active verbs,
avoids strings of prepositional phrases,
makes pronoun references clear, and
avoids dangling and misplaced modifiers.
2. Concise
Conciseness and clarity go together. The more concise a piece of writing, the more
likely it is to be clear. Wordy writing is also less powerful (punchy) than tight writing. The following guidelines (some the same as for clear writing) will make your
prose more concise:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
Use active verbs.
Avoid the verb “to be” whenever possible.
Don’t turn verbs into nouns (“nominalizations”).
Avoid long strings of prepositions (those “word salads” again).
Avoid repetition and redundancy.
I. Use Active Verbs
We discussed using active verbs in the section “1. Clear.” Using active verbs also
helps you avoid “to be” verbs, as discussed in the next section.
II. Avoid the Verb “To Be” Whenever Possible (“isy’s”)
“To be” is a weak verb form, in part because it indicates a state of being rather than
action. In other words, “to be” verbs are static rather than dynamic, passive rather
than active. And they are often unnecessary.
“To be” verbs can be called “isy’s,” and they are found in the passive forms of verbs.
Make the verb active and the isy’s usually disappear. Presto! A more concise sentence.
Look at this sentence:
The meeting is going to be attended by students in the economics faculty next
week.
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This sentence has two “isy’s”: “is” and “to be.” How about this: “Economics students
will attend the meeting next week.” On the conciseness index, that’s eight words
compared to 15, one “isy” (“will”) instead of two.
That said, even active sentences can fall into the “isy” trap, as in “The gardener
is of the opinion that we should prune the roses.” Better: “The gardener thinks we
should prune the roses.” That’s eight words instead of 12. The wordy construction
in this example, by the way, is called a “nominalization”—which means a verb (or
other part of speech) turned into a noun—and how to avoid nominalizations is
discussed in the next section.
“To be” verbs are sometimes called “helping verbs” or “auxiliary verbs” because
they help change the tense of a verb from, say, present to past or present to future,
and so on. For example, “I went” is past tense because I did that at some time in the
past. “I am going” is present progressive tense: I am going right now. “I was going”
is the past progressive tense.
The helping verbs, including “to be” and “to have,” are used to create gradations
in time, so they can’t and shouldn’t be eliminated when they are doing this job. These
verbs should, however, be used only when necessary.
“To be” constructions such as “there is,” “there are,” and “it is” can also almost
always be trimmed. “There are five ducks in the pond” = “Five ducks are in the
pond.” Even better: “Five ducks splashed in the pond” (a more dynamic active verb).
Similarly, “It is easy to jump rope” is less concise and punchy
Worth Remembering
than “Jumping rope is easy.” Sometimes, however, “there is,”
Sentences beginning
“there are,” and “it is” are unavoidable, as in, “There are five ways
with “it is,” “there
is,” and “there are”
to peel an apple.”
can almost always be
That said, if you see the phrase “there is,” “there are,” “it is,” or
rewritten to eliminate
the “isy’s.” Note,
anything similar at the start of a sentence, consider eliminating it
however, that, for
to increase conciseness and clarity.
some audiences, a
writer might use the
And while we’re on “there is” and “there are,” you should be
occasional “isy” to
aware that “there” is never the subject of a sentence. “There” is a
create a conversational
place-keeper word; it is a generic pronoun representing a noun,
style. (See if you can
find a few of these in
and that noun, not “there,” is the subject of the sentence.
this section.)
For example, in “There are five ducks in the pond,” the subject
of the sentence is “ducks,” plural. So the verb after “there” must
be “are,” plural.
If the sentence reads “There is a duck in the pond,” the subject of the sentence is
“duck,” singular, and the verb is also singular.
III. Don’t Turn Verbs into Nouns (Nominalizations)
Nominalizations occur when you use a verb or other part of speech as a noun,
and they have the effect of making your sentences less concise. They often involve
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“isy’s”—the “to be” helping verbs that you usually want to avoid if possible. Nominalizations weaken your writing.
Here’s an example: “The teacher made the comment that the class was sleepy.”
“The comment” is the noun form of the verb “comment.” So why not cut out the
middleman, go for the verb, and have a much more concise and punchy sentence?
“The teacher commented that the class was sleepy.” That’s eight words instead of ten.
Another example: “Morgan asked the managers to make a decision about the
new sales strategy.” More concise: “Morgan asked the managers to decide on a new
sales strategy.”
Incidentally, there’s a nominalization (italicized below) in the first sentence of
this section: “They have the effect of making your sentences less concise.” How about
this: “They make your sentences less concise.” Same meaning, but in six words
instead of ten!
IV. Avoid Long Strings of Prepositional Phrases (“Word Salads”)
We discussed avoiding prepositional word salads in “1. Clear,” Section IV.
V. Avoid Repetition, Redundancy, and GWS
One of the most overused and unnecessary phrases in the English language is “in
order to,” as in “In order to finish this job, we need to work overtime.” How about
the simpler “To finish this job, we need to work overtime”?
The second sentence means exactly the same thing, and you’ve gotten rid of two
words—“in order”—that do no useful work whatsoever.
Other wordy phrases you don’t need are “due to” (= “because”), “the fact that”
(= “because”), and many others. So, “Due to the fact that we were hungry, we ate”
becomes the much more concise “Because we were hungry, we ate.”
Important Exception
Do repeat a word if
Similarly, do you really need to “join together” something?
you need to make a
Doesn’t “join” imply putting together? Can you “return back”
pronoun reference
an unwanted purchase? Or would “return” alone do?
clear. Here’s the
example from “1. Clear,”
If the cat was “coloured brown,” do we need to say “coloured”?
Section V, on unclear
Isn’t “brown” by definition a colour? “The use of photos and
pronoun reference:
“The manager asked
graphics made the website very attractive”—do we need to say
her executive assistant
“The use of”? Why not the more concise “Photos and graphics
to finish the report
before she left for the
made the website very attractive”?
day.” To whom does
A variation of redundancy is “goes without saying,” or GWS.
“she” refer? In this
case, repetition of the
GWS refers to words, phrases, or sentences that are so obvious
noun is necessary:
they don’t need to be said.
“The manager asked
Here is an example of GWS: “Pictures and graphics make the
her executive assistant
to finish the report
website attractive for the viewer.” If the website is attractive, that
before the assistant left
implies a viewer, so you don’t need to say “viewer.”
for the day.”
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Similarly, “In addition, the website is free of jargon, allowing the average reader
to clearly understand the information presented.” If the website is free of jargon, then
it’s GWS that the average reader can clearly understand the information.
So, keep an eye out for words that do no work (i.e., are redundant or repetitious
or GWS) and—unless you are using the longer construction for rhetorical effect—
eliminate them for more concise, punchier writing.
Review
Concise writing
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
uses active verbs,
avoids “to be” and similar constructions,
avoids nominalizations,
avoids long strings of prepositions, and
avoids repetition and redundancy.
3. Concrete and Specific
Concrete words appeal to the senses—they describe things we can see or hear or
feel or smell or touch, thereby painting a vivid mental picture (e.g., “sports car” as
opposed to “transportation”). Specific words are more limited and defined than
more general terms (e.g., “Aston Martin DB5” as opposed to “sports car”). Your
writing should be concrete and specific whenever possible.
For example, “This is a lot of fun!” doesn’t tell us anything—“this” could be a
million activities that are fun. “Riding a zip line in the rainforest is a lot of fun!”
allows us to see the activity. Why? The description is concrete.
And we can make the description more specific, too. Where is the rainforest?
What sort of feeling do we mean by “a lot of fun”? Better: “Riding a zip line in the
Ecuadorian rainforest is exhilarating.”
Another example: “small town” isn’t very specific. The mental picture of a “small
town” in Canada will be different from the mental picture of a “small town” in,
say, China, so “small town” by itself really doesn’t tell us anything useful. “A rural
Prairie town of 2,000 people” is specific—you’ve now defined and limited the term
“small town.” This version is also more concrete—it creates more of a mental picture.
How old is an “old man”? For a 20-year-old, 50 seems “old.” For a 50-year-old,
70 seems “old.” For someone in his 70s, 90 is “old.” The phrase “old man” doesn’t
mean much unless you make it more specific: “a 60-year-old man.”
Concrete and specific go together, and, as the painter Salvador Dali put it, “We are
all hungry and thirsty for concrete images.” If you examine your own reactions to
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writing and speech, you will discover this is true. The communication most of us prefer—that we are “hungry and thirsty for”—is filled with concrete and specific detail.
So “The fire was huge” doesn’t appeal
Worth Thinking About
to the senses as much as “Towers of flame
A celebrated historian, essayist, and orator of
rose 20 metres above the treetops, throwthe nineteenth century, Thomas B. Macaulay
(1800–59) was famous for being concrete
ing off vast billows of smoke and ash.” The
and specific in his written descriptions and
first sentence presents an abstract idea of
speeches. Biographer John Clive gives an
example of Macaulay’s concrete and specific
the fire (huge); the second appeals to the
style, comparing it to a more abstract
senses by being concrete and specific. It crepresentation of the same idea from journalist
ates a vivid mental picture.
Sir James Mackintosh (1765–1832).
In praising the Industrial Revolution,
Another example: “On long car trips
Mackintosh describes this progress as “All the
with my parents, I spent most of my time
marvellous works of industry and science.”
Macaulay makes the same point, but much
reading comics” isn’t as concrete or spemore vividly, using concrete and specific
cific as “On long car trips with my parlanguage:
ents, I spent most of my time with Archie
Our fields are cultivated with a skill unknown
and Jughead.” Written the second way, the
elsewhere, with a skill which has extorted
rich harvests from moors and morasses. Our
reader should get an instant mental picture
houses are filled with conveniences which the
of the comic book characters, not just an
kings of former times might have envied. Our
bridges, our canals, our roads, our modes of
image of a generic comic book.
communication, fill every stranger with wonder.
How about this one: “He boarded the
aircraft.” An “aircraft” could be anything
from a fighter jet to a passenger liner. “He boarded the stretch Boeing 737” gives
a more specific and vivid mental picture of the plane (assuming you know what a
Boeing 737 looks like).
“Nitrogen is the most common gas in Earth’s atmosphere” doesn’t give us as much
information as “At 78 per cent of the air by volume, nitrogen is the most common
gas in the Earth’s atmosphere.”
Here are the first three paragraphs of the novel Damascus Gate by Robert Stone.
Note how Stone uses concrete and specific detail to create a mental picture of the
scene that seems utterly real.
THAT MORNING Lucas was awakened by bells, sounding across the Shoulder of Hinnom from the Church of the Dormition. At first light there had been
a muezzin’s call in Silwan, insisting that prayer was better than sleep. The city
was well supplied with divine services.
He climbed out of bed and went into the kitchen to brew Turkish coffee.
As he stood at the window drinking it, the first train of the day rattled past,
bound over the hills for Tel Aviv. It was a slow, decorous colonial train, five
cars of nearly empty coaches with dusty windows. Its diminishing rhythms
made him aware of his own solitude.
When the train was gone, he saw the old man who lived in one of the Ottoman houses beside the tracks watering a crop of kale in the early morning
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shade. The kale was deep green and fleshy against the limestone rubble from
which it somehow grew. The old man wore a black peaked cap. He had high
cheekbones and a ruddy face like a Slavic peasant’s. The sight of him made
Lucas imagine vast summer fields along which trains ran, long lines of gray
boxcars against a far horizon.2
You probably won’t need this level of concrete and specific detail in your business
writing. But in all your writing you should remember that humans are sensory beings
first, thinking beings second. Most of us are more interested in concrete, specific
description that appeals to the senses than in abstract, intellectualized generalizations that appeal only to the mind.
Review
Concrete and specific writing
i. uses concrete terms that appeal to the senses and
ii. uses terms that are limited and defined.
4. Complete
In writing for the news media, the classic news “lead” paragraph answers most or
all of the following six questions: who, what, where, when, why, and sometimes how
(the “Five Ws plus H”). In other words, the lead paragraph is complete, or almost.
It gives readers all the necessary information about what to expect; they aren’t left
wondering what the piece is about. If they have any unanswered questions (and they
usually do), a complete lead paragraph promises that all questions will be answered
as the reader goes along.
The same is true of professional communication. Writing or speaking that leaves
readers wanting more information is not complete. Communication that isn’t complete wastes everyone’s time because the reader has to ask supplementary questions
and the writer has to answer them. It just makes sense to put all the necessary information in your writing right from the start. Incidentally, complete communication
is also clearer communication.
Suppose your company sends out this memo: “The finance committee will meet
at 10 a.m.” What’s missing here?
Well, for a start, the memo doesn’t say where the committee is meeting, nor is the
date of the meeting clear. Now, in practice, everyone may know the finance committee always meets in Room 232 at 10 a.m. on Tuesdays. But, just to be complete
2 Robert Stone, Damascus Gate (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 3.
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(and therefore absolutely clear), the memo should read “The finance committee will
meet in Room 232 at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 18.”
How about this sentence: “The majority of Dell shareholders voted to merge with
Apple Computer.” What’s the first question the CEO of Dell is going to ask when
she receives this news?—“What kind of majority?” If 90 per cent of shareholders
voted for the merger, that indicates strong support. If only 51 per cent voted for the
merger, then the shareholders are badly split on this move. The original sentence is
not complete—it doesn’t give all the information that the CEO of Dell would want.
Or how about this sentence: “Some of our delivery trucks have faulty brake mechanisms.” The first question the boss would ask is, “How many of the trucks?” One
or two? Half the fleet of 20 trucks? The missing detail hides the difference between
a minor inconvenience for the company and a serious delivery problem.
So, in all of your communication, whether professional or not, whether written
(letters, emails, reports) or spoken, aim to include all the necessary information. In
other words, be complete.
Review
Complete writing answers all of the six basic questions:
i. Who?
ii. What?
iii. Where?
iv. When?
v. Why?
vi. How?
5. Courteous
Courteous communication, as one of the seven Cs, is about being polite in the
social sense (“yes, Sir,” “thank you very much,” that sort of thing). But courteous
in the context of business and professional writing is much more than that. Writing
courteously means following these guidelines:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
Be gender neutral.
Put the audience first (“you” rather than “we”).
Be tactful.
Follow the traditional forms of courtesy.
Use a reader-friendly format.
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Let’s look at these five in detail.
I. Be Gender Neutral
Good writing today is gender neutral, but even fairly recently that wasn’t always the
case. In the not-so-distant past, university anthropology courses were sometimes
called “The Study of Man” or “The Study of Mankind.” Similarly, a professionalcommunications textbook used to be called Technically Write: Communication for
the Technical Man. The text is now entitled Technically Write, period.
The person who ran a meeting used to be the “chairman”; today that will usually
be written as “chair” or “chairperson.” Of course, if the gender of the chairperson is
known, then “chairman” or “chairwoman” is acceptable. But “chair” or the slightly
more awkward “chairperson” is now preferred in almost all cases as the most genderneutral title.
In other words, given that half of “mankind” is female, communicators must be
courteous and include both genders in their writing and speech.
Gender neutrality creates problems for writers in some situations:
“A good military officer never forgets his duty to the nation.”
Until a few decades ago, military officers (and most other professionals) were almost invariably male. Today, in this more enlightened age, military officers, cabinet ministers, company officers,
postal workers, police officers, doctors, nurses, firefighters, and
even heavy-construction workers can be either male or female.
Therefore—and just to repeat what we studied in being clear—
you are better to rewrite the military duty sentence (and all others
of its kind) in one of three ways:
Grammar Note
Although the usage
is increasingly being
accepted, do not use
a plural pronoun to
refer to a singular
noun, as in “A good
lawyer [singular] never
forgets their [plural]
briefcase.” See the “1.
Clear” section for more
about this common
grammatical error.
1. Use “his or her”: “A good officer never forgets his or her duty to the nation.”
However, this solution often sounds awkward (it certainly does in this
example).
2. Make the singular noun plural: “Good officers never forget their duty to the
nation.” In most cases, this solution is best.
3. Take the gender reference out entirely: “An officer never forgets the importance of duty to the nation.”
Another acceptable way to get gender balance without the awkward “he or she” or
“he/she” construction (“he/she” is not yet fully accepted in formal writing but is
becoming increasingly common) is to alternate “she” and “he” in your text, as you
will sometimes find in this book.
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II. Put the Audience First—“You” not “We”
Courteous, in the business-communication sense, also means focusing all of your
attention on the client or customer. To say, “We will send your shipment of pencils to
arrive on November 25” puts the emphasis on “we,” the company’s agents, rather
than the customer. A “you” or customer-centred letter would read: “You will receive
your shipment of pencils on November 25.”
Another example: “We have scheduled your appointment for August 3 at 2 p.m.”
This is a more “you”-centred sentence: “Your appointment is scheduled for August 3
at 2 p.m.” “You did fine work today” is more “you” oriented than “We really appreciate the fine work you did today.”
Whenever possible (and it often isn’t possible, of course, but when it is), keep
the “we” out of your professional communication and focus on “you”—the client,
customer, or audience.
That said, there are times when you want to put the emphasis on “we” rather
than “you.”
Here’s a “you” message that is not courteous: “You forgot to include your cheque
with your order, so we can’t send you the merchandise.” It suggests blame and is
bound to get the customer’s back up. In this case, you should use the “we” form: “We
will be happy to send the merchandise when we receive your cheque.”
It’s the same message—we didn’t get your cheque—but stated in a more courteous, positive, and tactful way, without implying or outright stating the customer did
something wrong. It’s possible the customer did sent the cheque! Accounting may
have lost it, or perhaps the postal system delivered the letter to the wrong address.
So to avoid blaming or angering the client, focus the message on “we” rather than
“you.” In most other cases, put the other person (“you”) first.
III. Be Tactful
Part of putting the audience first is being tactful, which means considering the other
person’s feelings. If you have a negative message to deliver, find the most courteous
and tactful way of expressing it.
We do this all the time in social life. “How do you like my new hat?” Instead of “It
makes you look like a drunken moose,” you say, “Um, it’s lovely, although perhaps
a more neutral colour would better complement your skin tone.”
Instead of criticizing an employee directly—“You were incredibly rude to that
customer”—the supervisor might shift the focus to the company and its policies:
“We try to be courteous to even the most difficult customer.” In this case, the boss
should use the “we” approach to avoid openly suggesting blame.
Have you ever thanked a sales person and been told, “No problem!” The implication here is that you could have been a problem—which, when you think about it,
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isn’t very tactful or polite. A more courteous and tactful response is a simple “You’re
very welcome” or “It was a pleasure serving you.”
IV. Follow the Traditional Forms of Courtesy
Courteous also, of course, means courteous in the traditionally accepted sense of
polite and respectful, avoiding the use of coarse language and the like. For example,
business letters invariably begin “Dear Sir” or “Dear Ms. Okimora” or something
similar, and they end with “Yours sincerely” or “Yours truly” or something similar.
These traditional forms of greeting and closing are part of courtesy in professional
communication. Chapter 5 on document design discusses the traditional forms of
courtesy used in a business letter.
V. Make Formats Reader Friendly
A major part of being courteous is writing and speaking clearly, coherently, and
concisely—to do so is reader friendly, i.e., courteous. In other words, all of the seven
Cs are courteous because they make communication clear, more concise, and so on
and therefore easier to read.
It is also courteous, in the reader-friendly sense, to format documents so they
are easy to read and understand. You’ll find details on creating reader-friendly, and
therefore courteous, documents in Chapter 5.
These five types of courtesy might seem like small things, but they add up and
make it more likely that your customer or client or audience will respond positively
to your communication.
Review
Courteous writing
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
is gender neutral,
is “you” or audience centred,
is tactful,
follows the traditional forms of courtesy, and
is reader friendly.
6. Coherent
Coherent writing is writing that hangs together—the order of the words and the
argument make logical sense, and each sentence and paragraph flows easily into the
next. How can you make your writing coherent? Follow these guidelines:
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6. coherent
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I. Construct paragraphs carefully about one topic.
II. Write sentences with one main idea.
III. Use transitional words to unite sentences and paragraphs into a logical
and coherent whole.
IV. Be consistent in formatting numbers.
V. Begin lists with the same grammatical construction.
I. Construct Paragraphs Carefully
In all good writing, paragraphs develop one topic, and this topic is clearly signalled
by a topic sentence.
Imagine a piece of writing as a train and each paragraph as a boxcar on the train.
Boxcars are labelled with what’s inside—grain, oil, coal, chemicals, and so on—so
that oil and grain, say, aren’t put into the same boxcar. Similarly, in business and
professional writing, you don’t want to put two key ideas in the same paragraph. The
topic sentence, usually the first sentence, is the label stating what the paragraph is
about. For example, the first sentence of this paragraph is the topic sentence for the
paragraph; the topic is that paragraphs are like labelled boxcars.
As mentioned in Chapter 1, in academic writing, paragraphs tend to be long—
perhaps ten sentences or even more. There’s a topic sentence with the main idea
of the paragraph, but there can be many supporting subtopics and examples in an
academic paragraph.
In business writing, if you’ve got a paragraph like that—long, with lots of ideas
and examples—then you should break that long paragraph down into two or more
shorter paragraphs. The topic sentence for the first, shortened paragraph will serve
as the topic sentence for the shorter, following paragraphs as well.
Incidentally, the above paragraph and this one were originally part of a single
paragraph with one topic: breaking up long paragraphs into shorter paragraphs.
II. Write Sentences that Express One Main Idea
Just as paragraphs develop one topic, signalled by the topic sentence, so business
sentences also present one idea within that topic—they don’t veer off into tangled
webs of related ideas as academic sentences sometimes do.
This doesn’t mean that business sentences are all short, as in “I went for a walk
on the beach. I saw a dog. The dog was black and white. It was chasing sticks in the
water.” A series of short, simple sentences like this would be incredibly boring. Sentence variety is important (see Chapter 3 for ways to create sentence variety). But
within that variety, each sentence develops one main idea, not two or three.
Here’s a sentence that has too many ideas:
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t h e s e v e n c s o f g o o d p r o f e s s i o n a l c o m m u n i c at i o n
Miriam Parker was planning to write about her recent trip to Beijing, where
she saw many examples of Chinese painting through the centuries, examples
that, she felt, reflected the changing social conditions in China over time.
This sentence would be acceptable in academic writing, but there are two ideas here:
1. Ms. Parker planning to write about her trip to Beijing to look at Chinese art and
2. her observations about how Chinese art reflected historical periods in China.
For business-writing purposes, we should break the longer sentence into two
sentences, reflecting two ideas:
Miriam Parker was planning to write about her recent trip
to Beijing, where she saw many examples of Chinese painting
through the centuries. These paintings, she felt, reflected the
changing social conditions in China over time.
Worth Considering
Give your sentences
the “breath” test. If
you can’t read the
sentence in one breath,
it’s too long.
In other words, for business and professional writing, aim for...
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