Writing Business Messages
« Previous EntriesAt Hallmark Cards: The Writer’s Wall of Shame
Monday, August 11th, 2008There exists a place—a solemn hall of shame, of sorts—where the profane, snide, and otherwise inappropriate greetings cards you always wished for go to die. There they hang in all their unread glory, rendered incapable of wrecking their sardonic brand of havoc on the generally unsuspecting population. For employees at Hallmark’s Shoebox division who make their […]
Guide to Grammar and Writing
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008An extensive guide to grammar and writing with a wealth of materials to use and enjoy.
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Mind Map Your Business Writing
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008Stuck writing that presentation or report? Maybe you’re procrastinating and feeling guilty about it. Here’s a tip: use a mind map. Mind maps use both your left brain logical side and your right brain creative side. As you doodle your map, you’ll get new ideas and will make new connections. Before you know it […]
Help With Your Holiday Writing
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008With the holiday season upon us and the end of 2007 approaching, I want to share some resources and templates for your holiday business writing. Here are past blog entries that people have found helpful:
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Best Practices for Bullet Points
Monday, July 7th, 2008The days of long sentences in long paragraphs are long gone. Our readers need to retrieve information fast. An excellent way to help them do this is to lay out information in bulleted lists.
Definition: A "bullet point" is an item introduced by a dot ("bullet") or a similar icon, like this:
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Fighting the Non-Sexist Language Battle
Thursday, June 26th, 2008Sexist language consists of various words and terms that foster stereotypes of social roles based on gender; chairman and workman’s compensation are two examples.
Status quo debaters argue that the English language has struggled along fine with the language as it is, so why should we change now? Don’t we have better […]
The Magic Number of George Miller
Monday, June 16th, 2008George Miller wrote a now famous paper in 1956:
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information, George A. Miller (1956), Harvard University, First published in Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
Technical writers, business writers, instructional designers and others have elevated the central concept to a truism of writing, […]
How You Can Write An Effective Questionnaire
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008Writing an effective questionnaire is not a task for novices. At the very least, it requires an understanding of four basic issues: 1. Considering the differences between a questionnaire that respondents fill out themselves and one that a professional interviewer administers 2. Knowing what questions should be asked early on in the questionnaire, in the […]
Make Your Internal Communications Memorable with Strategic Storytelling
Thursday, May 29th, 2008 Jean-Paul Sartre said, “We understand everything in human life through stories.” I believe that is true. We comprehend better when a message is related in story form, and we also feel a stronger rapport with the person telling the story. Why not use these memorable stories in your internal communications?
When you cram too […]
Advocating Plain Language: Thom Haller Discusses the Need for Clarity
Monday, May 26th, 2008Plain language is a clear, concise, and straightforward presentation of information. It is professional content structured to eliminate ambiguity and confusion in technical, government, and legal documents.
Plain language allows readers to fully comprehend complex regulations, practices, and instructions by requiring the language of bureaucracy to reflect the language of everyday speech.
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