Writing for Business Professionals
While less ground-breaking, my writing class has been just as educational as my technologies class. Especially since each item we cover is relevant to my day-to-day work.
Each week, we start the class by discussing the business writing we've experienced at work over the past week - people will complain about long business emails, bad cover letters, and rambling meeting summaries.
This past week, our instructor gave us a series of 5 subject lines and asked us to make them more eye-catching, so that the reader would have more incentive to read on. The examples she provided weren't so bad, I thought, and she should have given us ones that needed more obvious help. But then I realized that in most cases, the subjects you see at work will never really be that bad - but you still need to make them better. It was a more realistic exercise.
It was an interesting exercise, and most people came up with Boston Herald-type subjects which were funny and eye-catching. However, they might have been a little TOO entertaining, prompting us to discuss the need to know the particular audience that is going to receive the email you are sending. If it's in a professional setting, an eye-catching email might be regarded as SPAM and deleted right away. Or it might simply look unprofessional.
As with almost any type of communication out there - it depends on your audience.
We've been reading two books for this course:
Effective Business Writing by Maryann Pietrowski
On Writing: A Process Reader by Wendy Bishop
The two books are like night and day - one is a short and sweet guide to business writing (itself a model for business communication), while the other is a longer and more complex discussion of the many different types of creative writing, with short and long stories for further reading. I am enjoying both books, but the creative book is really surprising me by how much I am enjoying it. I've never really studied creative writing, and I'm finding this feeds a desire I had to study the subject.
The class was split about the creative book - some people loved it like I did, while others found it a complete waste of time. But after discussion, we generally agreed that we could use more creative practices and innovations in business writing, and in business in general. Every chapter, whether relevant or not, gives you another tool for your writing toolbox.
Each week, we start the class by discussing the business writing we've experienced at work over the past week - people will complain about long business emails, bad cover letters, and rambling meeting summaries.
This past week, our instructor gave us a series of 5 subject lines and asked us to make them more eye-catching, so that the reader would have more incentive to read on. The examples she provided weren't so bad, I thought, and she should have given us ones that needed more obvious help. But then I realized that in most cases, the subjects you see at work will never really be that bad - but you still need to make them better. It was a more realistic exercise.
It was an interesting exercise, and most people came up with Boston Herald-type subjects which were funny and eye-catching. However, they might have been a little TOO entertaining, prompting us to discuss the need to know the particular audience that is going to receive the email you are sending. If it's in a professional setting, an eye-catching email might be regarded as SPAM and deleted right away. Or it might simply look unprofessional.
As with almost any type of communication out there - it depends on your audience.
We've been reading two books for this course:
Effective Business Writing by Maryann Pietrowski
On Writing: A Process Reader by Wendy Bishop
The two books are like night and day - one is a short and sweet guide to business writing (itself a model for business communication), while the other is a longer and more complex discussion of the many different types of creative writing, with short and long stories for further reading. I am enjoying both books, but the creative book is really surprising me by how much I am enjoying it. I've never really studied creative writing, and I'm finding this feeds a desire I had to study the subject.
The class was split about the creative book - some people loved it like I did, while others found it a complete waste of time. But after discussion, we generally agreed that we could use more creative practices and innovations in business writing, and in business in general. Every chapter, whether relevant or not, gives you another tool for your writing toolbox.
posted by Allison at 10:40 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home