Business Communication Today, 15th Ed.
Chapter 5. Writing Business Messages
"People don’t have the time or the attention span to read any more words than necessary.
Helen Coster (photo, left) presents "10 Tips for Better Business Writing.
"A great piece of writing is like a great piece of art.
"Back when I was a journalist," writes Victor Lipman (photo, left), "an old editor of mine had a great saying he used to tell his writers: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long letter.
"In writing a speech, you have two objectives: Making a good impression and leaving your audience with two or three takeaways.
"There is a lot to like in Mary Norris’s Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.
"I asked everyone around me, people who’d been working longer than I had, 'Why do we write this way?
"There’s real power in sending a handwritten note to a customer: a card to thank a customer for subscribing, to celebrate with a customer for completing her first project with you, and so forth.
We check in with Ken Makovsky (photo, left), contributor at Forbes.
Check out our gallery at Pinterest.
"Many companies' help lines are usually crowded with customers trying to find an answer for their questions.
"The slideshow not only acknowledges the long-lasting nature of digital information, but also suggests ways that employees can avoid incriminating themselves and GM by not using words like "catastrophic" and "spontaneous combustion" when talking about GM products.
Christina Desmarais of Inc.
Aja Frost and TheMuse.
"Amit Agarwal is the founder of Digital Inspiration, a popular tech & how-to website since 2004.
"Educators are often admonished to design work that 'leaves the classroom.
"For word nerds everywhere (this author included) the yearly additions to the Associated Press Stylebook are always met with great intrigue.
Jessica Stillman shares a suggestion from author Gretchen Rubin (photo, left).
"There are many different ways of telling a story, but everything starts with an idea.
Is it "first-come, first-serve," or "first-come, first-served?
Watch the video at BusinessInsider.
"I went out with a guy based on his use of dashes once.
Farhad Manjoo (photo, left) doesn't like it when people put two spaces after a period.