Don't Sound Smart; Be Smart

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Del curso dictado por University of Colorado Boulder

Business Writing

603 calificaciones

University of Colorado Boulder

Business Writing

603 calificaciones

Curso 1 de 4 en SpecializationEffective Communication: Writing, Design, and Presentation

Writing well is one of the most important skills you can learn for success in the business world. Knowing how to write well allows you to deliver your ideas with the power they deserve. Good writing also conveys a sense of your professional excellence to the world around you. In this course, you'll master the simple, effective skills that drive all successful business writing. You'll create impactful documents that not only showcase your ideas, but showcase your own professionalism to your audience. The principles you learn in this course enable you to become a great business writer. They also provide the foundation for moving into Graphic Design and Successful Presentation, so that you can unleash your best professional self whenever--and however--you present your ideas in the workplace.

De la lección

Building Great Business Writing

The first lesson in this module introduces the Effective Communication specialization, the capstone project, and the Business Writing course. You'll meet the writing instructor, Dr. Quentin McAndrew, and her counterparts Dave Underwood and Professor William Kuskin, who teach Graphic Design and Successful Presentation. Dave and William join Quentin to offer insights into how writing, design, and presentation relate to a process of continuous personal branding that we call Effective Communication. In this module, you'll discover the simple principles that inform all great business writing and that serve as the foundation of this course. These lessons set the stage for the deeper exploration and specific techniques that follow, not just in Business Writing, but in Graphic Design and Successful Presentation as well. Let's get started!

Be the Windowpane3:01

Waste No Time2:55

Don't Sound Smart; Be Smart4:25

Own Your Ideas3:46

Everyone Needs an Editor; or, the Story of My Failure5:04

Conoce a los instructores

Dr. Quentin McAndrew
Instructor
Department of English, University of Colorado Boulder

I want to build on the window pane and waste no time principles and

add to the box of your writing tools to introduce the concept of voice.

Crafting your writing voice breaks down into two simple ideas.

One, don't sound smart, be smart, which we'll cover in this video.

And, two, own your ideas, which we'll cover in the next video.

When we talk about voice, we're talking about tone.

I want to address tone early in our course, because many of you have already

heard about it from other writing classes that you may have taken.

I want to address it here, before we get too far,

because I want to correct some common perceptions about tone.

The main way that writing teachers deal with tone is to talk about audience,

because the two go hand in hand.

You need to have the appropriate tone for the audience you want to reach.

That concept's easy.

It makes sense.

The problem that I have is that a lot of writing teachers speak

as if you have a lot of different audiences.

This implies, then, that you need to understand

each kind of audience that you're writing to before you can actually start writing.

That sounds like a lot of work.

So my advice is, let's not do it.

Why?

Because we already know our audience and there's only one of them.

They're busy.

They have no time.

The want a reading experience that's efficient and doesn't waste their time.

Once we know that, we can achieve a proper tone with the same techniques,

no matter what kind of document we're writing.

When we understand that our motivation is always clarity and

always to waste no time, then we also understand that our goal with

our tone isn't to sound smart, it's to be smart.

These are two completely different concepts, and when a writer writes to

sound smart, they fail, because complexity detracts from your goal.

Let me say that again.

Complexity detracts from your goal.

Complexity is like a maze on a page.

You don't want your audience to feel like they're trapped in an Escher drawing when

they read your writing.

It takes more time and effort to read a complex sentence.

In fact, you don't read a complex sentence,

you decipher it, you have to work at it, and

like a dirty window pane, complex writing hides your ideas from view.

Remember, we want our writing to be transparent, we want our

readers to see through the words on the page without even thinking about them.

To put it in another way, we don't want our readers to have to do any extra work.

Choosing sentence structure or fancy vocabulary so

that you sound smart actually does just the opposite.

Your document becomes about your writing instead of about your ideas.

Take this sentence, for example.

In order to enhance our investment in maximizing our

systems without the encumbrance of onerous costs,

it's incumbent upon us to maximize our profitability.

[LAUGH] That's someone trying to sound smart, but do they?

No, they don't.

And I have to tell you something.

I get really annoyed when I have to read writing like this.

Why?

Because I know the writer did not take any time to make my experience better.

In fact, their writing is all about them.

It's not about me, their audience.

No promotion for that guy.

Instead of that maze of words, isn't it much better to say

in order to invest in new systems, we need to increase our profitability.

[LAUGH] Of course it is.

So just be smart.

Say what you mean, simply and directly.

And be the authority when you write.

>> It's exactly the same in graphic design.

In my course, we'll talk about the importance of designing with authority and

confidence, so that we're not simply adding things to the page, or

to our designs to make them look finished.

We know when to stop.

That's what good design is all about.

It's exactly the same as in writing.

[SOUND] >> In modules three and four,

we'll learn that good writers use the rules of grammar and

good organization to write with simplicity that lets their ideas really shine.

For the time being, just remember, you don't want to write to sound smart.

Keep things easy for your reader.

Present your ideas with simplicity and clarity, and just be smart.

You are smart, be who you are.

That's who your reader wants to see, and

that's what you want to showcase when you write.

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