Keep It Simple

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Del curso dictado por University of Colorado Boulder

Business Writing

610 calificaciones

University of Colorado Boulder

Business Writing

610 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

Activate Your Voice!

So, you've started to write a document . . . Module Four takes you beyond the scaffold and good grammar to provide you with specific tips that will elevate your language, infuse your writing with clarity, and amp up your ability to communicate your ideas effectively. Every lesson in this module is based on the principles you learned in Module One, and they form a checklist of techniques that you can apply to any business document to insure your ideas shine on the page. Short videos on emails and longer documents give you simple techniques for applying the lessons of this course to a broad range of your work.

Writing IS Revision3:18

Check Your Scaffold1:18

Keep It Simple4:43

Brevity is the Soul of Wit5:06

Dave on How Logo Design Reflects Brevity and Clarity5:22

Always be Specific; Avoid Generalities and Jargon5:04

Conoce a los instructores

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

When you've organized your document and feel that your scaffold is strong,

then you need to go through your document sentence by sentence.

First ask yourself, have I said exactly what I mean to say?

Sometimes when we translate an idea from our mind to the page,

we lose a little bit of our clarity,

because we have context within our heads that our readers can't see.

So you have to put yourself in your reader's shoes and

really ask, if I'm coming to this document without the background that I have,

does this make sense?

Put yourself in your reader's shoes to always check for simplicity and clarity.

Let's look at an example of what I mean.

The sentence, while analyzing the data,

the market plan emerged, might make sense from the writer's perspective.

If you'd written it, you might be taking about how you're team's data analysis fed

the marketing plan.

But a new reader who doesn't have that context isn't going to

understand what you're saying.

They don't know who was doing the analyzing.

In fact, the sentence technically says that the marketing plan emerged while it

analyzed the data.

The sentence has a misplaced modifier and

a missing subject, as you've probably recognized.

You'd need to rewrite this for clarity.

The point I want to make in this video, however, is that you don't need to

understand grammatical niceties, if you can put yourself in your reader's shoes.

By reading through your reader's eyes,

you can understand that you actually haven't written what you mean.

And then you can correct it.

Instead of writing while analyzing the data, the market plan emerged,

you'd be much better off with, our team's analysis led to the marketing plan.

That tells your reader exactly what they need to know.

It gives them the context that you have.

Once you've asked yourself if you said exactly what you want to say,

then you want to go back through and read your sentence and

say, have I expressed myself as simply and straightforwardly as I can?

In a later lesson we'll cover generalities and

jargon which can definitely hurt your clarity.

But for now I don't want you necessarily to analyze the parts of speech.

I just want you to ask yourself if you said things

as straightforwardly as you possible can.

Let's take this sentence as an example.

Dave's band specializes in events of local scale that make use of extremely friendly

environments and blues and gospel influence.

Here's the band we're talking about.

I can just look at this sentence and know I need to make it easier to read.

I'm going to start by cutting and rearranging words.

Instead of, in events of local scale, can't I just say, in local events?

Then, blues and gospel influence, they really don't make sense where they are.

They should describe Dave's band.

So I'm going to cut influence, and move blues and gospel in front of band.

Our current version of the sentence is, Dave's blues and gospel band

specializes in local events that make use of extremely friendly environments.

This is better, but still clunky.

In particular, I'm thinking that extremely friendly environments

can be replaced by casual venues.

Couldn't I just cut events that make use of and just say, local casual venues.

It says the same thing with fewer words, and it's more clear.

Finally, specializes, that seems wrong for a band.

Shouldn't I say plays, isn't that simpler and more clear?

Then I can also cut in.

And what about blues and gospel?

Dave might disagree, but I think just blues will do.

Then, maybe I want to stress that the band is successful.

So I might want to add popular.

All right, here's our first sentence.

And then here's our rewrite.

I've cut my word count from 20 to 8 words, and I've still gotten my point across and

still represented the band.

Think about undertaking that process for a memo that's say 500 words long.

You might cut it by as much as a half.

Think about how much more impactful and easy to read your final document will be.

Revising for simplicity is such a useful editing tool.

It helps you improve your writing without your having to know a single grammatical

rule or really anything about syntax.

It's a powerful technique, but it does take practice.

The quiz that follows will help you get to work on this so

that you can apply it to your writing right away.

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