Clear – Be clear in purpose and in outcome. Your audience needs to be able to receive the message quickly and with complete understanding. Concise…
People understand the costs of doing business in terms of equipment, staff, property and taxes. But what about the cost of communication? All activities related to written…
Examining organizational results is often the toughest, but also the most important, evaluation for your organization. We don’t spend time and money on training because it sounds…
Working remotely has many of us sending off dozens of emails a day to communicate with colleagues, customers and everyone in between. Due to the high volume, it can be easy to hit…
Nothing is more discouraging than logging out of a meeting wondering what was actually accomplished—and feeling like it was a waste of valuable work time. It can be frustrating…
How you format a document is just as important as the words you put on your page. Documents that are visually appealing are compelling and easier to read than poorly formatted…
Do you think much about using transition in your writing? It’s one of many practices that separate good writing from mediocre writing. Transition words and phrases link your…
Do employees in your organization struggle with using consistent abbreviations, spellings and capitalizations? Maybe you write Internet with a capital I but your…
Not all writers are numbers people, and not all numbers people are writers. But they’re all readers. That’s why it’s crucial to communicate numbers and data in a way that everyone…
We have a tendency to focus on our own perspectives when completing tasks, including writing our business documents. But the best documents (the ones that capture the most…
Often at the end of a workshop, you’ll be asked to complete an evaluation sheet. These sheets tend to only focus on whether you found the training favorable or engaging. However,…
In writing, we often provide additional information that is not needed in the sentence for its meaning to be clear to the reader. That additional information is call a non-…
Many of our grammar errors are due to the errors we make when we use a structure in speech. However, if we want to write correctly, we need to not only identify those…
To ensure correctness in your writing, pencil editing is one of the best things you can do. Pencil editing is a proofreading technique. To do it, touch and speak each word…
Finally, I’ve found a concrete example showing why we should avoid the use of “shall” in writing. (yes, even legal writing) While attending the PLAIN conference, I had the…
