Writing well is one of the most important skills you can develop to be successful in the business world. Over seventy companies and thirty thousand students--from professional writers to new employees to non-native English speakers to seasoned executives--have used the techniques in Business Writing to power their ability to communicate and launch their ideas. This course will teach you how to apply the top ten principles of good business writing to your work, how to deploy simple tools to dramatically improve your writing, and how to execute organization, structure, and revision to communicate more masterfully than ever. From the very first lesson, you'll be able to apply your new learning immediately to your work and improve your writing today.
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Your ideas are powerful. Learn how to deliver them with the clarity and impact they deserve.
"Thank you for giving me the knowledge I need in life. [Business Writing] was helpful, life changing, and has made a huge impact in my writing." -- Message from a Business Writing student
The principles you'll 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.
Course 1 of 4 in the Effective Communication: Writing, Design, and Presentation Specialization
Syllabus
WEEK 1
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!
WEEK 2
The Formula for Writing Success
Did you know that the most important element of good writing isn't good writing? It's good organization. If you haven't organized your documents for maximum effectiveness, you've wasted an opportunity to present your ideas--and yourself--with power. This module teaches you the universal organizational formula that allows you to optimize your business writing. You'll understand how the principles you learned in Module One build to this formula, and you'll see how a scaffold gets created and applied to a real business document. By the end of this module, you'll be able to wield your organizational knowledge in service of your ideas and personal brand, and you'll have built the foundation that allows you to generate powerful sentences in Module Three.
WEEK 3
Crafting Powerful Writing
In the first lesson of Module Three, we'll apply our writing principles and our scaffold to creating an actual memo. You'll see, step-by-step, how the scaffold guides the writing process to make it easier to create a forceful business document. You'll understand how to apply the scaffold to guide sentence and paragraph creation, and you'll have a chance to test and reinforce your new skills. The second lesson covers common grammatical errors that sap many writers' professional brands. Short videos explain each error, why each hurts your clarity, and how to correct your writing--even if you don't remember the grammar rule. You'll understand why these changes are important to your goal of Effective Communication and why it's important to eliminate these common missteps from your own writing.
WEEK 4
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.
