Effective Business Writing
Course Description Overview
Though businesses increasingly rely on technology, technological skills alone do not guarantee success in the workplace. You must still develop your ideas, express them clearly, and persuade others of their viability. This course offers effective strategies to sharpen your writing skills by structuring your ideas logically, exercising diplomacy in letters and reports, and shaping your arguments.
In contemporary business environments, information overload makes it necessary for you to communicate clearly and concisely. Trying to make sense of a disorganized email message can be frustrating given the number of emails you have to answer daily. By analyzing your audience, organizing your writing, and employing effective persuasive techniques, your writing will make an impact.
In this course, you will organize and write effective business documents.
You will:
- Identify techniques to write effective business communication.
- Write electronic communication that is clear, concise, and appropriate in a business context.
- Apply the writing principles you have studied to specific business situations and learn to address the needs of a particular audience.
- Use your writing and diplomatic skills to create formal business letters.
- Use basic persuasive strategies that will allow you to plan and deliver effective proposals.
To ensure your success, we recommend you have some level of work experience in any of a variety of organizational settings, and general end-user computer and Internet skills. You may wish to take the following United States Career Campus courses or have equivalent knowledge:
- Grammar Essentials (Second Edition)
- Microsoft® Office Word 2016: Part 1 (Desktop/Office 365™)
- Microsoft® Office Outlook® 2016: Part 1 (Desktop/Office 365™)
- Microsoft® Windows®10
- Microsoft® Office®16
- Any PDF reader
For this course, you will need one computer for each student and one for the instructor. Each computer will need the following minimum hardware configurations:
- 1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
- 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
- 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
- CD-ROM drive (if installing any software from a CD-ROM)
- Keyboard and mouse (or other pointing device)
- 1,024 x 768 resolution monitor recommended
- Network cards and cabling for local network access
- Internet access (contact your local network administrator)
- Printer (optional) or an installed printer driver
- Projection system to display the instructor's computer screen
Lesson 1: Writing Effective Business Communication
Topic A: Write Strong Sentences
Topic B: Organize Your Content
Topic C: Analyze Your Audience
Lesson 2: Writing Email and Other Electronic Communication
Topic A: Write an Email
Topic B: Write Instant Messages and Text Messages
Lesson 3: Writing Common Business Documents
Topic A: Write an Internal Announcement
Topic B: Write a Routine Request
Topic C: Write a Response to Routine Requests
Topic D: Write a Complaint
Topic E: Write a Positive Response to Customer Complaints
Topic F: Write Bad-News Messages
Lesson 4: Writing a Business Letter
Topic A: Write a Business Letter
Topic B: Write a Thank-You Letter
Lesson 5: Writing Business Proposals
Topic A: Persuade Your Audience
Topic B: Write an Executive Summary
Topic C: Use Visuals