Writing Workshops - Building Blocks
Effective business writing relies upon four building blocks. Each new block adds value to the writing-quality chain and increases the likelihood that your communications will produce the results you want.
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I describe each block below and show how my workshops align with these blocks. You can use this information to help select the workshop that best meets your needs.
Block 1: Grammar and Punctuation
In the first block, we start with grammar and proper punctuation: the foundation of effective business communication. If business writers make basic grammar mistakes, who will take their recommendations seriously? By association, readers will question their thinking and discount their ideas—no matter how good these ideas are.
Consequently, good business writers use proper grammar and punctuate their sentences correctly.
Block 2: Style
The second block deals with style: the ability to express oneself clearly in accordance with audience expectations. But if writers use abstract, formal language; unnecessary passive voice; weak verbs; long sentences; unnecessary words; and other style shortcomings, readers will have difficulty following their thoughts.
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In this second block, writers therefore apply essential style tips that help make their communications easy to understand—and easy to act upon.
Block 3: Organization, structure, and logic
The third block deals with understanding one's audiences and structuring messages to meet their needs. Here writers select content, prioritize information, organize communications, build persuasive arguments, and apply proper layouts. In essence, at this stage writers are concerned with strategies, not tactics.
No matter how good their grammar or style, if writers misread their audiences or fail to organize information properly, their results will suffer.
Block 4: Application
In the fourth and final block, writers tailor their prose to fit the types of communications they write.
For instance, writers should compose letters that turn down potential job candidates differently from letters that try to persuade readers to accept recommendations. Likewise, people should write reports to favourable audiences differently from reports to unfavourable audiences.
In short, in the application stage, writers use proven techniques and correspondence structures to achieve their communications objectives.
I've designed my workshops to cover each of these four building blocks, so you can easily choose the workshops that meet the needs of your organization. The following diagram shows how each workshop corresponds to a particular building block.
WORKSHOP TITLE | | WORKSHOP
CONTENT |
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Effective Business Correspondence |  | Strategic |
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Business Writing for Results* Business Writing Essentials* Marketing Communications Writing* |  | Strategic and
Tactical |
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The Secrets of Strong Style |  | Tactical |
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Grammar and Punctuation Review |  | Tactical |
*These workshops also address writing style to certain degrees.
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