Writing Workshops - Descriptions
The Secrets of Strong Style
(One day)
Workshop Description
Good business writing is concise and clear. Yet many business writers get bogged down in bureaucratese—inflated language, wordiness, weak verbs, and abstractions. Bureaucratese smothers clarity, hides action, obscures meaning, and makes writers sound pompous and self-important.
By following a few easy-to-learn style tips, writers can avoid the pitfalls of bureaucratese. The Secrets of Strong Style will show students how to inject clarity and energy into their writing. By doing a number of hands-on exercises throughout the day and reviewing them in the workshop, students will learn how to apply the principles of strong writing. And they'll be able to use this knowledge to produce results on the job immediately.
Audience
- Those in business or government who want to improve their writing styles
- People who want to express themselves clearly and write concise communications that sound natural and professional
Workshop Topics
- Minimizing the passive voice
- Un-smothering action verbs
- Avoiding weak verbs
- Avoiding expletive structures
- Omitting needless words
- Reducing wordiness
- Avoiding chains of prepositions and who, which, or that clauses
- Using plain, concrete words
- Putting statements in positive form
- Writing effective sentences
- Managing sentence length
- Clearly linking pronouns to their antecedents
- Simplifying sentences
- Clarifying sentence logic
How does The Secrets of Strong Style workshop differ from the Business Writing for Results workshop?
The Secrets of Strong Style workshop focuses exclusively on style. Business Writing for Results also addresses style, but in less depth than The Secrets of Strong Style. Business Writing for Results, however, also covers a wide range of other important written-communications topics such as audience analysis, planning, document organization and layout, and logic. In other words, The Secrets of Strong Style workshop can be considered tactical; Business Writing for Results can be considered both strategic and tactical although it emphasizes the former.
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