Contents
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Introduction
Are Common Errors Undermining Your Credibility?  10

A Plan for Improvement
New Year's Resolutions for Improving Your Writing  14
Faithful Readers at Midpoint in 10-week Exercise  17
Readers Respond to 10-week Writing Challenge  19  

Making It Short And Sweet
One MBA Executive’s Writing Style: A Critique  22
Send Your Boss to Language Efficiency School  25
Pseudo-sophistication No Justification for Obfuscation  27

From Prewriting To Postwriting
The Five Elements of Effective Writing  32
To Overcome Writer’s Block, Silence Inner Critic  35
Reinstate the Quality Loop To Ensure Good Writing  38

Between You And Me
Wanted: Top-level Managers To Edit Staff Writing  42
Trust Is Key to Cross-racial Writing Criticism  45
Successful Dictation Depends on Collaboration  48

Connecting Through Correspondence
Sales Letters Succeed by Linking Product to Need  52
Openings Are Key to Successful Sales Letters  55
Dos and Don’ts for Writing Holiday Greetings  57
How To Say, “You’re Wrong,” Yet Keep Business  60

The Electronic Revolution
How Word Processors Help and Hurt Our Writing  64
It’s Writer vs. Machine in a Fight over Language  67
Writing with the Word Processor  70
Use the Computer To Help You Think and Write  72

The Elements Of Smile
Humor Can Establish Common Ground with Reader  76
The War of the Words—Invasion of the Bureaucrats  79
Slumberwrite Software “Revolutionizes” Writing  82
Speaking English as it Was Meant To Be Spoken  85
Humor Can Take You Far—Sometimes Too Far  87

Tricks Of The Trade
Five Easy Lessons in Clear Thinking and Writing  92
Writing Can Help You Prepare a Terrific Speech  95
“Elegant Variation” Is an Affectation To Avoid  98
Some Operating Principles that Apply to Writing  101
Verbing Your Nouns and Nouning Your Verbs  104

Writing On The Job
The Three-step Memo Gets the Job Done in a Pinch  108
The Executive Summary and the One-page Report  111
Making Performance Reviews Less of a Burden  114
“Adequate” Not Adequate in Performance Reviews  117
How to Make Letters of Recommendation Work  120

Doing It With Style!
To Improve Skills, Read (and Copy) Good Writers  124
Variety in Sentence Structure Invigorates Writing  127
“How Can I Learn To Write with Style?”  130
Adapt Your Style To Fit the Audience, Occasion  132

The Kudos File
Touching Letter Offers Reason To Say Thanks  136
Handwritten Notes of Appreciation Create Goodwill  138

The Big Picture
Avoid Errors When Writing Internationally  142
Who Gets the Blame for Illiteracy in America?  145
How Would You Grade Your Business Writing?  148
The Book No Business Writer Should Be Without  151
What Poets Can Teach Us about Using Language  153

Works Cited / Recommended Reading  158

Index  162