Writing at Work : How to Create Effective Business Documents

This volume looks at how to write well at work and get results.

The emphasis is on how to write documents for a purpose, and follows the guidelines of the Better English campaign closely. The book divides into two halves: a manual and a reference book to support it, each cross-referenced for ease of application.

It is intended as a comprehensive, practical, on-the-desk guide which addresses the needs of a changing workforce, as people are called upon to produce documents themselves, rather than leave them for administrative staff, and as the need for clearer, action-centred communication becomes yet more urgent. The main points covered are: the focusing process - thinking, planning, creating, editing, using technology (PCs, WPs, dictating); analyzing the readership; displaying including layout (choice of fonts); managing others' writing - conforming to corporate style, developing others' skill and confidence and producing an in-house style guide; parts of speech; the finer points of punctuation; bones of grammatical contention; words of warning; and improving spelling. There are also worked examples, reader activities and appendices on parts of speech, sentences and how they work and common grammatical errors.