My last post argued that the use of prescribed minimums does our students a disservice. They learn to fluff up their prose to make documents longer. When those students enter the workplace, their prose style is entrenched. That means, as a writing teacher who attempts to build a bridge between school and work, most of…
One of the saddest practices in academic writing is prescribed minimums. I’m talking about teachers’ requirements for no less than 500 words, 5 pages, etc. (For a funny take on this, see I can write 600 words about anything from The Onion.) Of course, teachers prescribe minimums when their students have no real NEED to communicate…
To celebrate Friday the 13th (and keep in touch while I work to meet a deadline), I’m sharing a link to a 2010 article that appeared in The Onion. Nation Shudders At Large Block Of Uninterrupted Text is one of my favorites. And it reinforces the importance of one of my video tutorials. Enjoy! Related articles…
No time to write much here until I finish some tasks related to my day job. So I’ll get right to it. Today’s brief video tutorial focuses on how to use transitions to guide workplace readers through a document. Small words make a BIG difference. Related articles Amateurs suffer from directile dysfunction (proswrite.com)
The prevalence of directile dysfunction in men is well established, at least by women in North America. (I’m talking about the inability to ask for directions when traveling in unfamiliar locations.) But, while working on a lecture-tutorial devoted to transitions (e.g., “however,” “because,” etc.), it occurred to me that amateur writers also suffer from a version of this malady. Except their…
Here (finally) is the tutorial on analyzing a workplace audience. I’ve been distracted for a few days, playing nurse for my 17- year-old son after oral surgery. Whew! More later . . . Related articles Pros don’t settle for platitudes about audience (proswrite.com)
Know your audience! The most common platitude about workplace writing. Well . . . duh . . . who could argue with that? It certainly doesn’t describe what pros have learned. What amateurs need is GUIDANCE for getting to know the right things about their readers. My guidance, based on a chapter new to the third edition of Revising Professional Writing, focuses…
The fact that the people in this photo are arranged with similar visual structure (in rows with the same color and design of clothing) is one of the main reasons you can quickly pick out a “team.” (The other reason has to do with spatial proximity.) The use of similarity to impose order the chaotic…
Amateurs rarely appreciate the (lack of) commitment of workplace readers. It’s another one of the consequences of the fact that, as students, they have prepared documents only for teachers, who are required to read thoughtfully whatever their students write and who have no real use for the content in those documents. Amateurs don’t often recognize that everyone else…
Core. Essence. Kernel. Heart. Crux. When applied to a document, these terms refer to its bottom line message. One of the things pro writers do is make the bottom line clear. That means they state their bottom line explicitly. And more than once in a long or complex document. The other thing pros do is place their bottom line where…