What business writing
If you were training professionals, especially new ones, the art of business writing, what would you include as a must? Would you focus on business report writing? Business research? Technical writing? Memo writing? Perhaps even basic email writing to communicate with professionalism?
I believe I would start with basic grammar. Is everyone writing really well?
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Glen, I think Chris is making a joke with a curiosity-producing headline.
Glen - Thanks, so much, for your reply. In the spirit of my worser writing, what type of training do you think is good for someone under you're care in busyness? ;)
I agree with Glen..
The Millennials and the outlying Gen X (born in the last vestiges of Gen X, the early 80's) generations who have grown up on first e-mail and then social media such as Proformative and of course Twitter and Texting have never learned not only the basics, but how to formulate complete sentences, thoughts, concepts, logical progression of an argument and when a sentence becomes a run-on :).
LOL, LMAO, (smiley face emoji), WTF...... i am trying to improve it.
@Glen Norman - I thought the same thing at first! But like @Anonymous I figured it was an intentional pun. And good run-on by @Wayne!
Do they even teach how to write a basic 3-5 paragraph letter any more? Oh, wait - what is a letter?
Edit - What's the best way to learn? Read!
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John - that's true that the best way to learn is to read. Something that has helped me is that I worked with a writing coach for two months. The main purpose of the coach was to have a fictional story I am working on reviewed. The coach, however, took a lot of time helping me through some grammar issues I had.
I have no idea whether the 3-5 paragraph letter is being taught.
Reading and getting a writing coach are two great ideas to improve writing, irrespective of business or fiction.
Great topic Chris - thank you for bringing it up. As the Proformative members are discussing it, I would welcome your thoughts on where to find good training materials/classes for business writing skills. Thx, GAP
It depends on the person!
Basically writing skills 'should' have been taught, developed and learnt by the time one graduated high school and college. Advanced writing should have been taught and learnt in college.
Business writing and technical writing are 'different' skill sets usually learned either from particular learning
The problem in the business world, esp. in
Generally, many managers, like the millenials, have a very short attention span.
ANY manager that uses the Excuse of 'lack of time' to read stuff is just making excuses!
IMHO, business people don't write 'good' because many business people (esp.managers) either have their staffers write for them (their writings skills are also questionable) or they rush in writing because of the 'lack of time' or they, themselves, do not write "well" themselves.
It really depends on the person on whether or not they write 'well' or not.
Also, reading comprehension is related to writing which is another issue.
Even though one can read, can one also comprehend what one or another is writing?
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Excellent points. To your last point, I've read books that lack proper writing. Perhaps part of it is whoever edits the book. It's hard to catch all writing errors as the writer. The more I read the more I realize professional editors working for the New York publishers aren't any better either.
