Business communication developing leaders for a network world 2nd CHAPTER 6

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Improving Readability with Style and

Design

Chapter 6

© 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use Not authorized for sale or distribution in any manner This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part

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Provide All Relevant Information

 The key to providing all but only relevant

information is to plan, write, and review your

message strategically

 Repeatedly asking yourself what information

is necessary for the purpose of your message

will help you accomplish this.

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Be Accurate

your readers’ perceptions of your credibility

 Just one inaccurate statement can lead

readers to dismiss your entire message and

lower their trust in your future

communications as well.

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Being Accurate

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Be Specific

 The more specific you are, the more likely

your readers are to have their questions

answered

 If you are not specific, your readers may

become impatient and begin scanning and

skimming for the information they want

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Being Specific

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Improving Ease of Reading

with Conciseness

Control paragraph length

Use short sentences

Avoid redundancy

Avoid empty phrases

Avoid wordy prepositional

phrases

Avoid wordy prepositional

phrases

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Control Paragraph Length

 Long paragraphs can signal disorganization

and even disrespect for the reader’s time

 Typically, paragraphs should contain 40 to 80

words

 For routine messages , paragraphs as short as

20 to 30 words are common and appropriate.

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Controlling Paragraph Length

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Use Short Sentences in Most Cases

 Short sentences allow your readers to

comprehend your ideas more easily

 For routine messages, aim for average

sentence length of 15 or fewer words

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Using Short Sentences

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Avoiding Redundancy

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Avoiding Empty Phrases

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Avoid Wordy Prepositional Phrases

 Eliminating extra words allows you to get your

ideas across as efficiently as possible.

 You will often find that you can reduce word

count by 30 to 40 percent simply by

converting many of your prepositional phrases into single-word verbs.

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Avoiding Wordy Prepositional Phrases

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Improving Ease of Reading with Natural Style

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Use Action Verbs When Possible

verbs

such as is , are , am ) and convert them into

action verbs

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Using Action Verbs

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Use Active Voice

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Use Active Voice

 The doer-action-object allows for faster

processing because most people’s natural

thinking occurs in this way

 It also emphasizes the business orientation of

action

 Most important, it specifies the doer

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Using Active Voice Appropriately

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Using Passive Voice Appropriately

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Use Short and Familiar Words and Phrases

 Whenever possible, choose short, conversational, and familiar words

 Using longer, less common ones slows processing

and can distract from your message.

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Use Parallel Language

 Using parallel language means that you apply

a consistent grammatical pattern across a

sentence or paragraph.

 Parallelism is most important when you use

series or lists.

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Using Parallel Language

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Avoid Buzzwords and Figures of Speech

 Don’t distract your readers with overused or

out-of-place words or phrases

Workplace terms that become trite because of overuse

Can stir negative feelings among some readers

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The Most Annoying Buzzwords

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Avoid It Is/There Are

 Readers naturally want to know precisely who

or what the subject of a sentence is,

particularly in business writing, where

specificity is so important.

 Most sentences that begin with it is or there

are fail to provide a specific subject and

generally contain more words than necessary

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Avoiding It Is and There Is

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Improving Ease of Reading with Navigational

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Use Headings

 In i nformation-rich and complex messages,

headings can help your readers identify key

ideas and navigate the document to areas of

interest

 As you create headings and subheadings, be

consistent in font style and formatting

throughout your document.

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Add Headings for Visual Impact and

Readability

We need to discuss a number of topics at

our next meeting:

Budget Come prepared to discuss our

expense requests.

Schedule Who will be taking vacations or

leaves?

Hiring Soon we must begin the hiring

process to replace Matt.

We need to discuss a number of topics at

our next meeting:

Budget Come prepared to discuss our

expense requests.

Schedule Who will be taking vacations or

leaves?

Hiring Soon we must begin the hiring

process to replace Matt.

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Highlight Key Words

and Phrases

 When you want to highlight ideas or phrases ,

consider using bold , italics , or underlining to

draw and keep your readers’ attention

 If you use too much special formatting, your

main ideas will not stand out

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Apply Graphic Highlighting

• Letters, such as (a) and (b) within the text.

• Numerals, such as 1, 2, and 3, listed vertically.

• Headings and bullets.

• Font type and size

– CAPITAL LETTERS

– Underscores

– Boldface

– Italics

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Applying Formatting to Key Words

and Phrases

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Using Bulleted and Numbered Lists

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Use Numbered Lists for High “Skim Value”

Follow these steps to archive a document:

1 Select the document.

2 Select a folder.

3 Provide a file name.

4 Click “Save.”

Follow these steps to archive a document:

1 Select the document.

2 Select a folder.

3 Provide a file name.

4 Click “Save.”

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Use Bulleted Lists for High “Skim Value”

Consumers expect the following

information at product Web sites:

• Price

• Quality

• Performance

• Availability