Looking Your Best

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From the course by University of Colorado Boulder

Business Writing

539 ratings

University of Colorado Boulder

Business Writing

539 ratings

Course 1 of 4 in the Specialization Effective Communication: Writing, Design, and Presentation

Writing well is one of the most important skills you can learn for success in the business world. Knowing how to write well allows you to deliver your ideas with the power they deserve. Good writing also conveys a sense of your professional excellence to the world around you. In this course, you'll master the simple, effective skills that drive all successful business writing. You'll create impactful documents that not only showcase your ideas, but showcase your own professionalism to your audience. The principles you learn in this course enable you to become a great business writer. They also provide the foundation for moving into Graphic Design and Successful Presentation, so that you can unleash your best professional self whenever--and however--you present your ideas in the workplace.

From the lesson

Building Great Business Writing

The first lesson in this module introduces the Effective Communication specialization, the capstone project, and the Business Writing course. You'll meet the writing instructor, Dr. Quentin McAndrew, and her counterparts Dave Underwood and Professor William Kuskin, who teach Graphic Design and Successful Presentation. Dave and William join Quentin to offer insights into how writing, design, and presentation relate to a process of continuous personal branding that we call Effective Communication. In this module, you'll discover the simple principles that inform all great business writing and that serve as the foundation of this course. These lessons set the stage for the deeper exploration and specific techniques that follow, not just in Business Writing, but in Graphic Design and Successful Presentation as well. Let's get started!

Who are you?3:02

Appearance Matters3:55

Looking Your Best4:22

Dave Gives Pointers: Type is the Message5:57

Meet the Instructors

Dr. Quentin McAndrew
Instructor
Department of English, University of Colorado Boulder

Here's an example of one of the well designed memos from the last video.

The writing's all gibberish stand-in text, as I pointed out.

Yet, we get an idea from this design that this is a well-organized

thoughtful document that's going to be easy to read.

The way your documents look sets the stage for your reader and

persuades them you're a well organized writer.

And it also convinces them that you're well organized professional.

So what makes this design successful?

If we remember out principles of clarity, our window pane, and

waste no time, we can begin to see exactly what works here.

This memo looks somewhat clean like our window pane.

Like I keep saying, this isn't difficult.

But as you'll start to notice in the documents that you read every day,

it's amazing how many writers don't apply these simple principles to their own work,

which puts you ahead of the game.

First, when you look at this document you get a sense of white space.

There's breathing room on the page,

which suggests that there's breathing room in the reading experience.

It's not too cluttered to the eye, and it welcomes the reader in.

There's also balance on the page.

The entire page isn't filled with text, but

it's located on the page in a way that's pleasing to the eye.

It could look like this.

Or this.

Those don't look nearly as nice.

Our example is centered well from top and bottom and from side to side.

Importantly, the paragraphs are short.

This is one of the most important lessons that you can take from this video.

Long paragraphs look like a lot of work.

A busy person confronted with a lot of text immediately begins dreading

readying the memo.

And in fact, they may put it to the side.

The easier you can make the memo look to read the better off you are.

Short paragraphs are the key.

Finally, the use of bullet points and subheads suggest strong organization.

It also makes a document seem skimable.

It looks easy to read quickly.

If it looks like the important points are already highlighted for the reader,

then the reader feels they have to do less work to understand your point.

You should use bullets and

bold text strategically to guide your readers' experience.

To control the way that they navigate through your documents.

You want them to notice your most important ideas.

Well, if you highlight them for your readers, they will.

One note, use boldface sparingly in your documents.

If you highlight too much it overwhelms your reader.

But, if you have an important call to action or news item, like,

the meeting is Friday at 1 o'clock, you need a response in two days, or

sales have increased by 150%.

Experiment with boldface to highlight that important information.

You can also use bold face as a lead in to your paragraphs.

If you have a series of clearly organized points for each of your paragraphs, you

can add a bold face lead that tells your leader just what your paragraph is about.

For instance, we might be talking about target market, market demand, and

product benefits.

Used carefully, this can work as a nice device for your reader.

Whenever you have a list of items consider highlighting them with bullet points.

Bullet points make the reading experience seem skimmable and economical.

They also call out and highlight important information.

So, if you have a sentence like, we will increase profits by streamlining product

development, improving fulfillment, and reaching more customers.

You might write it in your memo as a list of bullet points like this.

Let's briefly review.

The elements that make this memo successful are white space,

short paragraphs and organizational tags that create the impression of an inviting,

quick reading experience.

This impression gets made before your reader ever looks at a word.

I've asked Dave to join us in our next video to discuss typeface and

why it's so important.

Spoiler alert, it has more to it than just avoiding Comic Sans.

In the later lessons of this course,

you'll see that the way that we organize our lessons and

write our sentences echos this concept of breathing room and clarity.

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