The most fundamental business writing exercise is exemplified by the "Letter To the External Stakeholder". In addition, there are the larger questions that are addressed here. These include the viability of letter writing as a business practice; the fundamentals including formatting, grammar, punctuation, paragraph formation; the importance of word choice; and the very important practice of proofreading. All of this is an important first step for improving one's writing skills.

A common element of writing in business and industry is the Research Proposal. The "proposal" is a common tool in business and industry used to compete for future business. Proposals are not just statements of what you or your business are capable of doing; there will be many bidders who will make the same statement. Instead, your proposal must CONVINCE the customer that you are the best choice of vendor for their upcoming work. In the effort to convince them, you must write to the customer's primary concerns, create a clear mental picture for the reader of your proposal, be brief and concise, and be perfect in format and all of the other writing fundamentals. Therefore, I offer this module as support for this most-common form of business writing.

The most useful written tool for the aspiring manager-leader is the Executive Summary. Although it is usually found as the first element of a proposal, it can also be used to summarize facts and recommendations for your supervisor. So, in this module, we'll learn about the value of the one-page executive summary and how to apply the skills we learned in weeks 2 and 3 to make our executive summary even better.