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Contemporary Managerial / Business Writing (Notes)

Strategic advantages of written managerial communication
- Economy
- Efficiency
- Accuracy
- Official permanece

Economical
Writing provides immediacy, in that the manager can write the message whether or not the receiver is immediately available to receive it

Efficient
- Manager can work independently and use words selectively
- Additionally, e-mail allows receivers to read messages at their convenience and thus avoids the time wasted in telephone tag

Accuracy
- Writing permits greater control of words and message organization than does oral communication
- Accuracy often eliminates confusion, ensures clarity, and further contributes to economy and efficiency

Official permanence
Writing provides an official record that can be retained for recall and review

Two unique characteristics of writing in a business context
- Collaborative
- Unique roles of business writing

Advantages of collaborative writing
- Group decision making
- When the size of the task and/or time limits call for the labor of more than one person
- When the scope of the job calls for more than one area of expertise
- When one of the task goals is the melding of divergent opinions
- Writing quality

Collaborative writing socializes employees in several fundamental ways
- Helps to acculturate newcomers by teaching writers about the corporation's capabilities & history & by modeling the corporation's values and attitudes in the actions of the experienced members
- Also helps break down functional barriers
- Fosters the informal chains of comm. and authority through which the corporation accomplishes its work

Disadvantages of Collaborative Writing
- Some members do not do their fair share
- Coordinating schedules for meetings can be complicated and vexing
- Personality conflicts can all but stall the group's progress
- One person may do a poor job on part of project, everyone is held responsible for the entire end result
- Respondents in one study noted two major costs of collaboration were time and ego
- Difficulty in resolving style differences
- Additional time required to work w/ a group
- Inequitable division of tasks
- Loss of personal satisfaction, ownership, or sense of creativity

Guidelines for effective collaborative writing
- First basic guideline: to make sure the work is divided equitably among group members
- Second: writing teams should use electronic technology for collaboration
- Third: all collaborative writing groups should have a team leader, even though person may not have any formal authority

Profile of effective collaborative writers
- Flexible
- Respectful of others
- Attentive & Analytical listeners
- Able to speak and write clearly & articulately
- Dependable (able to meet guidelines)
- Able to designate and share responsibility
- To lead and to follow
- Open to criticism but confident in own abilities
- Ready to engage in creative conflict

Responsibilities of leader
- Coordinating team's collaborative efforts
- Shaping team's vision
- Resolving conflicts among individuals and functional departments

Discourse communities
- Group of people who think in similar ways about how to communicate subjects to be dealt with and how to approach them, as well as what makes up legitimate knowledge

Elements of a manager's discourse community
- Fragmented workday
- Extensive collaboration
- Option to delegate
- Organization's size and culture
- Lines of authority
- Political forces
- Legal concerns

Three stages of the writing process

1. Planning

2. Composing

3. Revising

Planning stage
- What?
- Why?
- Who?
- When?
- Where?
- How?

What?
Nature of the message

Why?
Answer should be just as clear to reader as it is to writer

Who?
Who is receiving the message

Demographic characteristics
- Age
- Sex
- Education
- Political affiliations
- Job title

To engage in a truly thorough reader analysis
- Relative power position between the writer and the reader
- Communication requirements the organization exerts on the reader and the writer
- Business functions the writer and reader work in
- Frequency of communication b/w the writer and reader
- Reader's reaction to past messages from the writer
- Relative sensitivity of the message

For very important messages, a writer may
- Scrutinize all the information available to determine best wording
- The most appropriate organization
- Right medium
- Best timing
- Best source and destination for the message

When?
- For a nonroutine message, however, the decision on when to send it may directly affect how the message is received
- On subject of timing, managers need to keep in mind that it is possible to send messages too early as well as too late

Where?
- From where should the message come and to where should it be directed?
- Should the message come from a manager at a particular level, or should it come from a person higher in the org., so as to carry the additional weight of authority?
- At other end of spectrum, we may have to decide where the reader should be while receiving the message

How?
- letter, memo, report, e-mail, brochure, newsletter, manual, or even bulletin board
- The choice of medium is determined at least in part by how personal the message needs to be, how widespread its distribution, & how quickly it needs to reach audience
- Specifically, if a manager regularly uses one particular medium, the choice of a different medium might communicate a sense of urgency or importance

Principles of selecting words

1. Choose words precisely

2. Use short rather than long words

3. Use concrete rather than abstract words

4. Economize on words

5. Avoid cliches and jargon

6. Use positive words that convey courtesy

7. Use a conversational style

8. Keep sentences short

9. Prefer the active to passive voice

10. Organize paragraphs logically

11. Be coherent

Denotative meaning
Objective; they point to; they describe

Connotative meaning
- Subjective
- They can be different for different people because they are determined largely by a person's previous experiences or associations with a word and its referent

Euphemism
Expression with intended positive connotations

Concrete words
Tend to be specific; they create clear pictures in the reader's mind

Abstract words
Less specific and produce wider, more general interpretations of meanings

Economize on words
A practical, bottom-line reason exists to write concisely

Cliches
Have an accepted meaning; however, these words yield dull messages that lack creativity

Jargon
- Technical language or specified terms that become part of the everyday vocab of an organization or discipline
- Jargon includes technical terms, acronyms, and terms used in special ways

Business-ese
- Makes longer words out of short ones
- Be guided by your receiver's expectations, the communication climate, and cultural context

Use positive words that convey courtesy
- The more positive the stimuli, the more positive the response
- Subordinates will live either up or down to the expectations communicated by their managers

Options for avoiding such pronoun use
- Use of plural nouns and pronouns
- Use of 'he and she,' 'his or her,' 's/he,' or 'his/her'
- Don't use this option too often, could hinder style and readability
- Alternate masculine and feminine pronouns
- Technique that is not satisfactory to strict grammarians
- Uses plural pronouns, such as: each, every, everyone, everybody, or anybody
- Replace third-person pronouns (he/she) with second person (you). Probably the best suggestion

Controversial style
- Involves writing with words from a person's speaking vocabulary

Organizing words for effect

8. Keep sentences short

9. Prefer the active to the passive voice

10. Organize paragraphs logically

11. Be coherent

Causes of long-winded sentences in business writing
- The need to impress
- To avoid appearing forward or pushy
- The need to say everything that be said about a topic in one sentence

One way to shorten sentences
Avoid expletive constructions: 'It... that' and 'There is...'

Active voice
Presents the parts of a sentence in the normal order expected by English-speaking people

Passive voice
Reverses the order of the parts so that the subject is being acted on by the object in a way depicted by the verb

Developing effective paragraphs

1. Present one major idea in a paragraph

2. Decide if a deductive or an inductive pattern is appropriate

3. Use a variety of sentence structures in a paragraph

4. Structure paragraphs to emphasize important points

5. Keep paragraphs relatively short

Unity
Present one major idea in a paragraph, along with whatever support is necessary for the development of the idea

Deductive paragraph
Present main idea in the first sentence and supporting ideas in the sentences that follow

Inductive paragraph
Begin with the details or the support and end with the main idea

Emphasis can be accomplished in a variety of ways
- Repeat key concepts
- Use attention-getting words, such as action-verbs, and personal pronoun you
- Use typographical devices: bullets, text boxes, italics, boldface, or numbers

Parallel form
Sentence elements that are alike in function should also be alike in construction

Coherent writing
Relationship between sentences is clear

Revision process
- What is my purpose?
- Have I included all the info the reader wants or needs to know to understand my message?
- Does my message answer all the reader's questions?
- Is there any info nonessential to the reader that I can delete?
- Have I included reader benefits?

Revising involves

1. Reading what has been written for clarity, concreteness, and conversational tone

2. Determining factual accuracy

3. Organizing to ensure coherence

4. Rewording awkward sentences and phrases

5. Rearranging content and adding illustrations and transitions

6. Edit the document for correctness

The seven C's of good business writing

1. Completeness

2. Conciseness

3. Consideration

4. Concreteness

5. Clarity

6. Courtesy

7. Correctness

Completeness
- Answer all reader questions
- Include the five Ws and H

Conciseness
- Shorten or delere wordy expressions
- Avoid repetition

Consideration
- Focus on 'you', the reader
- Show reader benefits or interests
- Emphasize the positive

Concreteness
- Use specific facts and data
- Use active, not passive, voice
- Rely on vivid, image-building words

Clarity
- Use short, familiar words
- Avoid jargon
- Follow a logical sequence of points

Courtesy
- Be tactful and appreciative
- Avoid discriminatory language
- Respond promptly

Correctness
- Maintain accurate writing mechanics
- Avoid 'wrong word' errors