This book will give you the tools to become—in the next 36 hours— a more effective, efficient manager of your own writing. • You’ll become more effective because you’ll learn to produce writing that gets things done. • You’ll become more efficient because you’ll learn to produce more effective writing in less time.
[...]... confidence and your process knowledge will grow Training in writing can’t do everything But with the competence you already have, this book can make you more confident and knowledgeable and thus more efficient and effective And it can make you a lifelong learner of writing, getting better and better each day, week, month, and year 16 The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication. .. many messages you receive and send Consider ways you could help yourself or others by communicating more effectively 8 The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication 2 Pay special attention to the actual results of your speaking and writing Figure out what communication strategies work for you and what strategies don’t Notice when you’re understood and when you aren’t “There... another For all these reasons, the invention of the telephone was very good news for business During the late nineteenth century and most of 10 The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication the twentieth century, the proportion of business communication put in writing almost surely went down But oral communication has its disadvantages, too: • The main one is impermanence Speech disappears... that’s why writing was invented and for business purposes at that When humanity experienced Toffler’s “first wave,” moving from hunting and gathering to agriculture, the first writing began to appear, in the form of warehouse inventories and other business documents, on clay tablets These ancient pieces of business writing are still being found throughout the Middle East In her book Doing Business, ... to survive and thrive in this new knowledge economy This fact is particularly important because more and more of us—me included—are entrepreneurs and “intrapreneurs.” For the small business owner—or for the owner of “You, Inc.,” within a large business the 4 The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication upside of the knowledge economy is the fact that the creation or communication. .. somewhere between an art and a science A good potter, for example, needs both an eye for beauty and a knowledge of the chemistry and physics of clay Similarly, a good writer needs 18 The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication both an “ear” for the language (the competence discussed earlier) and a knowledge of what makes an effective and efficient writing process • Wurman’s... at the 20 The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication first and third stages than at the second My friend Lee Clark Johns, in her excellent book The Writing Coach, reported a study of one professional writer who spent his writing time this way: • 40 percent “prewriting” (planning) • 20 percent writing (drafting) • 40 percent “rewriting” (revising) Many good writers also build... ago, but not anymore Writing is how business gets done.” WHAT A WRITING COURSE CAN— AND CAN’T—DO Now for a confession—one I’ve never seen in any other business writing book: books and courses about writing can’t teach you everything you need to be an effective writer That’s the bad news But here’s the good news: what this book can’t teach, you almost certainly already know You see, writing requires two... effective writing training—confidence, process knowledge, and reinforcement—are interdependent As you become more confident, you’ll become more receptive to new process knowledge and more comfortable seeking and receiving feedback about your writing As you gain more process knowledge, you’ll become more confident about your writing process and more skillful at receiving reinforcement And as you receive (and. .. societies, communication often was oneway, top-down Information was held at the very top of organizational 6 The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication pyramids and passed down to workers only as needed Most of the time, most people—whether they worked in a field or in a factory—needed to be only passive receivers of communication Moreover, in first- and second-wave societies, communication