11
26) When incorporating lists into a document, they should all use the same grammatical pattern,
referred to as
A) repetitiveness.
B) bulleting.
C) clauses.
D) mix.
E) parallelism.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Critical Thinking
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
27) To guide readers to think a certain way about a topic, incorporate
A) descriptive headings.
B) parallelism.
C) bullet lists.
D) informative headings.
E) subheadings.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Critical Thinking
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
28) Although you should vary the length of paragraphs in your business messages, in general you
should strive for short paragraphs.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Conceptual
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
12
29) Readers can get a more out of a document just by reading its descriptive headings than by
reading its informative headings.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Conceptual
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
30) Briefly describe at least three advantages of using lists in business documents.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Conceptual
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
31) What three functions do effective headings serve in business documents? Explain each one.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Difficult
Classification: Conceptual
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
32) Briefly explain the difference between descriptive headings and informative headings.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Conceptual
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
13
33) Readability indexes are useful when determining
A) smooth transitions.
B) “you” attitude.
C) clear sentence structure.
D) proper word usage.
E) number of syllables.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Critical Thinking
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
34) To best convey complex ideas, use a
A) short sentence.
B) bullet list.
C) medium sentence.
D) descriptive heading.
E) long sentence.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Difficult
Classification: Critical Thinking
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
14
35) When you’re editing a document for conciseness,
A) change verbs into nouns.
B) separate subjects and predicates.
C) delete unnecessary words and phrases.
D) convert sentences to “it is” or “there are” structures.
E) eliminate awkward references.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Difficult
Classification: Application
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
36) Which of the following is an example of a hedging sentence?
A) The employee’s performance appears to be less than satisfactory.
B) The deadline is next Tuesday.
C) The financial statement needs to have two sections.
D) We must act on these recommendations.
E) Please meet me at 3:00.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Easy
Classification: Application
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
15
37) What is wrong with the following sentence? “To waste time and missing deadlines are bad
habits.”
A) Similar ideas are not parallel.
B) It contains a dangling modifier.
C) It contains a split infinitive.
D) It contains a hedging sentence.
E) It contains a camouflaged verb.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Difficult
Classification: Application
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
38) What is wrong with the following sentence? “Having stalled for two days, the assignment
was now late.”
A) It lacks parallelism.
B) It contains a dangling modifier.
C) It contains an awkward pointer.
D) It contains hedging.
E) It contains a dependent clause.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Application
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
16
39) When ________ are strung together as modifiers, they should be replaced with a single well-
chosen word to make the sentence easier to read.
A) bullet points.
B) dangling modifiers.
C) dependent clauses.
D) nouns.
E) references.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Application
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
40) Word endings such as -ion, -ing, and -ment often change verbs into nouns and are referred to
as
A) noun sequences.
B) awkward references.
C) camouflaged verbs.
D) parallel nouns.
E) dangling modifiers.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Application
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
17
41) “The above-mentioned book” is an example of
A) a redundancy.
B) a strung-out sentence.
C) an indefinite pronoun starter.
D) an awkward reference.
E) a camouflaged verb.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Application
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
42) Which of the following sentences is the most concisely worded?
A) The project manager is in charge of furnishing specifications until such time as the project
gets underway.
B) All specifications should be provided by the project manager prior to the start of a project.
C) Project managers have the capability of changing specifications before the official start date.
D) The project manager must give the engineers the revised specifications before the project
starts.
E) When it comes to specifications, the project manager must certainly be the only one to change
them.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Critical Thinking
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
18
43) “Visible to the eye” is an example of
A) a cliché.
B) a redundancy.
C) the passive voice.
D) obsolete language.
E) hedging.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Easy
Classification: Application
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
44) Starting a sentence with “It is” or “There are” is
A) usually a sign that the sentence could be shorter and more active.
B) perfectly acceptable, and you need not try to rewrite the sentence.
C) a sign that you are using active voice.
D) a sign that you are using passive voice.
E) a way to impose parallelism.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Conceptual
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
19
45) Because mobile users consume information one screen at a time, you should ________ when
you’re writing to them.
A) always format your message to be viewed from a vertical perspective
B) include long, fully justified paragraphs in small font sizes
C) divide your message into independent, easy-to-consume bites
D) use stylized typefaces and complex layouts) use several bullets and lists
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Easy
Classification: Application
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
46) A ________ uses words such as may and seems to avoid stating a judgment or fact directly.
A) hedging sentence
B) hypothetical clause
C) defensive sentence
D) tortuous statement
E) parallel sentence
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Difficult
Classification: Critical Thinking
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
20
47) When you have two or more similar ideas to express in writing, use parallelism to
A) show that the ideas are related.
B) show that the ideas are of dissimilar importance.
C) show that the ideas are on the same level of generality.
D) eliminate overly long words and phrases.
E) incorporate infinitives.
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Moderate
Classification: Conceptual
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages
48) A ________ is a verb that has been changed into a noun or an adjective.
A) transitive verb
B) transformed predicate
C) predicate nominative
D) camouflaged verb
E) camouflaged pronoun
tips on making your writing more concise.
AACSB: Written and oral communication
Difficulty: Difficult
Classification: Conceptual
Learning Outcome: Revise, complete, and distribute business messages