978-0134562186 Chapter 5 Lecture Note

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Chapter 5: Writing Business Messages

Chapter 5 continues the discussion of the three-step writing process with the writing step. The two tasks

covered here are adapting to your audience (including being sensitive to audience needs, building strong

relationships, and controlling your style and tone) and composing your message (including choosing

powerful words, creating effective sentences, and crafting unified, coherent paragraphs). The chapter

concludes with advice on writing message for mobile devices.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Adapting to Your Audience: Being Sensitive to Audience Needs

Using the “You” Attitude

Maintaining Standards of Etiquette

Emphasizing the Positive

Using Bias-Free Language

Adapting to Your Audience: Building Strong Relationships

Establishing Your Credibility

Projecting Your Company’s Image

Adapting to Your Audience: Controlling Your Style and Tone

Using a Conversational Tone

Using Plain Language

Selecting the Active or Passive Voice

Composing Your Message: Choosing Powerful Words

Understanding Denotation and Connotation

Balancing Abstract and Concrete Words

Finding Words That Communicate Well

Composing Your Message: Creating Effective Sentences

Choosing from the Four Types of Sentences

Using Sentence Style to Emphasize Key Thoughts

Composing Your Message: Crafting Unified, Coherent Paragraphs

Creating the Elements of a Paragraph

Topic Sentence

Support Sentences

Transitions

Choosing the Best Way to Develop a Paragraph

Writing Messages for Mobile Devices

Learning Catalytics is a “bring your own device” student engagement, assessment, and classroom

intelligence system. It allows instructors to engage students in class with real-time diagnostics. Students

can use any modern, web-enabled device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to access it. For more

information on using Learning Catalytics in your course, contact your Pearson Representative.

LECTURE NOTES

Section 1: Adapting to Your Audience: Being Sensitive to Audience Needs

Learning Objective 1: Identify the four aspects of being sensitive to audience needs when writing

business messages.

If your intended audience members think a message does not apply to them or doesn’t meet their needs,

they won’t be inclined to pay attention to it.

Using the “You” Attitude

Adopt the “you” attitude by:

Replacing terms that refer to yourself and your company with terms that refer to your

audience

Empathizing with your audience sincerely and genuinely

Avoiding the word you when its use would be impolite or accusatory

Following company style regarding the use of personal pronouns

Maintaining Standards of Etiquette

Maintain the highest standards of etiquette:

Be courteous to members of your audience.

Control your emotions and communicate calmly.

Be even more tactful in written messages.

Emphasizing the Positive

Emphasize the positive:

So en the blow of negative news.

Criticize constructively without dwelling on a person’s mistakes.

Emphasize audience benefit rather than your own.

Use euphemisms to avoid words that are hurtful or offensive to your audience—but don’t use them to

sugarcoat unpleasant news.

Using Bias-Free Language

Use bias-free language by avoiding words and phrases that unfairly and even unethically categorize

or stigmatize people in ways related to:

Gender

Race and ethnicity

Age

Disability

Class discussion question: Have you ever been put off by biased word choices another person made

while communicating with you (in writing or in person)? In the matter of age, for example, has an older

person ever referred to you as a “kid,” even though you think of yourself as an adult? Conversely, if

you’re an older student, have younger students ever referred to you as “grandma” or “grandpa,” even in a

humorous way? What effect did these word choices have on your relationship with the other party?

Section 2: Adapting to Your Audience: Building Strong Relationships

Learning Objective 2: Explain how establishing your credibility and projecting your company’s image

are vital aspects of building strong relationships with your audience.

Establishing your credibility and projecting your company’s image are two vital steps in building and

fostering positive business relationships.

Establishing Your Credibility

Credibility is the measure of your believability based on how reliable you are and how much trust you

evoke in others.

To establish your credibility, emphasize:

Honesty

Objectivity

Awareness of audience needs

Credentials, knowledge, and expertise

Endorsements

Performance

Sincerity

Credibility can take a long time to establish—and it can be wiped out by a single careless or foolish

mistake.

Projecting Your Company’s Image

Project the proper image for your company by subordinating your own views and personality, if

necessary, and mastering your company’s style.

Observe more experienced colleagues to see how they communicate, and never hesitate to ask for

editorial help.

Section 3: Adapting to Your Audience: Controlling Your Style and Tone

Learning Objective 3: Explain how to achieve a tone that is conversational but businesslike, explain the

value of using plain language, and define active and passive voice.

Style is the way words are used to achieve a certain tone (i.e., the impression made by your words).

Using a Conversational Tone

To achieve a conversational tone:

Understand the di,erence between texting and writing.

Avoid stale and pompous language.

Avoid preaching and bragging.

Be careful with intimacy.

Be careful with humor.

Using Plain Language

Plain language is a way of presenting information in a simple, unadorned style that your audience can

easily grasp without struggling through specialized, technical, or convoluted language.

Plain language can make companies more productive and more profitable simply because people

spend less time trying to figure out messages that are confusing or aren’t written to meet their needs.

Plain language helps nonnative speakers understand your messages.

Selecting the Active or Passive Voice

In active voice, the subject performs the action and the object receives the action.

The subject (“actor”) comes before the verb.

The object (“acted upon”) comes after the verb.

In passive voice, the subject receives the action.

The subject comes a er the verb.

The object comes before the verb.

It combines the helping verb to be with a form of the verb that is usually similar to the past tense.

Use the active voice to:

Produce shorter, stronger sentences.

Make your writing more vigorous, concise, and generally easier to understand.

Generally avoid the passive voice because it:

Is cumbersome

Can be unnecessarily vague

Can make sentences longer

However, the passive voice is best in some cases to demonstrate the “you” attitude:

When you need to be diplomatic

When you want to avoid taking or a4ributing the credit or the blame

When you want to avoid personal pronouns to create an objective tone

Class discussion question: Have you ever noticed anyone using the passive voice to avoid taking

responsibility for a situation or a mistake? For example, someone might say “mistakes were made” rather

than “I made a mistake.” What effect might this have on the speaker or writer’s credibility? Can the

passive voice be ethically misused in this way?

Section 4: Composing Your Message: Choosing Powerful Words

Learning Objective 4: Describe how to select words that are both correct and effective.

As you compose your first draft:

Look for opportunities to improve on your outline by rearranging, deleting, and adding

ideas (as long as you don’t lose sight of your purpose)

Try to let your creativity 6ow (don’t dra and edit at the same time)

Try to overcome writer’s block

You can jog your brain to overcome writer’s block by:

Skipping to another part of the document

Working on nontext elements such as graphics

Switching to a di,erent project

Starting to write without worrying about what you’re writing or how it sounds

As you create and refine your messages, learn to view your writing at three levels:

Strong words

E,ective sentences

Coherent paragraphs

If you have questions about grammar and usage, be sure to consult handbooks or online guides.

The words you choose to use must be correct because:

Grammatical or usage errors cause you to lose credibility with your audience.

Poor grammar implies that you’re uninformed and your audience may not trust you.

Poor grammar can imply that you don’t respect your audience enough to get things right.

Successful writers and speakers take care to find the most effective words and phrases to use.

Rich languages such as English provide you with a variety of options when choosing words.

Selecting and using words effectively is often more challenging than using words correctly because it’s a

matter of judgment and experience.

Reading widely is the best way to expand your vocabulary and thereby give yourself more options when

it’s time to choose words in your own writing.

Understanding Denotation and Connotation

Words may have two meanings:

The denotative meaning is the literal or dictionary meaning.

The connotative meaning includes all the associations and feelings evoked by the word.

In business communication, carefully use words that have multiple interpretations and are high in

connotative meaning.

Balancing Abstract and Concrete Words

A word may be:

Abstract (expressing a concept, quality, or characteristic)

Concrete (standing for something you can touch, see, or visualize)

Concrete words are often more effective than abstract words because they are more precise, but that

isn’t always the case.

Blend abstract terms with concrete ones to be as effective as possible.

Even though they’re indispensable, abstractions can be troublesome.

Abstract words tend to be fuzzy and subject to multiple interpretations.

Abstract words seem less “real” and pose a challenge to getting readers excited.

Finding Words That Communicate Well

To find the words that communicate well, think carefully about the right words to use for each

individual situation:

Choose powerful words.

Choose familiar words.

Avoid clichés and be careful with buzzwords.

Use jargon carefully.

Section 5: Composing Your Message: Creating Effective Sentences

Learning Objective 5: Define the four types of sentences and explain how sentence style affects emphasis

within a message.

To make every sentence count:

Arrange carefully chosen words.

Select the optimum type of sentence.

Choosing from the Four Types of Sentences

You can choose from four types of sentences:

Simple: one main clause (single subject and single predicate)

Compound: two main clauses that express two or more independent but related thoughts of

equal importance, usually joined by and, but, or or

Complex: expresses one main thought (the independent clause) and one or more

subordinate, related thoughts (dependent clauses that cannot stand alone as valid

sentences)

Compound-complex: two main clauses, at least one with a subordinate clause

When constructing sentences, choose the form that matches the relationship of the ideas you want to

express.

Use two simple sentences or a compound sentence if you have two ideas of equal

importance.

Use a complex sentence if one of the ideas is less important than the other.

To achieve the clearest writing possible, strive for variety and balance by mixing all four types of

sentences.

Using Sentence Style to Emphasize Key Thoughts

You can emphasize key ideas through sentence style by:

Describing an important element with more detail

Adding a separate, short sentence to augment the thought

Making a thought the subject of a sentence

Placing the key idea either at the beginning or the end of a sentence

In complex sentences, the placement of the dependent clause hinges on the relationship between the

ideas expressed.

Put the dependent clause at the end of the sentence (the most emphatic position) or at the

beginning (the second most emphatic position).

Put the dependent clause within the sentence if you want to downplay the idea.

Section 6: Composing Your Message: Crafting Unified, Coherent Paragraphs

Learning Objective 6: Define the three key elements of a paragraph, and list five ways to develop unified,

coherent paragraphs.

A paragraph organizes sentences related to the same general topic.

Readers expect each paragraph to:

Be uni#ed and focus on a single unit of thought

Be coherent and present ideas in a logically connected way

Creating the Elements of a Paragraph

A paragraph is made up of several elements:

Topic sentence—introduces the topic, gives readers a summary of the general idea that will

be covered in the rest of the paragraph, and reminds audiences of the purpose of each

paragraph

Support sentences—explain, justify, or extend the topic sentence with specifics; are more

specific than topic sentences; provide another piece of evidence to demonstrate the general

truth of the main thought; and are clearly related to the general idea being developed

Transitions—words or phrases that tie ideas together by showing how one thought is related to another,

help readers understand the connections you’re trying to make, and smooth your writing

Establish transitions by:

Using connecting words

Echoing a word or phrase from a previous paragraph or sentence

Using a pronoun that refers to a noun used previously

Using words that are frequently paired

Transitions are able to:

Serve as mood changers

Announce a total contrast with what’s gone on before

Announce a causal relationship

Signal a change in time

Use transitions to help readers understand your ideas and follow you from point to point:

Inside paragraphs, to tie related points together

Between paragraphs, to ease the shi from one distinct thought to another

Between major sections or chapters

Choosing the Best Way to Develop a Paragraph

Develop a paragraph in one of five ways:

Illustration

Comparison or contrast

Cause and e,ect

classification

Problem and solution

In practice, you’ll occasionally combine two or more methods of development in a single paragraph.

Think through other alternatives before accepting your first choice.

Section 7: Writing Messages for Mobile Devices

Learning Objective 7: List five techniques for writing effective messages for mobile readers.

Reading is more difficult on small screens, and users’ ability to comprehend what they read on mobile

devices is lower than it is on larger screens.

In addition to making different design and layout choices, adapt your approach to writing in order to help

mobile readers.

Technique #1: Use a linear organization

In a printed document or on a larger screen, readers can easily take in multiple elements on a page

and jump around the page to read various parts without feeling lost.

However, with small mobile device screens, a complex page requires readers to zoom in and out

and pan around, which slows reading and raises the odds of disorientation and misunderstanding.

To simplify reading, organize with a linear flow from the top to the bottom of the message or

article.

Technique #2: Prioritize information

Small screens make it difficult for readers to scan the page to find the information they want

most, so put the most-needed information first.

Use the inverted pyramid style favored by journalists, in which you reveal the most important

information briefly at first and then provide successive layers of detail that readers can consume

if they want.

You may need to avoid using the indirect approach if your message is complicated, because it will

be more difficult for readers to follow your chain of reasoning.

Technique #3: Write shorter and more-focused messages and documents

Mobile users often lack the patience or opportunity to read lengthy messages or documents.

In some cases, this could require you to write two documents, a shorter executive summary for

mobile use and a longer supporting document that readers can access later if they want more

details.

Technique #4: Use shorter subject lines and headings

Mobile devices, particularly phones and smaller tablets, can’t display as many characters in a

single line of text at a readable font size as the typical computer screen can.

Email subject lines and page headings will be truncated or will wrap around to take up multiple

lines; both make reading more difficult.

A good rule of thumb: keep subject lines and headlines to around 25 characters.

Make every word count and make sure you start with the key words so readers can instantly see

what the subject line or heading is about.

Technique #5: Use shorter paragraphs

In addition to structuring your message, paragraphs have a visual role in written communication.

Shorter paragraphs are less intimidating and let readers take frequent “micro rests” as they move

through a document.

Because far less text is displayed at once on a mobile screen, keep paragraphs as short as possible

so readers don’t have to swipe through screen after screen before getting to paragraph breaks.

HIGHLIGHT BOX: THE ART OF PROFESSIONALISM

Being Dependable and Accountable

1. To estimate project requirements when one hasn’t completed an identical or similar project in the

past, a smart first step is to seek advice from colleagues or superiors. Chances are that someone else

in the organization has done something similar. A second method is to break the project down into

its smallest logical components and then estimate time and cost for each component; estimating

piecemeal can be much easier and more accurate than trying to guess an entire project’s duration. A

third technique that works in some cases is to execute a small part of the project to measure the

accrued time and costs, then extrapolate those totals to the entire project. Fourth, one can

sometimes use numbers from analogous projects. Fi h, project planners o en project worst-case,

best-case, and likely totals for time and costs. In addition to providing these numbers to clients and

superiors in order to set expectations, it can be useful to use the best- and worst-case totals as

“reality checks” to see if estimates make sense. Finally, when making an uncertain commitment, it’s

always a good idea to explain that your schedule and budget estimates are based on the best

available information.

2. No, being accountable doesn’t mean you never make mistakes. It means that you (a) make every

e,ort to avoid mistakes, (b) take responsibility if you do make mistakes, and (c) if possible, take

corrective action to compensate people a,ected by your mistakes.

COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES AT SHE TAKES ON THE WORLD

Individual Challenge

Two changes will shift more emphasis to the point about the tiny percentage of companies that venture

capitalists fund. First, move the clause to the end of the sentence, so it is the last point readers see.

Second, use a transition to signal the change of tone from positive to negative.

Venture capitalists can provide valuable management expertise and industry connections in

addition to start-up funds, but they fund only a tiny percentage of all new companies.

Another option is to split the sentence and put the negative information in its own short sentence to end

the paragraph:

Venture capitalists can provide valuable management expertise and industry connections in

addition to start-up funds. However, they fund only a tiny percentage of all new companies.

Team Challenge

Option (d) does the best job of providing the necessary information in a way that is sensitive to the

audience’s needs.

a. This one veers off the topic by suggesting starting up an entire company, rather than setting

oneself up as an independent contractor.

b. This statement is undermined by a defeatist attitude.

c. This sounds flippant and suggests that creating your own job is something of a lark.

d. This one balances the seriousness of the situation with the motivational appeal of an inspiring

challenge.

Two phrases in particular demonstrate sensitivity to audience needs:

Chances are you’ll be facing a tough job market . . . Conveys the possibility of a negative job

market in the near future, without being defeatist.

Why not convert a challenge into opportunity . . . Inspires readers to take action, rather than

despairing at the lack of conventional opportunities.