Business Writing for Office Professionals

Powerful Writing Guides, Instructs & Informs the Reader

Effective business writing is a fundamental attribute of successful organisations. Managers and office professionals need to develop business writing skills of excellence in order to project a powerful image to customers and colleagues. 'Business Writing for Office Professionals' is an extensive two-day course designed to enable the writer to write with style, produce powerful documents and compose persuasive arguments.

Course Duration: Two days

Course Outline:

Unit 1: Writing & You
Evaluating your writing needs.

• What is writing?
• What is a good piece of writing?
• Your writing habits
• Assignment 1: Evaluating writing habits

Unit 2: Planning & Structure
Planning your writing ensures logical document structure.

• Focus: Setting obectives
• Mind mapping
• Structure: Using the Inverted Pyramid
• Assignment 2: Writing a business letter

Unit 3: Audience (the Reader), Style, & Tone
Write effectively for a specific readership.

• Profiling the reader
• Style and tone
• Assignment 3: Writing for your reader

Unit 4: Making Writing Clear & Easily Understood
Compose clear, concise sentences.

• Readability
• Concise language
• Avoiding repetition
• Reducing sentence length
• Using plain English
• Assignment 4: Evaluating readability

Unit 5: The Mechanics of Good Writing
A practical grammar session.

• Building blocks of grammar
• Concord
• Punctuation
• Vocabulary
• Using different voices
• Writing in the first or third person
• Assignment 5: Group analysis activity

Unit 6: Using Everyday Format
Use writing conventions successfully.

• Business letters
• Writing emails
• Summary writing
• Reports and proposals
• Agendas
• Minutes of meetings
• Assignment 6: Writing persuasively (email)

Unit 7: Editing - Developing a Critical Eye
Techniques to analyse and edit your documents.

• Editing content
• Linguistic flow
• Transitions
• Style and tone
• Accuracy
• Presenting your work
• Assignment 7: Editing

Delegates attending the course should bring one sample of business correspondence to analyse.

Accreditation

Ingwe Corporate Training is an accredited provider with the Services SETA (SETQAA Decision number 1994). 'Business Writing for Office Professionals' is a SETA accredited course and is aligned to the unit standard 12153 'Use the writing process to compose texts required in the business environment' NQF level 4, 5 credits. Learners are able to complete the summative assessment at the end of the course and, if deemed competent, earn NQF credits.