Waste No Time

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En provenance du cours de University of Colorado Boulder

Business Writing

563 notes

University of Colorado Boulder

Business Writing

563 notes

Cours 1 sur 4 dans Specialization Effective Communication: Writing, Design, and Presentation

Writing well is one of the most important skills you can learn for success in the business world. Knowing how to write well allows you to deliver your ideas with the power they deserve. Good writing also conveys a sense of your professional excellence to the world around you. In this course, you'll master the simple, effective skills that drive all successful business writing. You'll create impactful documents that not only showcase your ideas, but showcase your own professionalism to your audience. The principles you learn in this course enable you to become a great business writer. They also provide the foundation for moving into Graphic Design and Successful Presentation, so that you can unleash your best professional self whenever--and however--you present your ideas in the workplace.

À partir de la leçon

Building Great Business Writing

The first lesson in this module introduces the Effective Communication specialization, the capstone project, and the Business Writing course. You'll meet the writing instructor, Dr. Quentin McAndrew, and her counterparts Dave Underwood and Professor William Kuskin, who teach Graphic Design and Successful Presentation. Dave and William join Quentin to offer insights into how writing, design, and presentation relate to a process of continuous personal branding that we call Effective Communication. In this module, you'll discover the simple principles that inform all great business writing and that serve as the foundation of this course. These lessons set the stage for the deeper exploration and specific techniques that follow, not just in Business Writing, but in Graphic Design and Successful Presentation as well. Let's get started!

Be the Windowpane3:01

Waste No Time2:55

Don't Sound Smart; Be Smart4:25

Own Your Ideas3:46

Everyone Needs an Editor; or, the Story of My Failure5:04

Rencontrer les enseignants

Dr. Quentin McAndrew
Instructor
Department of English, University of Colorado Boulder

Let's build on the windowpane theory to introduce the concept of waste no time.

This is about efficiency.

Your readers are very busy.

Think about how many emails you get in a single day.

You're constantly bombarded with communication and information.

So is your reader.

Not only will they thank you for

being efficient and saving them time, if you give your reader too much to read,

you might be ignored or simply lost in the shuffle.

Let me repeat that.

It doesn't matter how well you write, if you give your reader too much to read,

you might not get read at all.

So, we always work towards the idea of keeping the reader's schedule in mind.

We always write for

an end reading experience, that is efficient for our reader.

It's not just a courtesy to be as clear and concise as possible,

it's actually essential for your success.

The irony, of course, is when I say, waste of time.

I don't mean that you don't take time.

You actually have to take extra time to save your reader time.

Good writers exert the effort to make reading efficient for their audience.

You need to work intentionally, through design and

revision, to create a short document for your reader.

It's actually easier to write a longer document

than it is to write a shorter one.

Easier for the writer, that is, but not for your reader.

As the writer, you need to be willing to enact discipline into your process,

in order to communicate the most effective way possible.

You need to be willing to revise multiple times to reach your goal.

Shorter, well-organized documents, with clear and direct writing,

get ideas across quickly, and make you and your ideas look good.

>> I have to agree, and it's the same for public speaking.

I can't think how many talks I've been in where the person just goes on and on.

And, you know, sometimes, it's a tricky thing, because sometimes they're really

interesting, but even then, I want to go have a sandwich.

>> Well, you find yourself looking at your watch, right?

>> I want to get out of there.

I want to get out of there.

>> It's rude.

>> It's rude.

>> So how do we go about saving our reader time?

It's not that hard.

Future lessons in this course will give you specific techniques for

making your writing more efficient.

But in the meantime, I want you to try the next quiz.

You'll see a series of sentences, and

I'm going to ask you to edit them to make them simpler.

And in our case,

simpler just means faster, a better experience for your reader.

I want you to try to start applying this principle to your writing

before you even know any specific techniques, so

that you can see how valuable our principles of clarity and

waste no time really are, and the fact that you can start applying them now.

In the next videos, we'll discuss the concept of voice, how you write your

documents to be authoritative and present your ideas in the best possible way.

Stay tuned.

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