Chapter-5

Test Knowledge:
1. What is meant by the “you” attitude?

Answer: The “you” attitude is best implemented by expressing your message in terms of the
audience’s interests and needs.

2. Why is it important to establish your credibility when communicating with an audience

of strangers?

Answer: It is very important to establish credibility when communicating with an audience

of strangers. When one communicate with anyone outside organization, it is more than a
conversation between two individuals. One will represent the company and therefore play a
vital role in helping the company build and maintain positive relationships with all its
stakeholders. Most successful companies work hard to foster a specific public image, and
your external communication efforts need to project that image. As part of this responsibility,
the interests and preferred communication style of company must take
precedence over one’s own views and personal communication style.

3. In what three situations is the passive voice appropriate?

Answer: The three situations where the passive voice is appropriate-

 to soften bad news

 to put yourself in the background

 to create an impersonal tone

4. How does an abstract word differ from a concrete word?

Answer: Words vary dramatically in their degree of abstraction or concreteness. An abstract

word expresses a concept, quality, or characteristic. Abstractions are usually broad,
encompassing a category of ideas, and they are often intellectual, academic, or philosophical.
Love, honor, progress, tradition, and beauty are abstractions, as are such important business
concepts as productivity, profits, quality, and motivation.

In contrast, a concrete word stands for something you can touch, see, or visualize. Most
concrete terms are anchored in the tangible, material world. Chair, table, horse, rose, kick,
red, green are concrete words; they are direct, clear, and exact.
5. How does the denotative meaning of a word differ from its connotative meaning?

Answer: A word may have both a denotative and a connotative meaning. The denotative
meaning is the literal, or dictionary, meaning. The connotative meaning includes all the
associations and feelings evoked by the word.
The denotative meaning of desk is “a piece of furniture with a flat work surface and
various drawers for storage.” The connotative meaning of desk may include thoughts
associated with work or study, but the word desk has fairly neutral connotations—neither
strong nor emotional.

However, some words have much stronger connotations than others and should be used
with care. For example, the connotations of the word fail are negative and can carry strong
emotional meaning.

6. How can you use sentence style to emphasize key thoughts?

Answer: One can use sentence style to emphasize key thoughts by-

 Devoting more words to them

 Putting them at the beginning or at the end of the sentence

 Making them the subject of the sentence

7. How can topic sentences help readers?

Answer: An effective paragraph deals with a single topic, and the sentence that introduces
that topic is called the topic sentence. In informal and creative writing, the topic sentence
may be implied rather than stated. In business writing, the topic sentence is generally explicit
and is often the first sentence in the paragraph. The topic sentence gives readers a summary
of the general idea that will be covered in the rest of the paragraph.

In addition to helping readers, topic sentences help as a writer because they remind of the
purpose of each paragraph and thereby encourage staying focused.

8. What function do transitions serve?

Answer: Transitional functions include

 Connecting words (conjunctions)

 Repeated words or phrases

 Pronouns
  Words that are frequently paired

9. What software functions can you use to make it easy to reuse blocks of text across
multiple documents?

Answer: Boilerplate can be used to make it easy to reuse blocks of text across multiple
documents. Boilerplate refers to a standard block of saved text that is reused in multiple
documents. Moving beyond simple text blocks, some systems can store fully formatted
document components such as cover pages and sidebars.