Complete messages

Revise
Produce
Proofread
Distribute
Writing Messages
Adapt to Your Audience
Compose the Message

Planning Message
Analyze Situation
Gather Information
Choose Medium and Channel
Organize the Information
The more you use the three-step process, the more intuitive
and automatic it will become.
Set aside roughly 50 percent of that time for planning, 25
percent for writing, and 25 percent for completing
Reserving half your time for planning might seem excessive,
but as the next section explains, careful planning usually
saves time overall by focusing your writing and reducing
rework.
As soon as the need to create a message appears, inexperienced communicators
are tempted to dive directly into writing. However, skipping or shortchanging the
planning stage often creates extra work and stress later in the process.
 Defining Your Purpose
Purpose helps define the overall approach you’ll need to take. Within the scope
of its general purpose, each message also has a specific purpose, which
identifies what you hope to accomplish with the message.
Developing An Audience Profile
The more you know about your audience members and their needs and
expectations, the more effectively you’ll be able to communicate with them.
Will anything change as a result of your message?
Is your purpose realistic?
Is the time right?
Is your purpose acceptable to your organization?
Identify your primary audience
Determine audience size and geographic distribution
Determine audience composition
Gauge audience members’ level of understanding
Understand audience expectations and preferences
Forecast probable audience reaction
Consider the audience’s perspective
Listen to the community
Read Reports and other company
Talk with supervisors, colleagues, or customers
Ask your audience for input
In many situations, your audience’s information needs will be obvious,
or readers will be able to tell you what they need. In other situations,
though, people may be unable to articulate exactly what they want.
In addition, try to think of relevant information needs that your
audience may not have expressed.
You may encounter situations in which the assignment or objective is
so vague that you have no idea how to get started in determining
what the audience needs to know. In such cases, you can use some
discovery techniques to help generate ideas and uncover possible
avenues to research.
 Be Sure the Information Is Accurate
The quality of the information you provide is every bit as important as the
quantity. Inaccurate information in business messages can cause a host of
problems, from embarrassment and lost productivity to serious safety and
legal issues
Be Sure the Information Is Ethical
By working hard to ensure the accuracy of the information you gather, you’ll
also avoid many ethical problems in your messages
Be Sure the Information Is Pertinent
When gathering information for your message, remember that some points will
be more important to your audience than others. Audience members will
appreciate your efforts to prioritize the information they need and filter out the
information they don’t. Moreover, by focusing on the information that concerns
your audience the most, you increase your chances of accomplishing your own
communication goals.
With the necessary information in hand, your next decision involves the best
combination of media and channels to reach your target audience. The simplest
way to categorize media choices is to divide them into oral (spoken), written,
and visual. Each of these media can be delivered through digital and nondigital
channels, which creates six basic combinations
Screen size and resolution
Input technologies
Bandwidth, speeds, and connectivity limitations
Data usage and operational costs
Richness
Formality
Media and channel limitations
Urgency
Cost
Audience preferences
Security and privacy
The ability to organize messages effectively is a skill that helps audiences and
writers alike. Good organization helps the receivers of your message in three
ways:
It helps them understand your message
It helps them accept your message
It saves your audience time
Finding a common thread through all these points can be a challenge.
Sometimes you won’t even be sure what your main idea is until you sort
through the information. For tough assignments like these, consider a
variety of techniques to define your main idea:
Brainstorming
Journalistic approach
Question-and-answer chain
Storyteller’s tour
Mind mapping
The scope of your message is the range of information you present,
the overall length, and the level of detail—all of which need to
correspond to your main idea. The length of some business messages
has a preset limit, whether from a boss’s instructions, the
medium/channel you’re using, or a time frame (such as speaker slots
during a seminar). Even if you don’t have a preset length, always limit
yourself to the scope needed to convey your main idea and whatever
supporting information it requires.
 The direct approach starts with the main idea (such as a
recommendation, a conclusion, or a request) and follows that with
supporting points and evidence
The indirect approach starts with reasoning, evidence, and
background information and builds up to the main idea.
Most of your routine business communication efforts will use the direct
approach. The indirect approach is most frequently used in three
situations:
When your audience is likely to have a skeptical or hostile reaction
to your main idea
When you need to convey significantly negative information, or
When you want to persuade people to take action or make a
decision
After you have chosen the best approach, it’s time to figure out the
most logical and effective way to present your major points and
supporting details. For anything beyond simple, short messages, get
into the habit of creating outlines. You’ll save time, get better results,
and do a better job of navigating through complicated business
situations.
Be sure to identify your
main idea, major
supporting points, and
the evidence and
examples that will help
you express the main
idea in a compelling
way.
Storytelling is an effective
way to organize many
business messages
because it helps readers
personalize the message
and understand causes
and consequences.
Career-related stories,
such as how someone
pursued the opportunity to
work on projects he or she
is passionate about, can
entice skilled employees to
consider joining a firm.
Using the “You” Attitude
Maintaining Standards of Ettiquette
Emphasizing The Positive
Using Bias-free Language
Instead this:
Tuesday is the only day Using this:
that we can promise quick
response to purchase
order requests. We are
swamped the rest of the
week
At Construction Resources,
we are proud to supply the
highest-rated engineered
wood in the entire Midwest
If you need a quick response,
please submit your purchase
order requests on Tuesday
Ensure the integrity of your
building projects with the
highest-rated engineered
wood in the entire Midwest
Instead this:
Once again, you’ve managed
to bring down the website
through your incompetent
programming
You’ve been sitting on our
order for two weeks, and we
need it now!
Using this:
Let’s review the last website
update to explore ways to
improve the process
Our production schedules
depend on timely delivery of
parts and supplies, but we
have not yet received the
order scheduled for delivery
two weeks ago. Please
respond today with a firm
delivery commitment
Instead this: Using this:
It is impossible to repair Your computer can be ready
your laptop today by Tuesday. Would you like a
We wasted $300,000 loaner until then?
advertising in that Our $300,000 advertising
magazine investment did not pay off;
let’s analyze the experience
and apply the insights to
future campaigns
Bias-free language avoids
words and phrases that
unfairly and even
unethically categorize or
stigmatize people
Gender bias
Racial and ethnic bias
Age bias
Disability bias
Successful communication relies on a positive relationship between sender and
receiver. Establishing your credibility and projecting your company’s image are
two vital steps in building and fostering positive business relationships
Audience responses to your messages depend heavily on your
credibility, a measure of your believability based on how reliable you
are and how much trust you evoke in others. With audiences who don’t
know and trust you already, you need to establish credibility before
they’ll accept your messages. To build, maintain, or repair your
credibility, emphasize the following characteristics:
Honesty
Objectivity
Awareness of audience needs
Credentials, knowledge, and expertise
Endorsements
Performance
Sincerity
In addition, audiences Instead this:
need to know that you
believe in yourself
and your message. If
you lack faith in
yourself, you’re likely
to communicate an
uncertain attitude that
undermines your
credibility
Using this:
We hope this We’re pleased to make
recommendation will this recommendation
be helpful By extending your
We trust that you’ll service contract, you
want to extend your can continue to enjoy
service contract top-notch performance
from your equipment
Your communication style involves the choices you make to express yourself:
the words you select, the manner in which you use those words in sentences,
and the way you build paragraphs from individual sentences. Your style creates
a certain tone, or overall impression, in your messages. The right tone depends
on the nature of your message and your relationship with the reader.
A conversational tone is
warm but businesslike and
emphasizes plain, clear
language; it is not too
formal and not too casual
An important aspect of creating a conversational tone is using plain
language (or plain English specifically when English is involved). Plain
language presents information in a simple, unadorned style that lets
audiences grasp your meaning quickly and easily.
Careful writers pay close attention to using the right words for every
situation and using them correctly. For the most part, English words
have widely agreed-on meanings and well-established standards for
how they should be used. However, the rules of grammar and usage
can be a source of worry for writers because some rules are complex
and others are in a state of flux that creates uncertainty
In active voice, the subject
performs the action and
the object receives the
action; in passive voice,
the subject receives the
action
After you have decided how to adapt to your audience, you’re ready to begin
composing your message. As you write your first draft, let your creativity flow.
Don’t try to draft and edit at the same time, and don’t worry about getting
everything perfect. Make up words if you can’t think of the right ones, draw
pictures, or talk out loud—do whatever it takes to get the ideas out of your head
and onto your computer screen or a piece of paper
Choose strong, precise
words
Choose familiar words
Avoid clichés, and use
buzzwords carefully
Use jargon carefully
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, which are neutral—neither strong nor emotional.
However, some words have much stronger connotations than others
and should be used with care.
An abstract word expresses a concept, quality, or characteristic.
Abstractions are usually broad, encompassing a category of ideas, and
are often intellectual, academic, or philosophical. Love, honor,
progress, tradition, and beauty are abstractions, as are such
important business concepts as efficiency, quality, and motivation. In
contrast, a concrete word stands for something you can touch, see, or
visualize
Arranging your carefully chosen words in effective sentences is the next step in
creating powerful messages. Start by selecting the best type of sentence to
communicate each point you want to make.
Simple sentence: A simple sentence has one main clause. Ex:
Profits increased 35 percent in the past year.
Compound Sentence: A compound sentence has two main clauses.
Ex: Wages declined by 5 percent, and employee turnover has been
high
Complex Sentence: A complex sentence has one main clause and
one subordinate clause. Ex: Although you may question Gerald’s
conclusions, you must admit that his research is thorough
Compound-Complex Sentence: A compound-complex sentence
has two main clauses and at least one dependent clause. Ex:
Profits increased 35 percent in the past year, so although the
company faces long-term challenges, I agree that its short-term
prospects look quite positive
Emphasize specific parts of sentences 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
The best placement of the dependent clause depends on the
relationship between the ideas in the sentence
Paragraphs organize sentences related to the same general topic. Readers
expect every paragraph to be unified—focusing on a single topic—and coherent
—presenting ideas in a logically connected way. By carefully arranging the
elements of each paragraph, you help your readers grasp the main idea of your
document and understand how the specific pieces of support material back up
that idea.
Paragraphs vary widely in length and form, but a typical paragraph
contains three basic elements:
Topic Sentence
The topic sentence gives readers a summary of the general idea that
will be covered in the rest of the paragraph
Support Sentence
Support sentences explain, justify, or extend the idea presented in the
topic sentence
Transition
Transitions connect ideas by showing how one thought is related to
another. They also help alert the reader to what lies ahead so that
shifts and changes don’t cause confusion.
Five ways to develop
paragraphs:
Illustration
Comparison or contrast
Cause and effect
Classification
Problem and solution
One obvious adaptation to make for audiences using mobile devices is
to modify the design and layout of your messages to fit smaller screen
sizes and different user interface features. Use these five techniques
to make your mobile messages more effective:
Use a linear organization
Prioritize information
Write shorter and more-focused messages and documents
Use shorter subject lines and headings
Use short paragraphs