Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Unit 2: The Writing Process in The Digital Era
Unit 2: The Writing Process in The Digital Era
1
Chapter 5
Organizing and Drafting Business Messages
Guffey/Loewy, Business Communication: Process and Product, 9 th Edition. © 2018 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May not be
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scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Informal Research Methods
1. Search company digital or other files.
2. Talk with the boss.
3. Interview the target audience.
4. Receiver decodes message
5. Conduct an informal survey.
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Formal Research Methods
1. Access data electronically.
2. Search manually.
3. Investigate primary sources.
4. Conduct scientific experiments.
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Social Media Brainstorming
Crowdsourcing: Requests that online crowd supply ideas or services.
Begin underline End underline
Begin underline Crowdstorming: Requires crowd to evaluate and filter the ideas into a viable product or plan.
End underline
business venture.
E.g., the Veronica Mars or Lazer Team movie projects
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Grouping Ideas to Show Relationships
• Group similar ideas.
• Organize into lists or outlines.
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Tips for Efficient Outlining
• Define the main topic (purpose of message) in the title.
• Divide the main topic into 3 to 5 major components.
• Break major component into exclusive subpoints (no overlapping).
• Use details, illustrations, and evidence subpoints.
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Achieve Variety With Four Sentence Types (1 of 2)
1. Simple Sentence (one independent clause)
Jade just graduated.
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Achieve Variety With Four Sentence Types (2 of 2)
3. Complex (one independent and one dependent clause)
Before she applied for a job,
Jade prepared a résumé.
4. Compound-complex (two independent clauses and one dependent
clause)
Before she applied for a job, Jade prepared a résumé; in addition, she
posted a LinkedIn profile.
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be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Three Common Sentence Faults (1 of 3)
1. Avoid fragments (broken-off parts of sentence).
Fragment:
E-mail seems boring. When compared with Twitter.
Revision:
E-mail seems boring when compared with Twitter.
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be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Three Common Sentence Faults (2 of 3)
2. Avoid run-ons (two independent clauses without coordinating
conjunction or semicolon)
Run-on:
He’s addicted to social media he posts updates constantly.
Revision:
He’s addicted to social media, and he posts updates constantly.
Revision:
He’s addicted to social media; he posts updates constantly.
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Achieving Emphasis (2 of 3)
Label the main idea.
Unlabeled Labeled
Explore the possibility of Explore the possibility of leasing a
leasing a site, but also hire a site, but, most importantly, hire a
consultant. consultant.
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Achieving Emphasis (3 of 3)
Emphasize the most important idea by placing it first or last in a simple
sentence and by making it the sentence subject.
Unemphatic Emphatic
Labor lawyers say that Most internship programs are illegal if
companies should review their interns are not paid.
internship programs because
most often they are illegal if
interns are not being paid for
their work.
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Using Active and Passive Voice Effectively (1 of 2)
Use active-voice verbs for clear expression.
We lost money.
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Using Active and Passive Voice Effectively (2 of 2)
Indirect and Less Clear in Direct and More Clear in Active
Passive Voice Voice
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Use Passive Voice to Emphasize the Action, Not
the Doer
Less Tactful in Active More Tactful in Passive Voice
Voice
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Use Parallelism to Achieve Balance
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Avoid Dangling Modifiers
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Drafting Effective Paragraphs (1 of 4)
Arrange paragraphs in one of these plans:
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Drafting Effective Paragraphs (2 of 4)
To build paragraph coherence, link ideas with one of these techniques:
Sustain the key idea by repeating a key expression or a similar word
throughout a paragraph.
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be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Drafting Effective Paragraphs (3 of 4)
To build paragraph coherence, link ideas with one of these techniques:
Dovetail sentences by connecting the beginning of each new sentence with a
word from the end of the previous sentence.
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Drafting Effective Paragraphs (4 of 4)
To build paragraph coherence, link ideas with one of these techniques:
Use a pronoun in one sentence to refer to a noun in the previous sentence.
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End
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