That being said, even the most logical route will not be enough if we don’t give clear directions to the reader on what to expect next on the pathway. Organizing my thoughts was something I certainly had to be reminded to do even in graduate school and I continue to remind myself regularly when I write. Maybe a meme about making an outline first would be handy. It is fairly common for inexperienced writers to just put their thoughts down as they are thinking without ever trying to organize them ahead of time. Make sure that one section leads to the next. Of course headings only really make sense if they are configured in line with #3 Follow a Logical Path.
Just use bold, not italic or underline and for goodness sake don’t use a combination (horrors). Making the heading stand out is good but don’t overdo it. No time for flowery prose here – make headings obvious with very few words that say exactly the focus of a particular section. Remember speed as a principle? The reader needs to be able to “glance” through a memo, letter, or document and pick out important information. This leads us to #2: Succinct Section Headings Thanks to the computer age, single spacing also comes hand-in-hand with the use of left-alignment and no paragraph indent (replaced by a single line space to designate a new paragraph (ah more white space). White space (the parts of the page that do not contain text, make the text easier to read). Single-spacing will take up less pages but it also has to come with shorter paragraphs to create what is called white space.
OK, no problem, but of course this does not stand alone. #1: Single (not double) spacing is the default With these principles in mind, these ten memes just might help us remember. Given the need for speed in the business world, the message has to be succinct, accurate for the audience, with high readability (ease of understanding the main message), and ultimately bring a positive result. A new concept for our post-secondary level writers. No time to waste trying to figure out the “bottom line” as they say. Workplace (aka business/technical) writing is about speed.The academic practice of double-spacing is also meant for “corrections” and publisher notes.In our very first experiences with writing we learn to give lots of space between letters and sentences so that our rough attempts can more easily be read and corrected.Why are these things so difficult to remember? My guess is that it come from three understandable places – thus why we teach such a class: These ten are not the entire list but let’s not get too heavy here, right?
BUT THATS NONE OF MY BUSINESS MEME WASTE PROFESSIONAL
Having just completed teaching our Professional Report Writing course, CMNS 251, I am reminded once again of ten common business writing practices that many of the learners in the course need to have reinforced several times throughout a semester before they seem to stick.
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