The Business Writing Skills self-study course will teach you how to write clear, professional letters, emails, memos, and reports. The course materials contain easy-to-understand explanations and a large number of examples so you can learn the skills on your own. It is divided into lessons, like a college course. You have access to the course materials for as long as you want to use them. The Business Writing Center will record your completion of lessons and notify you or a manager that you have submitted the forms showing that you completed all of the lessons.
Because the self-study courses have no instructor contact, you will not receive a graduation certificate. If you want instructor contact and a graduation certificate, you should enroll in BWC210.
Course Content
Set goals.
Choose strategies based on the goals and readers.
Prepare notes for your email, memo, letter, or report.
Use special organizational patterns for some messages.
Write a clear, complete introduction.
For emails, letters, and memos, write a cordial beginning or buffer.
State the contents.
For reports, state conclusions and recommendations in the introduction.
Check each block for focus.
Check each block for completeness.
Use headings to open blocks.
Create lists.
For reports, write clear, complete, relevant explanations.
Write concisely.
Write clear, simple, active-voice sentences.
For reports, write clearly and simply for non-technical readers.
Use words the reader will understand.
Proofread.
Format the email to be readable.