Week 2 Course Connect: Lesson 4: Presentation

COMPOSING A BUSINESS MESSAGE

OVERVIEW

When assigned a writing task, do you cringe at the thought of accomplishing it? Many people avoid writing because they’re overwhelmed with the thought of taking on a task that will be scrutinized so closely for meaning and quality, not unlike performing on stage.

Here is a secret: People who write well start with a plan. Composition is a three-step process that begins with planning, some of which you may not even have to write down. Understanding how to make a plan, analyze your audience, gather information, and organize your thoughts will help you compose your business message or correspondence in simper, incremental, more manageable steps. During the planning process, you determine a purpose and theme for your composition, gather and organize information, and choose your delivery medium and format.

Before writing a first draft, you will analyze your audience to be sure your message is sensitive to their needs and builds a strong relationship. After writing, you will revise, produce, proofread, and distribute your message. There are a number of things you do in the composition process besides writing, that ensure the act of writing is efficient, successful, and even short.

TOPICS

Topic 1: First Step: Planning

To plan for writing, determine your audience and purpose, gather and organize information, and select a medium.

When planning a vacation, you probably do more than simply pick a destination. You likely research places you’d like to go, the various attractions those places offer, and all the transportation options for getting from place to place. You take the time to plan your trip so you know where you’re going, what you will see and do, and how you will get there. You probably map out your itinerary before booking a flight or reserving a hotel room.

Here’s something else to think about: Your favorite television shows are typically the ones that speak directly to you, the intended audience. Writers of these shows have a message, and they know how to deliver it effectively because they know their audience inside and out: its average age, education level, socioeconomic status, and social habits. A critical part of planning is building an audience profile, just like TV writers do.

Topic 2: Second Step: Writing

Writing involves analyzing your audience, organizing your contents, and composing a first draft.

As wonderful as word processors have become, nothing beats the quality of the pen on paper. Sometimes it takes a simple, clean, familiar medium such as paper to remind you how basic the idea of writing for any audience truly is. If you’re writing to someone you know, perhaps even intimately, you proceed with an understanding of who that person is, what that person expects from you, and what methods of addressing that person yield the best results.

You make up for the lack of familiarity you have with your audience with respect. You write directly to them, using the same “you” pronouns you see in this sentence. You put yourself in your audience’s situation, having carefully considered their current needs, wants, and ideas. And you write with sincerity, which doesn’t just mean closing your correspondence with “Yours sincerely.” Write from your heart, as truthfully as with a personal letter.

Topic 3: Third Step: Completing

Revising, proofreading, and distributing your message are critical to finishing your message.

Revision is never a bad thing. Although it involves correction and proofreading, good revision is the act of taking raw material you produce in your first draft, and improving it to better emphasize the main points, to use strong and more appropriate language, and to more directly address your targeted audience. The key to strong revision is the ability to evaluate. You can’t just start from the position that everything you produce is naturally bad, or that it’s naturally good. Revision is not about you, the writer; it’s about the product and its quality. Although a word processor’s spelling and grammar checkers will help you find common typing errors like “resistence” and “deep in there pockets,” they don’t substitute for your own qualities of evaluation.

Once you get your draft properly revised, you get to do the fun part: making it look good.

SUMMARY

You’ve seen the three stages of the writing process: planning your work, followed by the actual writing part, and revision. To be accurate, the process isn’t really three equal links in a chain. About half of your time will be spent in the planning process, probably before you’ve even put word one to paper. Once you begin writing, you may soon find yourself also revising, maybe even starting over. That’s normal. Writing and revision are often interleaved. But if you’ve thoroughly planned in advance, your revisions will be succinct, and will help your final product make more sense.

Having planned your message, you then organize the information by determining your main ideas, limiting the scope of your work, choosing your approach, and outlining your content. Adapting to your audience and being sensitive to their needs is important, and you can use style, tone, and credibility to build a strong message.

Proofreading is when you (or, perhaps more appropriately, someone else) scans over your draft for proper spelling and grammar, accuracy, and good phraseology. Oftentimes a second pair of eyes will be more helpful, because once you’ve read and re-read your draft several times, it’s easy for you to read what you expect to read rather than what your eyes actually see.

For electronic distribution, you don’t just have to attach a document to an email anymore. There are business document distribution services (often affiliated with videoconference services), Web publishing platforms, and document collaboration sites.

INTRODUCTION

Planning

You probably are familiar—or even well acquainted—with the The Complete Idiot’s Guide series of books that cover hundreds of topics ranging from computer basics, Microsoft Office, chemistry, Spanish, and even playing the guitar.

How does the primary author of these “how-to” guides on various subjects produce such highly successful books? Why do these books attract thousands of readers who are eager to know more?

Well, in addition to explaining complex ideas in an engaging way, author Joe Kraynak, a successful writer who sympathizes with consumers, tries to entertain and educate. But you can bet that before Kraynak typed the first word of any of his numerous publications, he did some extensive planning! Planning is the first step in the writing process.

Planning is the foundation for writing and completing messages. If you don’t plan carefully, the final product will not meet your readers’ needs. Let’s go through the various stages of planning:

Defining Your Purpose

Let’s look at the purpose of your communication a bit more closely. You should ask several questions related to your purpose:

What do you hope to accomplish with your message? What do you want your audience to do or think after receiving the message? Will anything change as a result of your message? Is your purpose realistic? Are there ulterior motives or hidden agendas for your message? Is the timing right for your message? Is the most appropriate person delivering the message?

If your purpose is to inform, you as the communicator have more control and the audience has less participation. If your purpose is to collaborate, your audience participates more, but you have less control as the communicator.

Gathering Information

After you have analyzed your reason for communication, you are ready to gather information. The first step in gathering information is to find out what your audience wants to know. Then you can gather information to provide for your audience’s requirements.

Use the journalistic approach by answering the following questions:

Who?

What? When? Where? Why? How?

Be sure the information is tailored to the audience’s interests and needs.

Selecting a Communication Medium

After you have gathered the information for your communication, you can assess it, and determine the best method for delivering it. Learn more about selecting a communication medium:

Oral media (speaker):

Conversation Interviews Speeches In-person presentations Meetings

Written media (document):

Memos Letters Reports and proposals

Electronic media (IM or text on screen):

Telephone calls: good for internal and external communication Voice mail: good for short, unambiguous messages Teleconferencing and videoconferencing—good for informational meetings Videotapes and DVD’s: good for sending a motivational message to a large

audience Faxes: good for overcoming time-zone barriers when a hard copy is required Email: good for speedy, low-cost convenience and increased access to other

employees Instant messaging (IM): good for carrying on real-time text conversations

online Web sites and blogs: good interactive communication through hyperlinks Electronic documents: good for sending written materials over email and IM

networks or on CD-ROM

Organizing Information

After you have defined your purpose, developed an audience profile, gathered pertinent information, and decided how you will present the information, you are ready to organize the information.

To successfully organize your message, define your main idea, limit your scope, choose a direct approach, and outline your content by starting with the main idea, adding major points, and illustrating with evidence.

REVIEW

Without planning, your written communication would likely be disorganized and ineffectual. You must first analyze the situation. Is your intention to persuade, inform, or motivate your audience? This is your purpose definition.

Next, you generate an audience profile. How do you picture your audience right now? Are you speaking to one person or a plurality, and what roles do they play in their organizations or in yours? What changes do you want to make in their minds, their plans, or their goals once your message is complete?

The next steps are to gather information and do your research, basing your information on your audience requirements. You’re looking for timely, convincing, accurate, pertinent evidence, even if your only purpose is to report on the current state of affairs. Finally, organize your information by determining the main ideas, limiting your scope, approaching the topic inductively or deductively, and outlining the content.

Second Step: Writing

You’ve learned what’s involved in the planning step of the writing process, and now you are ready to bring your great ideas to life.

Great ideas deserve to be expressed in strong, powerful words, effective sentences, and coherent paragraphs that will carry your ideas to your intended audience.

But before you produce your first masterpiece, it is important to understand how you can adapt your communication to your audience.

Listen to any commercial on television, and you will recognize a familiar message: all the ads are heralding the benefits of using their product or service. Well, writing

is no different. Audiences want to know how your message will benefit them, it’s as simple as that.

Adapting to Your Audience: Becoming Sensitive to Their Needs

One of the ways you can adapt your message to your audience is to be sensitive to their needs. There are several approaches to this, and you should consider them all:

Adapting to Your Audience: Building a Strong Relationship

Adapting to your audience also means building a strong relationship with your audience by establishing your credibility and controlling your style and tone. You can control your style by using a conversational tone, plain English, and appropriate voice (active or passive).

Credibility is a measure of your believability based on how reliable you are and how much trust you evoke in others. Your audience’s response to every message you send depends heavily on their perception of your credibility. The following characteristics can help build, maintain, or even restore your believability:

Composing Your Message

Finally, you are ready to compose your message. As you compose your first draft, you should do the following:

Improve on your outline by rearranging, deleting, and adding ideas (but don’t lose sight of your purpose).

Try to let your creativity flow (don’t draft and edit at the same time).

Try to overcome writer’s block. Many techniques are proposed for overcoming writer’s block. When you experience this phenomenon, practice various techniques to see which, if any, work for you. Don’t burden yourself with negative reactions or listen to the voice of doubt. Write anyway.

Composing Your Message: Tips for Writing

Here are some helpful guidelines to think about when you’re writing:

Use grammar and punctuation correctly. Make sure you use functional words (conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and

pronouns) and content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) correctly.

Be careful with words that have multiple interpretations and are high in connotative meaning.

Try to balance your use of concrete and abstract terms to convey your meaning accurately.

Vary your use of types of sentences and sentence structure for impact and interest.

Think carefully about the right words to use for each situation, avoiding clichés and using jargon only when your audience understands and prefers it.

Organizing Your Information

Let’s next understand how to best organize your message so that it will be communicated effectively to your audience.

1. Determine your purpose: The purpose will help you decide how to organize your material.

2. Define your main idea: In light of your purpose, expand on your main idea, problem, question, or reason for the communication.

3. Limit your scope: Many effective communications get hidden by too much information or too many points. Limit the points of your message to only those that directly relate to the purpose. Scope refers to the overall length of the message, the level of detail, and the range of information you present.

4. Choose between a direct and an indirect approach: In a direct approach, start with the main idea. This could be your recommendation, your conclusion, or your actual request. A direct approach works when your audience is open to your message. An indirect approach may be appropriate when your audience

is not open to your message, and you have to build up to your request, idea, or recommendation.

5. Group your points: Consider starting with the main idea followed by major points. Then illustrate your points with examples or evidence. A well-constructed outline here can help tremendously. Common Problems of Disorganized Messages: Taking too long to get to the point Including irrelevant material Getting ideas mixed up Leaving out necessary information Not having evidence to back up points Not telling your audience the purpose Not concluding your message effectively with what you want your

audience to do or think

Sending Email Messages

You have already learned how technology can improve your business communication. Too many people think that the transitory nature of email means that email messages can be less formal, but that’s a mistake. Attention to detail and appropriateness is just as important in electronic messages as it is for any other type of business writing.

Here are some guidelines to use the next time you’re ready to send an email message:

REVIEW

In your writing, you can be sensitive to your audience by making your message positive, courteous, and bias free. To build a strong connection with your audience, you can control your style and tone and use honesty, objectivity, and credentials to establish your credibility. Make sure you’ve determined your purpose, defined your main idea, and limited your scope to maintain an effective message. Ask yourself: How will my audience benefit from my message?

Keep in mind that business email messages should be as professional and formal as business letters or other business communication. Business correspondence should include only appropriate content, be job-related, and respect the chain of command within your own organization as well as the recipients’. When composing your message, use bias-free, courteous, positive words that speak to the audience using

“you” pronouns. Remember that using plain, conversational English and establishing credibility builds a strong relationship with your audience.

INTRODUCTION

Revision is never a bad thing. Although it involves correction and proofreading, good revision is the act of taking the raw material you produce in your first draft, and improving it to better emphasize the main points, to use stronger and more appropriate language, and to more directly address your targeted audience. The key to strong revision is the ability to evaluate. You can’t just start from the position that everything you produce is naturally bad, or that it’s naturally good. Revision is not about you, the writer; it’s about the product and its quality. Although a word processor’s spelling and grammar checkers will help you find common typing errors like “resistence” and “deep in there pockets,” they don’t substitute for your own qualities of evaluation.

Once you get your draft properly revised, you get to do the fun part: making it look good.

Third Step: Four Tasks for Completion

You have composed your first draft of your message and are ready to move on to producing your message. Or are you?

There are four tasks involved in the third stage of the three-step writing process:

1. Revise the message: Evaluate content and review readability, then edit and rewrite for conciseness and clarity.

2. Produce the message: Use effective design elements and suitable for a professional appearance.

3. Proofread the message: Review for errors in layout, spelling, and mechanics.4. Distribute the message: Deliver your message using the chosen medium,

making sure that all documents and relevant files are distributed successfully.

Revising the Message

Revision is an ongoing activity that occurs throughout the writing process. In this phase, you evaluate content, review organization and readability, and then edit and rewrite for conciseness and clarity.

As you rewrite, concentrate on the following:

How each word contributes to an effective sentence

How each sentence develops a coherent paragraph How your words affect readers How to make material more interesting through the use of strong, lively

words and phrases

Revising the Message: Checklist

The revision process might seem to be labor intensive, but you will soon learn that your first draft is rarely as tight, clear, and compelling as it needs to be. If possible, put your draft aside for a day or two before you begin the revision process so that you can approach your material with a fresh eye and renewed spirit. Use this checklist when revising your message:

1. Evaluate content: a. Check—and recheck—information for accuracyb. Be sure information is relevant to your audiencec. Include enough material to satisfy reader needsd. Balance the general and the specific

2. Evaluate organization: a. Cover all points in the most logical orderb. Give important ideas the most space and the most prominent

positionsc. Be sure the organizational sequence is the most convincingd. Repeat no point unnecessarilye. Group details logically

3. Evaluate style and tone:a. Write formally enough to meet audience expectations without being

too formalb. Avoid being too casual for a serious subjectc. Emphasize the needs of the audience over your own

4. Review for readability:a. Vary sentence lengthb. Keep paragraphs short.c. Use lists and bullets to clarify and emphasized. Add headings and subheadings

5. Edit for clarity and conciseness:a. Break up long sentences and rewrite hedging onesb. Impose parallelismc. Rewrite dangling modifiersd. Reword long noun sequences and replace camouflaged verbse. Clarify sentence structure and awkward referencesf. Moderate your enthusiasmg. Delete unnecessary words and phrasesh. Shorten long words and phrasesi. Eliminate redundanciesj. Recast “it is”/”there are” starters

Keep in mind that spell checkers and grammar checkers can’t catch all spelling mistakes, and is no substitute for human editing.

Producing the Message

Now it’s time to take your hard-earned writing and put it on display. The production quality of your message can enhance or minimize its effectiveness. Production quality means the total effect of page design, graphical elements, typography, paper, and so on.Did you ever try to read an advertisement in a magazine, but the design elements were so distracting and the size of the letters in the copy were so small that you gave up on your reading and turned to the next page? If the reader can’t read the words, communication is blocked and the message is lost.

1. Visual Appeal

Fortunately, today’s word processors and other software tools can help you create impressive visuals that bring life to your text. The software for creating business visuals falls into two basic groups: presentation software and graphics software.

Presentation software creates overhead transparencies and computerized slideshows. Graphics software run the gamut from products that create simple diagrams and flowcharts to comprehensive tools geared to artists and graphic designers. Clip art (collections of uncopyrighted images) is another resource for adding visuals to your messages.

2. Adding Media

Adding sound bites and video clips to electronic documents is an exciting way to get your message across with embedded voice messages or animated images.

You can also use hypertext markup language (HTML) to insert hyperlinks into your message. Hyperlinks allow readers to jump from one part of a document to another or from one document to another with the click of a mouse.

Producing the Message: Effective Design

Effective design can help you establish the tone of your document and guide your readers through your message. For optimal readability, consider these design elements:

1. Consistency: Be consistent in your use of margins, typeface, type size, and spacing such as in paragraph indents, between columns, and around photos. The use of too many fonts, type styles, and design elements can obscure the text and detract from the message.

2. Balance: Balance the space devoted to text, artwork, and white space as much as possible. Any space free of text or artwork is considered “white space” and can be a design element.

3. Restraint: Simpler is better when it comes to the use of design elements. Too much highlighting, too many colors, or too many borders clutter your message.

4. Detail: Pay attention to details that affect your design and your message and that can be annoying to readers.

Producing the Message: Word Processors

In producing your message, most of your production work is likely to be done with a word processor such as Microsoft Word. It is a good idea to learn as much as you can about the capabilities of the program so that you can use it effectively. Know how to use the following word-processing features:

1. Templates and style sheets: Using MS Word2. Page setup3. Column formatting4. Paragraph formatting5. Font formatting6. Numbered and bulleted lists7. Tables8. Pictures, text boxes, and objects

Proofreading the Message

The next task in the writing process is proofreading your message. You might consider proofreading to be a “no-brainer”; after all, you just read over your material. You’d be surprised, however, at the mistakes made when details are overlooked.

Think about this scenario: You learn about a highly reputable company in your town that is looking to promote their services and improve their business marketing. The position requires a person with solid communication skills (both written and verbal), creativity, and attention to detail. You say to yourself, “This is a perfect opportunity for me,” and send off your resume. But you discover, too late, a typographical error in your resume. You feel terrible, but what can you do?

Let’s find out how to improve our proofreading skills so that situations like the one just described don’t happen to you.

Distributing the Message: Production Options

For single copies, you can use an inkjet or laser printer. A photocopier is useful for producing multiple copies, but for high-volume and complex reproduction, a print shop is probably the best option.

Mail merge and broadcast faxing enable you to send the same document to a large number of people.

Many companies now distribute information on CD-ROM or computer disk rather than on paper.

The Internet remains one of the most popular methods for distributing documents, but there are a number of new ways to put your message in the hands of your audience. Examples are blogs and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, a format for distributing and gathering content from sources across the Web, including newspapers, magazine, and blogs.

REVIEW

To be considered complete, your message will need to be revised, proofread, produced or rendered, and distributed. Revision includes adding, deleting, or reorganizing content to make your writing strong and lively. When revising, evaluate how your message can be improved. Remove unnecessary words, sentences, and ideas, and replace weak words with strong, interesting ones. Critically judge your draft for clarity, content, tone, organization, and readability. When appropriate, use audio and video tracks, especially in a presentation. Proofreading includes reviewing your writing for spelling, grammar, layout, and other errors that make your message unprofessional and less credible than an error-free document.

Production is the act of rendering your message in an appropriate format. You should be careful here, because for business correspondence, the rules for formatting and appearance have already been set in stone. By contrast, embedding a background photo and video into a presentation may help it stand out.

SUMMARY

You’ve seen the three stages of the writing process: planning your work, followed by the actual writing part, and revision. To be accurate, the process isn’t really three equal links in a chain. About half your time will be spent in the planning process, probably before you’ve even put word one to paper. Once you begin writing, you may soon find yourself also revising, maybe even starting over. That’s normal. Writing and revision are often interleaved. But if you’ve thoroughly planned in advance, your revisions will be succinct, and will help your final product make more sense.

Having planned your message, you then organize the information by determining your main ideas, limiting the scope of your work, choosing your approach, and outlining your content. Adapting to your audience and being sensitive to their needs is important, and you can use style, tone, and credibility to build a strong message.

Proofreading is when you (or, perhaps more appropriately, someone else) scans over your draft for proper spelling and grammar, accuracy, and good phraseology. Oftentimes a second pair of eyes will be more helpful, because once you’ve read and re-read your draft several times, it’s easy for you to read what you expect to read rather than what your eyes actually see.

For electronic distribution, you don’t just have to attach a document to an e-mail any more. There are business document distribution services (often affiliated with videoconference services), Web publishing platforms, and document collaboration sites.