What is Good Writing? | Episode 1 Video Lecture | Business Communication: The Ultimate Guide

hi and welcome to our inaugural lecture
here for BA 5 this is business
communications over at the willow
International Center and we're gonna
start here with chapter 1 this is going
to be a brief lecture just on the
content in that particular chapter and
as you've noticed going through the
first couple of pages you'll notice that
it isn't a very lengthy chapter and it
really is just a way to introduce you to
really the content of the writing
portion of this particular textbook as
you've noticed the book is divided in
between two sections we have a writing
portion and then we also have a speaking
portion so for the first probably 2/3 of
the semester we will spend on the
writing portion of this particular
chapter and that begins with us defining
what is good writing and what does it
really look like and the book I feel
lays this out fairly succinctly this
book out of all the books that I
reviewed is very very detail-oriented
but doesn't slow you down with a lot of
mundane facts and things just to
increase the length of the textbook so I
feel like it's a great resource it's a
quick read and it's a very easy read too
and one of the things that we'll go over
here is that's kind of the point of your
writing it should be fairly easy to read
it should entice readers to want to
continue and so will over the course of
this semester hopefully give you some
tools that you can use to make your
writing more appealing so the first
thing that the book covers or the
chapter I should say is talking about
this concept of plain English and we get
introduced to this concept and we show
or worse taught that plain English
really is not necessarily a simplistic
third grade style of writing instead
it's really the way that most
professionals even those that are in or
out of business should actually write
and it actually is the style of writing
that most people would prefer to read in
the bpe as its referred to or commonly
known to as before plain English is very
bureaucratic it's very difficult to read
it's it's used by people who
almost in a sense want to prove how
intellectual they are by using big words
and having these completely huge
sentences that are very very difficult
to read and the whole point of
communication especially if you're
trying to convey something is really to
get that point across and if you're
communicating in a way that people can't
understand then really you're not doing
anything you're wasting your time and so
a big component of this class is trying
to find okay who is our audience
identifying who it is that we're
speaking to and then ultimately crafting
our message so that we can get our point
across now if you're dealing with a very
technical type subject matter with
professionals and experts in that field
then maybe technical speak is is okay
but for the most part you're not really
speaking to professionals in a
particular area or speaking to everyday
people that may not have the expertise
so it's important to use plain English
to ultimately get your point across now
let's talk about playing English for a
second here plain English encompasses
doing a few of the following things and
these are outlined in the chapter and I
just want to go over these in a little
bit of detail here in a few minutes the
first of these is you want to make your
main point easy to find this is contrary
to before plain English some writing
styles encourage you to provide any type
of documentation up front and then
ultimately reach a conclusion that's
kind of the whole point of maybe like a
research type paper where you provide
your findings you try to remain as
objective as possible and then
ultimately based on your findings you
reach a particular conclusion and that's
a certain way of writing and business
writing that isn't the best thing to do
because remember you're dealing with
people that have very very
time-sensitive schedules they have a lot
of things going on and they don't
necessarily want to go through your 10
page document to figure out what your
main point is so with business writing
you want to make your main point up
front within the first couple sentences
if not
first paragraph it should be front and
center so that the reader will know
ultimately where you're going and then
can decide based upon your main point if
they want to continue reading and in
terms of your writing after your main
point you're gonna provide all the
documentation to go ahead and basically
support what you're trying to say or
what your main idea is so that's very
very important the second part of
following plain English involves writing
the way you talk and this is contrary
the way that you're really taught in
school we're kind of taught to write
very legalistically to follow all these
different types of rules and all the
rules regarding grammar and spelling
punctuation all these different things
and it really forms us to be very rigid
and we don't have a great deal of
flexibility and we feel like we need to
write in a specific bureaucratic type
way which comes off is very stuffy in my
opinion and really I find that the best
papers and the ones that I find that are
most interesting and the easiest to read
are the ones that are written in a way
that people will communicate you know
everyone listening to this lecture is
fairly articulate and most likely to
convey a message in person fairly well
but the second you start writing
something on paper you instantly try to
start making the information being
conveyed it sound more important in
using different words and using
thesauruses and those types of things
and really if you just write the way you
talk then people would probably want to
read what you're writing and I don't
mean that necessarily writing the way
you would speak if you were to use slang
I mean there is a certain code of some
type of professionalism and obviously as
a business type class you want to
present yourself in a professional way
but what I do mean by that is using the
same type of words that you would use in
an everyday conversation and not using
words like succinctly or parsimonious or
all those different things that are
going to cause people to scratch their
heads and kind of look for a thesaurus
and you want them to read your writing
right you don't want them to be looking
up words trying to find out what it is
you're trying to say the next thing is
using good layout and layout is really
what
draw your readers attention to certain
things if you were to write a one-page
paper you wouldn't want to put it in
basically one paragraph because that's
not very appealing if I'm a reader and I
look at that not an ounce of me wants to
actually read what's on that it's very
intimidating because it's just a solid
block of text and you need to have some
kind of white on the pages because it
makes things easier to read and it makes
things more appealing now but you want
to use things like headings for example
because headings when you have things
underlined and bold faced will draw a
reader's attention to certain areas and
it's important that you draw their
attention to things that ultimately you
want them to see things that you find
are important things that you want to
convey it's also important to use bullet
points and people don't use them often
enough but I think that they're
fantastic especially if you're trying to
convey a large amount of information and
you don't want to necessarily write it
all out in a sentence format you can use
bullet points to explain the information
fairly quickly but also in a way that's
easy for the reader to actually view as
opposed to one big block of text it's
spread out amongst different bullet
points and if you're concerned about
doing these types of things and feel
like I'm brushing over them in terms of
the how-to practical aspect really don't
be because we're gonna spend at least I
would say the next 9 to 10 weeks or so
on crafting your skills in these
particular areas so we will go over
sentence structure we will go over using
bullet points so hopefully after this
course and after reviewing these
lectures you will be able to have you
know more confidence with regards to
your writing but also greater skills to
go along with that confidence of course
as well the last thing I will say with
regards to layout is the use of graphics
and graphics are a way to really convey
your message without using text and we
all know that reading sometimes isn't
the best way for people to comprehend
things a lot of times it's audio which
is the reason that I record these types
of lectures because I don't feel that
necessarily
students learn best by reading a book
but you can also use graphics you can
use tables and charts and different
things to help convey information if
you're trying to compare data it makes a
lot more sense to have a graph rather
than explaining it in a paragraph form
because it just doesn't make as much
sense I can look at a graph and
instantly draw conclusions versus
reading an entire page of text to kind
of draw those same conclusions so real
quick the book very succinctly and very
clearly outlines a difference between
plain English verses before plain
English and so what I want to do is I
have those those excerpts posted here in
this slide deck I just want to go
through those just show the compare and
contrast between the two and you're
really gonna see just the difference
between using plain English and using
what the book refers to as before plain
English so this would be an example of
before plain English and this is with
regards to a government regulation
working in education and for a state-run
institution I have the opportunity
unfortunately to have a lot of exposure
to this type of speech and it really for
one is very intimidating to read but two
it kind of leaves you scratching your
head trying to figure out ultimately
what you read and it's very very just
counterproductive in my opinion but
unfortunately it's something that's
really plagued the education system for
quite some time I will go through and
read this just briefly for you what it
says is examinations of bids by
interested persons shall be permitted if
it does not interfere unduly with the
conduct of government business original
bids shall not be allowed to pass out of
the hands of government officials unless
a duplicate bid is not available for
public inspection the original bid may
be examined by the public only under the
immediate supervision of a government
official and under conditions that
preclude the possibility of substitution
addition deletion or alteration in the
bid now many of you probably read that
and understand what the point is and
it's not fairly difficult to get there
it's just the way that we got there was
a little interesting if I would say that
the lease
because of the fact that there's a lot
of text there and really what we're
trying to say is you can't get a dub
duplicate bid unless there's one that's
not available and if you want to review
one there has to be somebody present to
make sure you don't Forge anything
that's really what this thing what this
passage is trying to say but you look at
this the amount of text here and you see
just the way that they're conveying the
message it's very stuffy very rigid very
impersonal and that really is embodies
what before plain English writing is and
chances are you've seen a lot of this
over the years and may even use it in
your writing and that's okay because we
all tend to default to this type of
writing unfortunately but it isn't the
best way to write now contrast that to
or compare that with this the same
excerpt that's actually translated into
plain English and as you can see here
just instantly you know there's a lot
less words fairly enough so I'll read
this here briefly and we'll kind of go
through it it says can you look at a
copy of another company's bid yes if
there's no undue interference with
government business if a copy isn't
available you can look at an original
bid in that case a government official
must be present to make sure no one
tampers with it fairly simple fairly
straightforward if you were to ask
someone who worked in this department
you know about this particular question
if you can copy someone else's bid this
is probably the answer they would give
you in person verbally so why not use
this in your writing because it's easy
to read and so these this is a good
comparison between the two formats here
we're gonna spend some time converting
passages that are written in before
plain English to plain English you're
gonna get some practice with this but I
just want you to see kind of what it
entails all right we're gonna end here
with just a brief kind of discussion of
what is good writing and and good
writing is a couple of different things
good writing one doesn't necessarily
follow all of the rules there are a lot
of rules that have been passed down over
the years more most common ones are not
being able
start sentences with the word and or the
word but which you can shocking to know
but you can actually do that but my
point being is there are a lot of rules
that have been made up that you don't
necessarily need to follow there are
some very important ones that are that
are fairly concrete but there are some
that really are just someone's opinion
for the most part but also following all
of the rules doesn't necessarily mean
that you're gonna have good writing
because you can have very bureaucratic
type writing that someone can't read and
I wouldn't classify something that just
because it follows the rules is good
writing if no one can understand it so
that piece is very very important good
writing is also easy to read um that
should go without saying someone should
be able to pick that piece of paper or
look at that computer screen and read
whatever document is posted and
instantly be able to understand it but
also in a way that's you know fairly
relaxed type feel and can read it fairly
easily that's very very important that
the the purpose of business writing is
to convey a message
we don't write just for fun right we
have a lot of things to do in business
and we write for the purpose of giving
information and so if we want to convey
that message without having to you know
have a reply message asking us to
clarify err getting a phone call to
clarify we need to write in a way that's
easy to read right off the bat to
eliminate those conversations it just
frees you up to ultimately do what you
want to do I mentioned this before but
I'll reiterate because it is important
is that you want to understand your
target audience because you want to
write to their level like I said if you
have a fairly technical audience you
have experts in the field maybe you're
writing something with regards to
medical briefing and you're talking to a
panel of doctors then you can use fairly
technical wording because they
understand it but if you're
communicating that same information to a
group of college students maybe that
isn't the same the reason isn't the best
idea because they may not be familiar
with a technical language that you're
going to use so that is very
important to not use that technical
language because you're gonna alienate
some of your listeners and some of your
readers and the last thing is that good
writing is something that people want to
pick up and read I'm having the
opportunity to do a lot of hiring over
the years I've looked at hundreds if not
thousands of applications resumes cover
letters and things like that and I can
tell you that good formatting is the key
to your resume or cover letter getting
looked at longer than 10 or 15 seconds
because of the fact that people look at
so many of these things that you need to
stand out in that first 10 to 15 seconds
to ultimately get the reader to commit
to looking at the rest of the document
which of course is the good stuff right
they don't even get to the good things
because they're so concerned with just
how the document looks and how
unappealing it is that they may not even
look it and see all your good
qualifications and education background
and things like that
so the look of something is important it
is very very crucial although you can
say you shouldn't judge a book by its
cover that is very very true but people
make impressions very very quickly
within the first 10 to 15 seconds you
know people make impressions all the
time the second that we started this
recording you likely made impressions of
me based upon my voice based upon the
PowerPoint slides based upon the
technology that we're using and that's
okay because everyone does it but
understanding that you want to make sure
that ultimately you're putting your best
foot forward and you want to make sure
and gain their interest at the very
beginning so that ultimately they can
read the rest of your writing because
you know it's gonna be good you just
want to make sure and gain their
attention at the beginning all right
that covers everything I wanted to touch
on in this brief lecture here we will
have subsequent lectures posted and I'll
make those available to you as we
continue throughout the course of the
semester