How to Prepare Written and Spoken Messages | Episode 29 Video Lecture | Business Communication: The Ultimate Guide

well if you remember where we left off
previously we were discussing how to
plan for both spoken and written
messages and we're gonna pick right back
up where we left and we're gonna
continue with how to prepare both spoken
and written messages if you remember
from last time we specifically discussed
determining the purpose for our message
as well as selecting the appropriate
channel we talked about envisioning the
audience as well as adapting our message
to the needs and the concerns of our
audience and then lastly we discussed
how to organize our messages now we're
going to continue with actually
preparing those messages themselves so
we're gonna go from the the planning
phase in which we're trying to gather
information determining the
appropriateness of our channel how we're
going to communicate that whether or not
we're going to use deductive or
inductive reasoning when we're writing
our actual our actual work but we're
gonna go ahead and we're actually gonna
start crafting the body of our message
essentially either if it's spoken or if
it's written and this is an important
part obviously because this dictates
what the message is and so there's two
steps that are encompassed in this the
first of which is preparing the first
draft and the reason I say preparing the
first draft is because many times in
writing you have multiple drafts
particularly if you're writing formal
business type reports usually the first
thing that you put down on paper the
first thing that you type into your
computer isn't the finished product
usually it's a process that you go
through to consistently tweak and change
certain things and polish up your
writing the same thing if you've ever
delivered any type of presentations in
public whether they're in a business
type setting or or not necessarily in a
business setting usually when you're
trying to craft the speaking points that
you're going to mention that usually
there's things that change over the
course of when you're practicing the
actual delivery piece you find certain
things don't really sound right and you
want to add certain content maybe
something isn't necessary and so it's
completely fine for the first thing that
we put on paper to not necessarily be
the end result in fact that's the right
idea that's actually preferred
so there's a couple of things I want to
discuss with regards to these two steps
here that should give you a little more
information in terms of how to improve
ultimately your written and spoken
communication so the first of which I
have here is a rapid versus deliberate
writing there's a lot of change or
different schools of thought with
regards to how people should write you
have the the camp that suggests that
rapid writing is preferred in that case
the goal is to just simply put words on
paper to start typing because it's only
always easier to go ahead and and make
revisions later on as opposed to trying
to make sure that we get everything
right the first time
and then there's the camp that proposes
that deliberate writing is more ideal
that doing things right the first time
saves you a lot of headache later on
personally I feel that rapid writing is
appropriate for a majority of situations
and I say a majority because a lot of
times there are time constraints that
don't allow you to prepare multiple
drafts if that's the case then
deliberate writing would be more
appropriate because you're making sure
and you're you're producing a quality
product the first time because you don't
necessarily have the luxury of producing
multiple drafts and a lot of times
especially in the business world that's
really how it works but if we do have
the opportunity to take the time and
review a rapid writing would be
preferred because this helps prevent
what we were often referred to as
writer's block where we simply can't
think of what to say
because we're literally just putting
things on paper with the mindset that
it's always easier to come back and edit
the document rather than try to create
something entirely from scratch and I'm
not sure if you've actually tried this
practice before I have and have had a
lot of success with it so I can
personally vouch for it because I too
sometimes struggle with trying to trying
to communicate something especially if
it's in writing and I have some trouble
kind of figuring what I want to
communicate and once I have something on
paper and I pick it back up and review
it the next day it's always easier to
make those changes and to to kind of
move forward with it at least for myself
and you may be different but I've had a
lot of a lot of success using that type
of style with the the rapid writing
style making changes later on and this
allows you every time you look at it you
have a fresh perspective you've got a
fresh set of eyes and so usually what
you do is you spot some errors you spot
different ways of wording something as a
way of communicating more effectively
which is ideal obviously the next thing
you need to consider is writing with an
active voice we write a lot in what we
refer to as passive voices and I'll give
you an example of what this is an active
voice is written where the actor in the
sentence is actually doing something
okay they're actually doing something so
for example if I were to say Dave washed
the car okay the actor in this sentence
is obviously Dave Dave is doing
something he's washing the car okay if I
were to convert this to a passive voice
I would say something along the lines of
the car was washed by Dave now in this
in this new sentence the actor is
obviously the car but the car isn't
really doing anything it's just sitting
there it's actually getting washed by
someone else and so that is an example
of what a passive voice would be when
you're crafting a sentence now passive
voices aren't necessarily bad all the
time the problem is is when we tend to
over rely on them it changes the style
of our writing it makes it very
difficult to read makes it very
bureaucratic almost stuffy which can be
very difficult for someone to read and
remember if the purpose of our writing
is to try to communicate something so
that someone will understand what it is
that we're saying then we ultimately
want to make it easy for the other
person
to understand what our message is and so
if you can writing in an active voice is
is much more preferred it makes your
writing easier to understand then
obviously writing in a passive voice so
do so and that will definitely improve
the readability of your writing now the
next thing is using contractions and we
people go back and forth on using
contractions you know we use them a lot
when we speak obviously because it's a
lot more efficient and it just sounds it
seems to flow more naturally but we
don't necessarily use them in writing
and I don't know why personally because
really the whole purpose of writing is
we should and I say should because we
don't but I say should we should write
the way that we speak ultimately because
that is what's gonna communicate more
effectively but oftentimes when we write
we try to think well what are the
biggest words that I can use how can i
impress the other person with the breath
of my grammar and all the different
words that I know now what once again if
we're looking at it from the standpoint
of I understand who my reader is and I'm
going to write towards their readability
level or their reading level then
obviously I want to make things easier
for them because if they don't
understand my writing well it's not very
effective then and that's really my
fault it's not theirs so using
contractions I think is completely fine
some people do not like them I've seen
some English professors actually notate
that you know you cannot you shouldn't
use a contraction they're completely
fine there's nothing wrong with them if
anything it makes your writing flow a
little more accurately and then we use
them obviously in our speech as well so
why not use them in writing as my stance
and then lastly that what I'll discuss
here is varying your sentence in your
paragraph length we need to be careful
and I see this a lot in that we we get
used to a certain structure of a
sentence a certain length using the
certain words and we begin to replicate
that periodically throughout our writing
and that gives you a very kind of stale
look it's very boring for the reader
because they're essentially reading the
same thing over and over just the words
are a little different so you want to
get in the habit of varying your
sentence in your paragraph length you
don't want all of your sentences to be
really small because then you probably
run into some issues with fragmented
sentences and not developing ideas but
you don't want sentences that go on for
1825 words because then those get really
difficult to understand and then
especially if you're trying to
communicate something to someone who may
not be interested in the first place
they're gonna check out right away and
they're not going to read any further
because it's taking too much effort and
so you want to make it easier for people
to go through your writing to read
through it and to understand it so in
order to keep people engaged what I
recommend is varying the
of your sentences as well as paragraphs
you don't need to need to necessarily
make them a standard cookie-cutter
length but vary them some can be longer
you know and by longer I mean 16 words
that's usually as long as I would go
anything longer than that and you're
going to likely introduce errors or it's
gonna be difficult for the reader to
comprehend depending upon who your
reader is or who your listener is but
then you don't want everything being
very long so you want to kind of
sprinkle in some shorter sentences to
vary the length up that way it's
engaging to the reader and it kind of
keeps them interested now assuming that
we've prepared our first draft obviously
our first sometimes even our second and
our third isn't the final product what
we have to do is we have to go through
and revise and proofread our drafts for
accuracy and this is a very very
important part unfortunately a lot of
times we skip through this just for time
constraints and you know not obviously
wanting to be patient and follow through
with the process and to put something
out there and get a finished product
ready to go but the revision piece is
extremely pivotal because ultimately
your writing or
speech is a reflection of you and
whether or not it's accurate you know if
you write a piece of a certain article
or position paper or research paper and
it's completely littered with
grammatical errors and spelling errors
and the sentence structures are very
monotonous and the same and it's written
entirely from a passive voice your
content could be good you could have
very very good content in terms of what
you're actually saying but the way in
which you communicate it will make it so
that your reader is essentially turned
off which obviously is not ideal
ultimately that writing is a reflection
of you as well even if you're a
completely intelligent and capable
person there people are going to judge
you based upon what your writing is or
what your speech is even if they don't
have any prior knowledge of your
background and all those other things
and so ultimately we want to put our
best foot forward we want to make sure
and we convey the information that we
want to and in the mad
we want it interpreted and that's an
important part here so a couple things
that you can do in the revision process
this is not all-inclusive but these are
just a few things that you can do
immediately to help proofread your
writing for accuracy and increase your
communication effectiveness first thing
is writing or using readability
statistics these don't get used very
often but they are offered in many word
processing software packages I know
Microsoft Word offers a similar type
package here and readability statistics
are very useful because they essentially
determine how difficult it is to read
your writing some common indexes that
you'll see in readability statistics are
the flesh Kincaid readability index and
that essentially gauges how difficult
your writing is it gives you a numerical
score and then that essentially equates
to a grade level okay and so that helps
determine how difficult it is to read
which is very helpful because if you're
considering the education level in the
background of your audience you want to
make sure that your writing is
consistent with that level you don't
want to necessarily write above the
heads of your readers otherwise no one's
gonna understand anything so this is
very very good you can also see
statistics that tell you the average
you're the average of your words that
you use okay so it'll tell you roughly
how long your words are okay so
obviously if you're getting to where
it's seven eight nine characters is the
average then you may have an issue where
your writing is very complicated you may
want to reduce some of those they also
tell your average sentence length so you
can see ultimately are we varying our
sentence length are we you know 20 25
words in a sentence which is far too
long or far too many or are we more of
the five or six or seven which might be
too few so these are things that
although they may not be able to tell
you instantaneously if your writing is
difficult or if you're varying your
sentence structure they will at least
give you a good pulse or a good idea if
you're heading in the right direction
and then you can of course go through
read through the document
and find out what the issues are there
I'm so definitely good for highlighting
some major issues there I encourage you
to use it very easy and it scans the
entire document real quick so you don't
have to go through and you know count
how many words there are in each
particular sentence because that would
be very very cumbersome the next thing
you want to consider during the revision
process is the visual appeal of your
writing very very important we stress
content of a lot even to to a false
almost content is good content is king
but if there was a queen it would
certainly be the visual appeal aspect
and you've probably been in similar
situations where either the material was
good but the way it was communicated was
something that almost that made you
disengage or if you were reading
something and it was just so difficult
to read even if the content was very
very interesting that you completely
disengage from and didn't read and
didn't read further so the visual appeal
is very very important
it cannot emphasize that enough if I
were to produce a paper and it was just
one entire block of text there was no
white space whatsoever on this page
chances are you would probably not want
to read that because it's very
intimidating it's very overwhelming and
so knowing that you want to go ahead and
go through and take some steps to
actually change the structure of your
paper even if it's saying the same thing
right we're communicating the same thing
we're not changing content we're just
changing the look of how our writing is
the visual appeal of it so what are some
things that you can do one of the
easiest things is including some type of
bulleted list those bullets that you see
in Microsoft Word or the word processing
software that you use are very common
bulleted lists are great if you're
trying to communicate more than one of
something so maybe more than one
proposal more than one recommendation
more than one item so they're very very
useful because you write the first part
of the sentence possibly a semicolon
obviously tab down enter a bullet and
enter each of the items there and you
can research on your own
how to structure those you can use
commas you don't have to use commas
whatever you do just be consistent
obviously throughout the body of your
writing but those are very good because
they allow for what we call white space
and white space is very visually
appealing if I look at a paper and it's
entirely just text instantly I don't
want to read it even if it is a great
paper has great content visually it
doesn't look good to me it looks very
intimidating and so you do want some
white space intermingled into the paper
there because it's not as intimidating
to readers or to viewers and it just
increases the visual appeal of your
writing in general I'm so bulleted lists
certainly work headings are another
thing that works very well by by
headings I mean you know obviously
enlarging the text and then maybe
bolding it in certain areas and headings
work great because they delineate or
separate between certain changes in
thought or changes in paragraph changes
an idea and they communicate to your
reader that a certain area of text is
related to one idea and then you have a
new new header and that obviously
conveys that you're switching thoughts
your going to be talking about a new
thing and so instantly when I look at a
paper that includes headers one I know
that the writer went through the trouble
of trying to make it visually appealing
and easier on myself because it provides
essentially a roadmap of what we're
going to cover I don't necessarily have
to hunt through an entire forest of text
I know based upon the headers that we're
discussing these three or four things
very visually appealing very easy for
readers to understand and to get the the
direction of where you're going another
thing that I'll highlight before I move
on is the use of tables and graphs okay
tables and graphs are great for
conveying quantitative information
numbers things that it would be very
very difficult to list in paragraph form
it would probably be easier to actually
go ahead and create a table or some type
of chart or graph to convey that
information you know we live in a very
visual society and so
using those tools are a great way to get
your point across and to make it easier
for your reader to understand the
information to ultimately consume the
information and to understand it which
obviously is the purpose of our writing
all right the last thing that I'll
mention before we end our time here is
technology is great obviously we've made
great improvements but you do need to
understand the limitations of technology
relying solely on spelling spelling
checkers or grammar checkers will not
produce a good quality document and the
reason is is you're relying on a
computer program which is based upon
certain rules that were programmed into
it to understand everything they're
trying to communicate which grammar
checkers will spot a lot of different
things but they will miss a lot of
things as well okay
and so it's important not to rely solely
on those to actually go through and to
read your document yourself hopefully at
a different sitting when you have a
fresh set of eyes and spot those
different errors that you that you see
that maybe you didn't see beforehand
okay another great thing that you can do
as well and I've always done in my
writing particularly with formal reports
and papers and proposals is I've had
someone that I trust actually read
through it can be a spouse friend
sibling parent whomever I'm someone that
you trust that has obviously good
writing skills that would be beneficial
of course right because the whole idea
is we don't want to give it to somebody
who's gonna say it's great we want them
to find things that are wrong with our
writing because that's what's gonna help
us improve I'm so having someone you
trust read through the document it's
very beneficial because we need to be
accepted receptive to criticism even
though it's something that maybe we
missed or maybe it could be better it's
all meant for the purpose of improving
our document and ultimately improving
our communication in general so adhering
to those guidelines will help you
prepare more successfully I might add in
speaking as well as writing it's very
very important as I said a lot of times
especially when if you're crafting
something like
a cover letter or resume you know the
the person on the other end they don't
know you they don't know who you are
your work ethic
and so they're gonna judge you based
upon the quality of your writing and the
information that you conveyed and so do
yourself a favor put forth the time and
the energy upfront to make sure and you
produce a good quality document