5 Chapter 5: Writing Preparation
“Before you write, think.”
—William Arthur Ward
Opening Case Study: The Forty-Thousand-Dollar Sentence
Imani Oyelaran-Hughes had been staring at the blinking cursor for ninety-one minutes. The document on her screen said Piedmont_CapacityGrant_DRAFT.docx at the top and absolutely nothing else underneath. Outside her office window, a delivery truck was backing up to the loading dock of the Northern Catawba Food Network warehouse, beeping the way it always beeped on Monday mornings. The backup alarm had become the soundtrack of her panic.
Eight days. She had eight days to write a $425,000 foundation grant that, if funded, would pay for a new thirty-foot cold-storage room, a refrigerated box truck, and six months of a part-time produce coordinator. The cold storage would let NCFN triple its fresh-produce distribution to the 23,000 food-insecure residents across the four counties they served. It would be the biggest capital expansion in the agency’s nineteen-year history. Wesley Truitt, the executive director who had promoted her six months ago from program coordinator to grants and development associate, had walked her to her office on Friday afternoon, set a thin manila folder on her desk, and said, “This one’s yours, Imani. I trust you. The Piedmont Community Foundation deadline is next Thursday at five.”
She had smiled and thanked him. Then she had gone into the hallway bathroom and thrown up.
It wasn’t that she couldn’t write. She had written plenty at Chapel Hill—papers, case notes, program reports, board updates, a graduate thesis on food security in rural Appalachia that her advisor had called “quietly excellent.” But grant writing was different. Grant writing was math with words. Every sentence cost money or earned money. The last major grant she had written—back in March, for a smaller workforce-training foundation—had been rejected with a polite three-sentence email. “Strong mission fit. Narrative lacked specificity. Encourage reapplication.” Wesley had said all the right things. It happens to everyone. First rejections are part of the job. We’re going to land the next one. But Imani had read the rejection email forty-one times, and somewhere around read number twelve she had started to believe that she wasn’t really a writer after all, just a coordinator with a master’s degree and a new title.
Now she was sitting in front of the biggest grant of her career with a blank page, a blinking cursor, and a thermos of cold coffee.
She tried to think her way back to something solid. Before you write, think. That was what her graduate advisor used to say, quoting some old educator whose name she couldn’t remember. Imani opened a new tab in her browser and searched for “critical thinking Paul Elder.” A PDF downloaded. She read the first page, then the second, then underlined a sentence: Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. She thought: Self-directed would be helpful right now.
At 10:14 a.m., her phone rang. Corinne Vashchenko, the development director at the Blue Ridge Harvest Alliance, a sister food bank two counties east. Corinne had been Imani’s informal mentor since grad school, a warm and slightly scattered woman in her late fifties who had raised twenty-two million dollars over her career and never let anyone forget it. Imani answered on the second ring.
“Sweetie,” Corinne said, “Wesley told me you got the Piedmont assignment. I wanted to check in.”
“I’m a disaster,” Imani said. “I have a blank page and eight days.”
“Oh, honey. Listen. I’m going to help you. I’m going to send you the Piedmont grant we submitted in 2024. Six hundred thousand dollars. Funded on the first try. Our cold-storage narrative, our theory of change, our evaluation plan, all of it. You can just follow the same structure. Change the names, change the numbers, tweak the paragraphs, and you’ve got a draft by Wednesday.”
Imani said nothing. Her screen still said Piedmont_CapacityGrant_DRAFT.docx. The cursor was still blinking.
“I’ll email it in five minutes,” Corinne said. “Bye sweetie. You’ve got this.”
By 10:22, the email arrived with a subject line that said HELP—PIEDMONT 2024 (don’t forward!) and an attachment named BRHA_Piedmont_Funded_Final.docx. Imani stared at the paperclip icon without clicking it.
Her office door was open. Across the hall, the program staff were talking about the Tuesday mobile pantry at the Lincolnton Senior Center. She heard the box truck pulling away from the dock. She heard someone laughing. She thought about what Wesley had said on Friday—This one’s yours, Imani. I trust you.—and about how trust was one of those things that got spent down a little every time you cut a corner, even when nobody knew you had cut it.
At 10:45 she closed Corinne’s email without downloading the attachment. She opened her notebook, wrote Who is the program officer? What does she need from page one? at the top of a fresh page, and started looking up Dr. Priya Santoro-Quintero on the foundation’s website. Santoro-Quintero’s bio said she had been a program officer at Piedmont for eleven years, had a doctorate in public health from Emory, and had a reputation on the nonprofit conference circuit for being skeptical of “narrative pyrotechnics” and partial to what she called “honest arithmetic.” Imani made a note: She skims the first half of every grant. She analyzes the second half. Write both.
At 11:10 she started a new document titled Sources and began pasting in USDA Economic Research Service pages on food insecurity in the Catawba Valley region. She opened a second tab and bookmarked Feeding America’s latest Map the Meal Gap report. She opened a third tab and found a 2024 advocacy brief from the Southern Food Justice Coalition that had the most striking statistics she had seen all morning—numbers so stark she knew they would grab a program officer’s attention on the first page. She almost pasted them directly into her draft. Then she paused. The Southern Food Justice Coalition was funded in part by a national hunger-relief organization whose board included executives from two major agricultural companies. Frame of reference, she wrote in her notebook. Who paid for this number?
By noon she had eleven sources listed, each with a URL and a three-sentence summary of what it offered. She had not yet written a single word of the grant narrative. She had not panicked in thirty-seven minutes. It felt, if not like success, at least like movement.
At 4:43 p.m., Wesley knocked on the doorframe. He was carrying a stack of folders and the look of a man who was about to ask something large.
“Imani, I just got off the phone with Everett Macintyre-Okafor. Emergency board meeting tomorrow morning, seven a.m. He wants me to walk the full board through the Piedmont ask before we submit, and he wants a one-page executive summary of the grant narrative so the board can vote to endorse it. I told him you’d have something for me by seven a.m. tomorrow.”
Imani’s mouth went dry. “Wesley. I don’t have a narrative yet.”
“I know it’s a lot. But you’ve got the project scope from Friday’s folder, right? You’ve got the budget Lillie pulled together. The board doesn’t need polished prose. They need clear reasoning. One page. Informative headings so they can skim. Real numbers. I trust you.” He set his hand on the doorframe. “What can I take off your plate tonight?”
“Nothing,” Imani said. “I’ve got it.”
Wesley smiled, thanked her, and left.
Imani looked at her screen. On the left side, the blank draft of the eight-day grant. On the right side, Corinne’s unopened email with its attachment that could solve the overnight executive-summary problem in fifteen minutes of quiet copy-paste. Above both, her notebook page that said Who is the program officer? What does she need from page one? and eleven URLs in a Sources document and a single sentence from Paul and Elder that she had underlined twice.
She counted her options. Option one: download Corinne’s grant tonight, swap the proper nouns, and have an executive summary on Wesley’s desk by 6:30 a.m. Option two: work through the night from her own research, risk an under-cooked one-pager, and stand in front of the board at 7 a.m. with whatever she had. Option three: call Wesley back and ask for an extension—honest about the fact that she wasn’t ready—and watch the look on his face when he realized his promotion bet might not pay off. Option four: something else. Something she hadn’t seen yet.
She pulled up the Piedmont Community Foundation application guidelines on her second monitor. She opened her Sources document. She cracked her knuckles. And then, for the first time all day, she started thinking about her reader instead of her fear.
By the end of this chapter, you’ll have the tools Imani needs to make the right call—and the writing tools she needs to carry it out. You’ll learn how to think before you write, how to build a planning checklist for any business message, how to research without drowning, how to evaluate sources you didn’t commission, how to compile information into a coherent draft, and how to write for readers who will both skim your document and analyze it line by line.
Before You Read
Self-Diagnostic: Writing Preparation
Before you dive into the chapter, take ninety seconds and answer these four questions honestly. You’ll return to them at the end of the chapter to see how your thinking has changed.
- When you face a blank page on an important writing assignment, what is the first thing you typically do? Is that move actually writing preparation, or is it a form of avoidance dressed up as work?
- If a trusted colleague offered you a “template” version of a document they had written for a different audience and suggested you adapt it to save time, what factors would you weigh before saying yes or no?
- Read the last three pieces of business writing you received (an email, a memo, an announcement). Did you read them word by word, skim them, or skim and then re-read? What does that tell you about how your own readers are likely to encounter your writing?
- Think of a writing task that currently makes you nervous. Can you name the specific fear—negative orientation, risk of failure, fear of the unknown, or something else? What would it take to shrink that fear by even ten percent?
Getting Started
Introductory Exercises
- Identify a career you’re interested in pursuing and do an online search for information about it, taking note of the number of results returned and a couple of the top ten sources. Compare your results with those of your classmates.
- Visit your college or university library. Familiarize yourself with the resources available to business writers and choose one resource that you find especially valuable. Write a short summary of the resource to share with your classmates, explaining why you chose this resource.
- In a business setting, describe some circumstances where it would be appropriate to send a message by instant messaging, by email, or in a printed memo. Ask some colleagues or coworkers what they consider the best option and why, and share the results with the class.
No matter who you are, you weren’t born speaking English (or any other language), and you certainly weren’t born writing. You learned to speak and to write and, like all humans, your skill in speaking and writing can continue to improve and adapt across your lifetime. This simple fact should encourage you. If your writing has been well received in the past, congratulations. It may be that your skill in producing college-level essays has served you well. Still, learning to produce clear, concise business writing may be a new challenge. Even seasoned professional business communicators find it difficult to present complex and dynamic relationships in a way that the audience can grasp at a glance, on a first read, or with minimal effort. If your writing hasn’t been as well received in the past as you would like, this chapter will help you see the process from a perspective where attention to specific steps can lead to overall success.
In addition to your previous experiences, you’ll necessarily draw on the writing of others as you prepare for your writing effort. If you’ve ever fallen asleep on your textbook, you know that trying to absorb many pages of reading in a single session isn’t the best strategy for studying. In the same way, as you prepare to write a business document, you know that using the first search result listed on Google or Yahoo! isn’t the best strategy for success. You may be tempted to gather only the information that’s most readily available, or that which confirms your viewpoint, but you’ll sell yourself short and may produce an inferior piece of writing.
Instead, you need to determine the purpose of your writing project; search for information, facts, and statistics to support your purpose; and remain aware of information that contradicts the message you’re aiming to convey. Think of it as an exercise program. If you only do the easy exercises, and nothing else, you may develop a single muscle group but will never gain real strength. What kinds of skills, or strengths, will you need to write well enough to succeed in your career? Solid research skills combined with effective preparation for writing involve a range of skill sets that require time and practice. The degree to which you make the extra effort will pay dividends throughout your career.
5.1 Think, Then Write: Writing Preparation
Learning Objectives
- Explain why preparation time is a multiplier, not a tax, on your writing output.
- Define critical thinking and identify how confirmation bias, egocentrism, and sociocentrism distort business writing.
- Name the three most common fears writers bring to a blank page and choose a strategy to shrink each one.
- Diagnose your own writing orientation and set a realistic target for measurable gain.
“How do I prepare myself for writing?” is a common question—and one that has no single correct answer. When do you do your best work? Whatever your work or task may be, it doesn’t have to be writing. Some people work best in the morning, others only after their daily dose of coffee. Still others burn the midnight oil and work well late into the night while their colleagues lose their productive edge as the sun sets. “To thine own self be true” is great advice when you have the freedom to choose when you work, but increasingly our lives are governed by schedules and deadlines that we don’t control. You may have a deadline that requires you to work late at night when you recognize that you’re far more productive early in the morning. If you can, consider one important step to writing success: know when you’re most productive. If you can’t choose your timing, then dedication and perseverance are required. The job must be completed and the show must go on. Your effort demonstrates self-control and forbearance (as opposed to impatience and procrastination) and implies professionalism.
To be productive, you have to be alert, ready to work, and able to accomplish tasks with relative ease. You’ll no doubt recognize that sometimes tasks take a lot longer, the solution is much harder to find, and you may find work more frustrating at other times. If you have the option, try to adjust your schedule so the writing tasks before you can be tackled at times when you’re most productive, when your ability to concentrate is best, and when you’re at your sharpest. If you don’t have the option, focus clearly on the task before you.
Every individual is different, and what works for one person may be ineffective for someone else. One thing that professional writers agree on, however, is that you don’t need to be in the “right mood” to write—and that, in fact, if you wait for the right mood to strike, you’ll probably never get started at all. Ernest Hemingway, who wrote some of the most famous novels of the twentieth century as well as hundreds of essays, articles, and short stories, advised writers to “work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.”Hemingway, E. (1999). Ernest Hemingway on writing (L. W. Phillips, Ed.). New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group.
For your work to be productive, you’ll need to focus your attention on your writing. The stereotype of the writer tucked away in an attic room or a cabin in the woods, lost in the imaginary world created by the words as they flow onto the page, is only a stereotype. Our busy lives involve constant interruption. In a distraction-prone business environment, much of your writing will be done while colleagues are talking on the phone, having face-to-face conversations as they walk by, and possibly stopping at your desk to say hello or ask a question. Your phone may ring or you may have incoming instant messages (IMs) that need to be answered quickly. These unavoidable interruptions make it even more important to develop a habit of concentrating when you write.
Case Connection: Imani at the Blank Page
Notice what Imani did during her ninety-one minutes of panic. She wasn’t writing, but she also wasn’t exactly doing nothing. She was rehearsing failure in her head, re-reading her March rejection email, and waiting for the “right mood” to arrive. Hemingway’s advice applies directly: don’t wait for the mood, bite on the nail. But before Imani could bite, she had to admit to herself that the ninety-one minutes had been avoidance, not preparation. Preparation is active. It looks like opening a Sources document, reading the foundation’s application guidelines, or looking up the program officer’s professional background. Avoidance looks like staring at a cursor and telling yourself you’re “getting into the headspace.” In your own writing life, the single most useful question you can ask yourself at minute ten of a blank page is: If a camera were pointed at me right now, would it see preparation or avoidance?
The mind has been likened to a brace of wild horses; if you’ve ever worked with horses, you know they each have a mind of their own. Taken individually they can be somewhat manageable, but together they can prove to be quite a challenge. Our minds can multitask and perform several tasks simultaneously, but we can also get easily distracted. We can get sidetracked and lose valuable time away from our designated task. Our ability to concentrate is central to our ability to write effectively, whether we work alone or as part of a team.
In many business situations, you may not be writing solo but instead collaborating on a document with various coworkers, vendors, or customers. The ability to concentrate is perhaps even more important in these group writing situations.[1] In this discussion, we’ll consider the writing process from a singular perspective, where you’re personally responsible for planning, researching, and producing a product of writing. In other areas of this text, we also consider the collaborative process, its strengths and weaknesses, and how to negotiate and navigate the group writing process.
Thinking Critically
As you approach your writing project, practicing critical thinking matters. Critical thinking can be defined as “self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking.”Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2007). The miniature guide to critical thinking: Concepts and tools. Dillon Beach, CA: The Foundation for Critical Thinking Press. It’s the difference between watching television in a daze versus analyzing a movie with attention to its use of lighting, camera angles, and music to influence the audience. One activity requires very little mental effort, while the other requires attention to detail, the ability to compare and contrast, and sharp senses to receive all the stimuli.
As a habit of mind, critical thinking requires established standards and attention to their use, effective communication, problem solving, and a willingness to acknowledge and address our tendency for confirmation bias, egocentrism, and sociocentrism. We’ll use the phrase “habit of mind” because clear, critical thinking is a habit that requires effort and persistence. People don’t start an exercise program, a food and nutrition program, or a stop-smoking program with 100 percent success the first time. In the same way, it’s easy to fall back into lazy mental shortcuts, such as “If it costs a lot, it must be good,” when in fact the statement may very well be false. You won’t know until you gather information that supports (or contradicts) the assertion.
As we discuss getting into the right frame of mind for writing, keep in mind that the same recommendations apply to reading and research. If you only pay attention to information that reinforces your existing beliefs and ignore or discredit information that contradicts your beliefs, you’re guilty of confirmation bias.[2] As you read, research, and prepare for writing, make an effort to gather information from a range of reliable sources, whether or not this information leads to conclusions you didn’t expect. Remember that those who read your writing will be aware of, or have access to, this universe of data as well and will have their own confirmation bias. Reading and writing from an audience-centered view means acknowledging your confirmation bias and moving beyond it to consider multiple frames of reference, points of view, and perspectives as you read, research, and write.
Egocentrism and sociocentrism are related concepts to confirmation bias. Egocentrism can be defined as the use of self-centered standards to determine what to believe and what to reject. Similarly, sociocentrism involves the use of society-centered standards.[3] Both ways of thinking create an “us versus them” relationship that can undermine your credibility and alienate readers who don’t share your viewpoint.
This leads to confirmation bias and groupthink, resulting in false conclusions with little or no factual support for a belief. If a person believes the Earth is flat and never questions that belief, it’s an example of egocentric thinking. The person believes it’s true even though they’ve never questioned why they believe it. If the person decides to look for information but only finds information that supports their pre-existing belief, ignoring or discrediting information that contradicts that belief, they’re guilty of confirmation bias. If they believe the Earth is flat because everyone in their group or community believes it, even though they’ve never questioned or confirmed the belief, they’re guilty of sociocentrism.
In each case, the false thinking strategy leads to poor conclusions. Watch out for your tendency to read, write, and believe that which reflects only what you think you know without solid research and clear, critical thinking.
Pro Tip: Name the Fear Out Loud
The next time you feel stuck on a writing project, try this thirty-second exercise before you do anything else. Say the fear out loud, in a complete sentence, starting with the words I’m afraid that… For example: I’m afraid that my boss will read this and think I don’t deserve my promotion. Or: I’m afraid that I’ll submit this and never hear back. Or: I’m afraid that I’m not really a writer and everyone is about to find out. Naming the fear out loud does two things at once. It moves the fear from the vague background of your brain into a specific, finite sentence you can look at. And it lets you ask a follow-up question: Is that actually true? And if it is, what would I do next? Most writing panic lives in the gap between a fear you haven’t named and a consequence you haven’t faced. Close that gap and the panic shrinks.
Overcoming Fear of Writing
For many people, one of the most frightening things in life is public speaking. For similar reasons, whether rational or irrational, writing often generates similar fears. There’s something about exposing one’s words to possible criticism that can be truly terrifying. In this chapter, we’re going to break down the writing process into small, manageable steps that, in turn, will provide you with a platform for success. To take advantage of these steps, you need to acknowledge any reluctance or fear that may be holding you back, and bring your interests and enthusiasm to this discussion on writing.
Having a positive attitude about writing in general, and your effort, is also a key ingredient to your success. If you approach a writing assignment with trepidation and fear, you’ll spend your valuable time and attention in ways that don’t contribute positively to your writing. People often fear the writing process because of three main reasons:
- Negative orientation
- Risk of failure
- Fear of the unknown
Let’s take each reason in turn. Negative orientation means the writer has a pre-existing negative association or view of the task or activity. We tend to like people who like us.[4] And we tend to pursue activities where we perceive rewards and appreciation for our efforts, and are more likely to engage in activities where we perceive we’re successful. Conversely, we tend to not like people who we perceive as not like us, tend to ignore or avoid activities where we perceive we’re not appreciated or rewarded, and are less likely to engage in activities where we perceive we’re not successful. For some writers, previous experiences have led to a pre-existing association with writing. That association may be positive if they’ve been encouraged, affirmed, or rewarded as they demonstrated measurable gain. That association may also be negative if efforts have been met with discouraging feedback, a lack of affirmation, or negative reinforcement.
Effective business writing is a highly valued skill, and regardless of the degree to which writing will be a significant aspect of your designated job duties, your ability to do it well will boost your career. If you have a negative orientation toward writing, admitting this fact is an important first step. Next, we need to actively seek ways to develop your skills in ways that will demonstrate measurable gain and lead to positive affirmation. Not everyone develops in the same way on the same schedule, and measurable gain means that from one writing assignment to the next you can demonstrate positive progress. In an academic setting, measurable gain is one of your clear goals as a writer. In a business or industry setting, you may lack the time to revise and improve, meaning that you’ll need to get it right the first time. Take advantage of the academic setting to set positive, realistic goals to improve your writing. Surround yourself with resources, including people who will help you reach your goal. If your college or university has a writing center, take advantage of it. If it doesn’t, seek out assistance from those whose writing has been effective and well received.
It’s a given that you don’t want to fail. Risk of failure is a common fear across public speaking and writing situations, producing predictable behavioral patterns we can recognize, address, and resolve. In public speaking, our minds may go blank at the start of a presentation as we confront our fear of failure. In writing, we may experience a form of blankness often referred to as “writer’s block”—the overwhelming feeling of not knowing what to write or where to start—and sit helplessly waiting for our situation to change.
But we have the power to change our circumstances and overcome our risk of failure. You may be familiar with the concept of a rough draft, but it may compete in your mind with a desire for perfection. Writing is a dynamic process, a reflection of the communication process itself. It won’t be perfect the first time you attempt it. Awareness that your rough draft serves a purpose, but doesn’t represent your final product, should serve in the same way a rehearsal for a speech serves a speaker. You get a second (or third) chance to get it right. Use this process to reduce your fear of failure and let go of your perfectionist tendencies, if only for a moment. Your desire for perfection will serve you well when it comes to polishing your finished document, but everything has its time and place. Learning where and when to place your effort is part of writing preparation.
Finally, we often fear the unknown. It’s part of being human, and is reflected across all contexts, including public speaking and writing. If you’ve never given a speech before, your first time on stage can be quite an ordeal. If you’ve never written a formal business report, your fear of the unknown is understandable. How can you address this fear? Make the unknown known. If we take the mystery out of the process and product, we can see it for its essential components, its organizational pattern, and start to see how our product may look before we even start to produce it. In many organizations, you can ask your supervisor or coworkers for copies of similar documents to the one you’ve been assigned, even if the content is quite different. If this isn’t an option, consider the way most documents in your company are written—even something as basic as an interoffice email will provide some clues. Your goal is to become familiar with the type of document and to examine several successful examples. Once you see a couple of reports, you’ll have a better feel for what you have to produce and the unknown will be far less mysterious.
Reflection Write: Your Writing Orientation Inventory
Take ten minutes and write a one-page inventory of your current orientation toward writing. Don’t edit as you go. Answer these prompts in whatever order feels honest.
- Describe the last time you received feedback on something you wrote. What did the feedback say, who delivered it, and how did you feel for the next forty-eight hours?
- Which kinds of writing do you actually enjoy (text messages to close friends, cover letters, fanfiction, journaling, social media captions, whatever) and which kinds do you dread?
- What do you think your writing would look like if you weren’t afraid?
- Finish this sentence: If I believed I was a writer, the first thing I would do differently tomorrow morning is…
When you finish, read what you wrote. Circle one sentence that surprised you. That sentence is the one to carry with you into the next writing assignment.
Imani’s morning of avoidance wasn’t a moral failure. It was a recognizable, ordinary, almost predictable response to all three fears stacked on top of each other: a negative orientation left over from her March rejection, a well-founded fear of failing on a promotion-defining grant, and the deep unfamiliarity of a foundation application she had never written before. Diagnosing those three fears isn’t the same as curing them—but it does make the next small step possible, which is all that preparation needs to do.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- How would you describe your orientation to writing? Where does this orientation come from? Discuss your thoughts with a classmate.
- If you could identify one aspect of your writing you would like to improve, what would it be and why? Write a one- to two-page essay on this subject.
- What kinds of writing do you like? Dislike? Explain why and provide an example of each. Share and compare with the class.
- Who is your favorite author? What do you like about their writing? Discuss your opinion with a classmate.
- Read the opening case a second time and identify the exact moment Imani stops avoiding and starts preparing. What single action marks the shift? Why does that action count as preparation rather than more avoidance?
- Keep a “blank page log” for one week. Every time you sit down to write something longer than a text message, note the time, the assignment, and how many minutes pass before you actually type your first real sentence. At the end of the week, look at the pattern. Is your average stall time closer to three minutes or to ninety?
5.2 A Planning Checklist for Business Messages
Learning Objectives
- Distinguish general purpose from specific purpose in a business message and identify both before drafting.
- Apply the who, what, when, where, why, and how framework to the content elements of any informative message.
- Use the twelve-item planning checklist to pressure-test a message before it reaches the reader.
- Choose the right channel for a given message, audience, and outcome—and defend the choice.
John Thill and Courtland Bovée, two leading authors in the field of business communication, have created a checklist for planning business messages.[5] The following twelve-item checklist, adapted here, serves as a useful reminder of the importance of preparation in the writing process:
- Determine your general purpose: are you trying to inform, persuade, entertain, facilitate interaction, or motivate a reader?
- Determine your specific purpose (the desired outcome).
- Make sure your purpose is realistic.
- Make sure your timing is appropriate.
- Make sure your sources are credible.
- Make sure the message reflects positively on your business.
- Determine audience size.
- Determine audience composition.
- Determine audience knowledge and awareness of topic.
- Anticipate probable responses.
- Select the correct channel.
- Make sure the information provided is accurate, ethical, and pertinent.
Throughout this chapter, we’ll examine these various steps in greater detail.
Case Connection: Applying the Twelve-Item Checklist to the Grant
Walk Imani’s Piedmont grant through the twelve-item checklist and notice how much of her panic disappears once the checklist replaces the blank page as her starting point.
- General purpose: to persuade (a foundation to fund a capacity-building project).
- Specific purpose: to secure $425,000 for cold storage, a refrigerated box truck, and six months of a part-time produce coordinator.
- Realistic purpose? Piedmont has funded capacity grants of this size to peer agencies within the last twenty-four months. Yes.
- Timing: The deadline is eight days out. The overnight board one-pager is due in fifteen hours. Tight but doable.
- Credible sources: USDA Economic Research Service, Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap, county health department data. She decides to flag the advocacy brief rather than cite it.
- Reflects positively on the organization: The draft must show NCFN as competent, humble about its limits, and honest about what funding would actually change.
- Audience size: Two people who matter most—program officer Dr. Santoro-Quintero and one external reviewer. A handful of others will scan.
- Audience composition: A public-health PhD who skims the first half and analyzes the second half; an external reviewer whose background she doesn’t know yet.
- Audience knowledge: High on food insecurity generally; variable on cold-chain infrastructure specifically.
- Probable responses: Program officer will ask “why you, why now, and where is the evidence?” The grant must answer all three in the first two pages.
- Channel: Piedmont’s online portal, PDF upload, strict page limit, specific heading structure required by the RFP.
- Accurate, ethical, pertinent: No borrowed narrative from Corinne, no cherry-picked statistics from advocacy sources, no numbers she can’t defend in a follow-up call.
Twelve items. Fifteen minutes of disciplined thought. A ninety-minute panic spiral becomes a working plan.
Determining Your Purpose
Preparation for the writing process involves purpose, research and investigation, reading and analyzing, and adaptation. In the first section, we consider how to determine the purpose of a document, and how that awareness guides the writer to an effective product.
While you may be free to create documents that represent yourself or your organization, your employer will often have direct input into their purpose. All acts of communication have general and specific purposes, and the degree to which you can identify these purposes will influence how effective your writing is. General purposes involve the overall goal of the communication interaction: to inform, persuade, entertain, facilitate interaction, or motivate a reader. The general purpose influences the presentation and expectation for feedback. In an informative message—the most common type of writing in business—you’ll need to cover several predictable elements:
- Who
- What
- When
- Where
- How
- Why (optional)
Some elements may receive more attention than others, and they don’t necessarily have to be addressed in the order you see here. Depending on the nature of your project, as a writer, you’ll have a degree of input over how you organize them.
Note that the last item, Why, is designated as optional. This is because business writing sometimes needs to report facts and data objectively, without making any interpretation or pointing to any cause-effect relationship. In other business situations, of course, identifying why something happened or why a certain decision is advantageous will be the essence of the communication.
In addition to its general purpose (e.g., to inform, persuade, entertain, or motivate), every piece of writing also has at least one specific purpose, which is the intended outcome—the result that will happen once your written communication has been read.
For example, imagine that you’re an employee in a small city’s housing authority and have been asked to draft a letter to city residents about radon. Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that has been classified by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as a health hazard. In the course of a routine test, radon was detected in minimal levels in an apartment building operated by the housing authority. It presents a relatively low level of risk, but because the incident was reported in the local newspaper, the mayor has asked the housing authority director to be proactive in informing all the city residents of the situation.
The general purpose of your letter is to inform, and the specific purpose is to have a written record of informing all city residents about how much radon was found, when, and where; where they can get more information on radon; and the date, time, and place of the meeting. Residents may read the information and attend or they may not even read the letter. But once the letter has been written, signed, and distributed, your general and specific purposes have been accomplished.
Now, imagine that you begin to plan your letter by applying the above list of elements. Recall that the letter informs residents on three counts: (1) the radon finding, (2) where to get information about radon, and (3) the upcoming meeting. For each of these pieces of information, the elements may look like the following:
-
Radon Finding
- Who: The manager of the apartment building (give name)
- What: Discovered a radon concentration of 4.1 picocuries per liter (pCi/L) and reported it to the housing authority director, who informed the city health inspector, environmental compliance office, and mayor
- When: During the week of December 15
- Where: In the basement of the apartment building located at (give address)
- How: In the course of performing a routine annual test with a commercially available do-it-yourself radon test kit
-
Information about radon
- Who: According to the city health inspector and environmental compliance officer
- What: Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that results from the breakdown of uranium in soil; a radon test level above 4.0 pCi/L may be cause for concern
- When: Radon levels fluctuate from time to time, so further testing will be done; in past years, test results were below 4.0 pCi/L
- Where: More information is available from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or the state radon office
- How: By phone, mail, or on the internet (provide full contact information for both sources)
- Why: To become better informed and avoid misunderstandings about radon, its health risks, and the meaning of radon test results
-
City meeting about radon
- Who: All city residents are welcome
- What: Attend an informational meeting where the mayor, director of the housing authority, city health inspector, and city environmental compliance officer will speak and answer questions
- When: Monday, January 7, at 7 p.m.
- Where: City Hall community room
- Why: To become better informed and avoid misunderstandings about radon, its health risks, and the meaning of radon test results
Once you’ve laid out these elements of your informative letter, you have an outline that will make it easy to write the actual letter.
Your effort serves as a written record of correspondence informing them that radon was detected, which may be one of the specific or primary purposes. A secondary purpose may be to increase attendance at the town hall meeting, but you’ll need feedback from that event to determine the effectiveness of your effort.
Now, imagine that instead of being a housing authority employee, you’re a city resident who receives that informative letter, and you happen to operate a business as a certified radon mitigation contractor. You may decide to build on this information and develop a persuasive message. You may draft a letter to the homeowners and landlords in the neighborhood near the building in question. To make your message persuasive, you may focus on the perception that radiation is inherently dangerous and that no amount of radon has been declared safe. You may cite external authorities that indicate radon is a contributing factor to several health ailments, and even appeal to emotions with phrases like “protect your children” and “peace of mind.” Your letter will probably encourage readers to check with the state radon office to verify that you’re a certified contractor, describe the services you provide, and indicate that friendly payment terms can be arranged.
Pro Tip: The Audience Map Before the Outline
Before you draft an outline of any important business message, draw an audience map. On a blank sheet of paper or a whiteboard, write the name of every specific person you expect to read the document. Under each name, write three things: (1) what they already know about the topic, (2) what they most want to know, and (3) the question they will ask themselves on first read. If a name appears whose knowledge, desires, and first-read question you cannot describe in a single sentence, you have homework to do before you start drafting. The audience map takes ten minutes. It will save you hours of rewriting.
Credibility, Timing, and Audience
At this point in the discussion, we need to consider credibility. Credibility, or the perception of integrity of the message based on an association with the source, is central to any communication act. If the audience perceives the letter as having presented the information in an impartial and objective way, perceives the health inspector’s and environmental compliance officer’s expertise in the field as relevant to the topic, and generally regards the housing authority in a positive light, they’ll be likely to accept your information as accurate. If, however, the audience doesn’t associate trust and reliability with your message in particular and the city government in general, you may anticipate a lively discussion at the city hall meeting.
In the same way, if the reading audience perceives the radon mitigation contractor’s letter as a poor sales pitch without their best interest or safety in mind, they may not respond positively to its message and be unlikely to contact them about any possible radon problems in their homes. If, however, the sales letter squarely addresses the needs of the audience and effectively persuades them, the contractor may look forward to a busy season.
Returning to the original housing authority scenario, did you consider how your letter might be received, or the fear it may have generated in the audience? In real life, you don’t get a second chance, but in our academic setting, we can go back and take more time on our assignment, using the twelve-item checklist we presented earlier. Imagine that you’re the mayor or the housing authority director. Before you assign an employee to send a letter to inform residents about the radon finding, take a moment to consider the feasibility of your purpose. As a city official, you may want the letter to serve as a record that residents were informed of the radon finding, but will that be the only outcome? Will people be even more concerned in response to the letter than they were when the item was published in the newspaper? Would a persuasive letter serve the city’s purposes better than an informative one?
Another consideration is the timing. On the one hand, it may be important to get the letter sent as quickly as possible, as the newspaper report may have already aroused concerns that the letter will help calm. On the other hand, given that the radon was discovered in mid-December, many people are probably caught up in holiday celebrations. If the letter is mailed during the week of Christmas, it may not get the attention it deserves. After January 1, everyone will be paying more attention to their mail as they anticipate the arrival of tax-related documents or even the dreaded credit card statement. If the mayor has scheduled the city hall meeting for January 7, people may be unhappy if they only learn about the meeting at the last minute. Also, consider your staff; if many of them will be gone over the holidays, there may not be enough staff in place to respond to phone calls that will likely come in response to the letter, even though the letter advises residents to contact the state radon office and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Next, how credible are the sources cited in the letter? If you, as a housing authority employee, have been asked to draft it, to whom should it go once you have it written? The city health inspector and environmental compliance officer are mentioned as sources; will they each read and approve the letter before it’s sent? Is there someone at the county, state, or even the federal level who can, or should, check the information before it’s sent?
The next item on the checklist is to make sure the message reflects positively on your business. In our hypothetical case, the “business” is the city government. The letter should acknowledge that city officials and employees are servants of the taxpayers. “We are here to serve you” should be expressed, if not in so many words, in the tone of the letter.
The next three items on the checklist are associated with the audience profile: audience size, composition, knowledge, and awareness of the topic. Since your letter is being sent to all city residents, you likely have a database from which you can easily determine the size of your audience. What about audience composition? What else do you know about the city’s residents? What percentage of households includes children? What is the education level of most of the residents? Are there many residents whose first language isn’t English? If so, should your letter be translated into any other languages? What is the range of income levels in the city? How well informed are city residents about radon? Has radon been an issue in any other buildings in the city in recent years? The answers to these questions will help determine how detailed the information in your letter should be.
Finally, anticipate probable responses. Although the letter is intended to inform, could it be misinterpreted as an attempt to “cover up” an unacceptable condition in city housing? If the local newspaper were to reprint the letter, would the mayor be upset? Is there someone in public relations who will be doing media interviews at the same time the letter goes out? Will the release of information be coordinated, and if so by whom?
One additional point that deserves mention is the notion of decision makers. Even if your overall goal is to inform or persuade, the basic mission is to communicate. Establishing a connection is a fundamental aspect of the communication audience. If you can correctly target key decision makers, you increase your odds of making the connection with those you intend to inform or persuade. Who will open the mail, or email? Who will act upon it? The better you can answer those questions, the more precise you can be in your writing efforts.
In some ways, this is similar to asking your professor to write a letter of recommendation for you, but to address it to “to whom it may concern.” If you can provide a primary contact name for the letter of recommendation, it will increase its probable impact on the evaluation process. If your goal is to get a scholarship or a job offer, you want to take the necessary steps to make a positive impression on the audience.
Communication Channels
Purpose is closely associated with channel. We need to consider the purpose when choosing a channel. From source to receiver, message to channel, feedback to context, environment, and interference, all eight components play a role in the dynamic process. While writing often focuses on understanding the receiver (as we’ve discussed) and defining the purpose of the message, the channel—or the “how” in the communication process—deserves special mention.
So far, we’ve discussed a simple and traditional channel of written communication: the hardcopy letter mailed in a standard business envelope and sent by postal mail. But in today’s business environment, this channel is becoming increasingly rare as electronic channels become more widely available and accepted.
When is it appropriate to send an instant message (IM) or text message versus a conventional email or fax? What’s the difference between a letter and a memo? Between a report and a proposal? Writing itself is the communication medium, but each of these specific channels has its strengths, weaknesses, and understood expectations that are summarized in Table 5.1 “Written Communication Channels”.
| Channel | Strengths | Weaknesses | Expectations | When to Choose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IM or Text Message |
|
|
Quick response |
|
| Channel | Strengths | Weaknesses | Expectations | When to Choose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Normally a response is expected within 24 hours, although norms vary by situation and organizational culture |
|
|
| Fax |
|
|
Normally, a long (multiple page) fax isn’t expected |
|
| Memo |
|
|
Normally used internally in an organization to communicate directives from management on policy and procedure, or documentation | You need to communicate a general message within an organization |
| Letter |
|
|
Specific formats associated with specific purposes | You need to inform, persuade, deliver bad news or negative message, and document the communication |
| Report | Significant time for preparation and production | Requires extensive research and documentation | Specific formats for specific purposes; generally reports are to inform | You need to document the relationship(s) between large amounts of data to inform an internal or external audience |
| Proposal | Significant time for preparation and production | Requires extensive research and documentation | Specific formats for specific purposes; generally proposals are to persuade | You need to persuade an audience with complex arguments and data |
By choosing the correct channel for a message, you can save yourself many headaches and increase the likelihood that your writing will be read, understood, and acted upon in the way you intended.
Our discussion of communication channels wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the issues of privacy and security in electronic communications. The American Management Association estimates that about two-thirds of employers monitor their employees’ electronic communications or internet use.[6] When you call and leave a voice message for a friend or colleague at work, do you know where your message is stored? There was a time when the message may have been stored on an analog cassette in an answering machine, or even on a small pink handwritten note which a secretary deposited in your friend’s in-box. Today, the “where” is irrelevant, as the in-box is digital and can be accessed from almost anywhere on the planet. That also means the message you left, with the representation of your voice, can be forwarded via email as an attachment to anyone. Any time you send an IM, text, or email or leave a voice message, your message is stored on more than one server, and it can be intercepted or forwarded to persons other than the intended receiver. Are you ready for your message to be broadcast to the world? Do your words represent you and your business in a positive light?
Newsweek columnist Jennifer Ordoñez raises this question when she writes, “For desk jockeys everywhere, it has become as routine as a tour of the office-supply closet: the consent form attesting that you understand and accept that any emails you write, internet sites you visit or business you conduct on your employer’s computer network are subject to inspection.”[7] As you use MySpace, update your Facebook page, get LinkedIn, Twitter, text, and IM, you leave an electronic trail of “bread crumbs” that merge personal and professional spheres, opening up significant issues of privacy. In our discussion, we address research for specific business document production, and all the electronic research conducted is subject to review. While the case law is evolving as the technology we use to interface expands, it’s wise to consider that anything you write or record can and will be stored for later retrieval by people for whom your message wasn’t initially intended.
When preparing your written messages, you should review any electronic communication before you send it. Spelling and grammatical errors will negatively impact your credibility. With written documents, we often take time and care to get it right the first time, but the speed of IM, text, or email often skips this important review cycle of written works. Just because the document you prepare in IM is only one sentence long doesn’t mean it can’t be misunderstood or expose you to liability. Take time when preparing your written messages, regardless of their intended presentation, and review your work before you click “send.”
Try It: Channel Mismatch Audit
Look at the five most recent pieces of business or school communication you have sent or received. For each one, answer three questions: (1) What channel was used? (2) What was the sender’s purpose? (3) Would a different channel have served that purpose better? Bring your list to class and see whether your classmates noticed similar patterns. Most writers discover that somewhere between one-third and one-half of their recent communications used the wrong channel for the job—usually because the easy channel was treated as the default channel. The cost of a channel mismatch is rarely one big failure. It is a slow accumulation of ignored emails, misread tones, and conversations that should have happened face to face.
Channel selection is a moment of craft, not habit. When Imani chooses the Piedmont Foundation’s online portal with its strict formatting requirements, she is not just uploading a document. She is accepting a channel that strongly shapes how her argument can land. The page limits, the required section headings, and the sequence the portal imposes all constrain what she can say and how she can say it. The best grant writers treat a foundation’s submission portal the way a careful dinner guest treats a host’s dining room—not a place to perform, but a place to respect the rules so that the food (the argument) can do its work.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- Write a one-page letter to a new customer introducing a new product or service. Compare your result to the letters your classmates wrote. What do the letters have in common? How do they differ from one another?
- Write a memo that addresses a new norm or protocol, such as the need to register with a new company that will be handling all the organization’s business-related travel, with specific expectations including what information is needed, when, and to whom.
- Make a list of the written communication that you read, skim, or produce in a day. Share your results with the class.
- Using the twelve-item checklist, plan (but do not yet write) a persuasive email asking a professor for an incomplete-grade extension on a major assignment. Write one sentence for each checklist item. Hand the plan to a classmate and ask them to predict how the final email will open.
- Choose a real email from your inbox that misfired—either you misread it or the sender clearly chose the wrong channel. Rewrite it for the correct channel and explain in two sentences why your replacement works better.
5.3 Research and Investigation: Getting Started
Learning Objectives
- Identify the existing resources nearest to you before you start any external research.
- Narrow a broad topic to a realistic scope given the time, space, and audience at hand.
- Build a running Sources document from the first click of a research session forward.
- Recognize when it is time to stop gathering and start drafting.
Clearly, not every piece of business writing requires research or investigation. If you receive an email asking for the correct spelling of your boss’s name and their official title, you’ll probably be able to answer without having to look anything up. But what if the sender of the email wants to know who in your company is the decision maker for purchasing a certain supply item? Unless you work for a very small company, you’ll likely have to look through the organizational chart, and possibly make a phone call or two, before you’re able to write an email answering this question. There—you’ve just done the research for a piece of business writing.
Even if you need to write something much more complex than an email, such as a report or proposal, research doesn’t have to be all about long hours at a library. Instead, start by consulting with business colleagues who have written similar documents and ask what worked, what didn’t work, and what was well received by management and the target audience. Your efforts will need to meet similar needs. Your document won’t stand alone but will exist within a larger agenda. How does your proposed document fit within this agenda at your place of work, within the larger community, or with the target audience? It’s worth noting that the word “investigation” contains the word “invest.” You’ll need to invest your time and effort to understand the purpose and goal of your proposed document.
Before you go to the library, look over the information sources you already have in hand. Do you regularly read a magazine that relates to the topic? Was there an article in the newspaper you read that might work? Is there a book, CD-ROM, or MP3 that has information you can use? Think of what you want the audience to know and how you could show it to them. Perhaps a famous quote or a line from a poem could make a significant contribution to your document. You might even know someone who has experience in the area you want to research, someone who has been involved with skydiving locally for their whole life. Consider how you’re going to inform and engage your audience about your document.
Once you have an assignment or topic, know your general and specific purposes, and have a good idea of your reader’s expectations, it’s time to gather information. Your best sources may be all around you, within your business or organization. Information may come from reports from the marketing department or even from a trusted and well-versed colleague, but you’ll still need to do your homework. After you’ve written several similar documents for your organization, you may have a collection of sample documents, but don’t be tempted to take shortcuts and “repurpose” existing documents to meet a tight deadline. Creating an original work specifically tailored to the issue and audience at hand is the best approach to establish credibility, produce a more effective document, and make sure no important aspect of your topic is left out.
Case Connection: Imani Narrows the Ask
When Wesley handed Imani the Piedmont folder, the “topic” she had been assigned was wide enough to fill two dozen grants. Food insecurity in four counties. Capacity building at a regional food bank. Fresh-produce distribution. Cold-chain logistics. Workforce capacity on the warehouse floor. She could have written a book on any one of those subjects, and for the first ninety minutes she mistook that breadth for opportunity. It wasn’t. It was the reason she couldn’t start. Real research begins with a single hard narrowing move. Imani’s narrowing move, once she made it, was a single sentence she wrote in her notebook: This grant is about one cold-storage room and its effect on the weight of fresh produce distributed per week for one year. Everything else—the broader story of hunger in Appalachia, the politics of federal food policy, the history of the organization—could support that sentence but could not replace it. Find the sentence, and the research knows where to go.
Narrowing Your Topic
By now, you’ve developed an idea of your topic, but even with a general and specific purpose, you may still have a broad subject that will be a challenge to cover within the allotted time before the deadline. You might want to revisit your purpose and ask yourself, How specific is my topic?
Imagine that you work for a local skydiving training facility. Your boss has assembled a list of people who might be candidates for skydiving and asks you to write a letter to them. Your general purpose is to persuade, and your specific purpose is to increase the number of students enrolled in classes. You’ve decided that skydiving is your topic area. You’re going to tell your audience how exhilarating the experience is, discuss the history and basic equipment, cover the basic requirements necessary to go on a first jump, and provide reference information on where your audience could go to learn more (links and websites, for example).
But at this point, you might find that a one-page letter isn’t sufficient for the required content. Rather than expand the letter to two pages and risk losing the reader, consider your audience and what they might want to learn. How can you narrow your topic to better consider their needs? As you edit your topic, considering what the essential information is and what can be cut, you’ll naturally focus on the key points and reduce the pressure on yourself to cover too much information in a limited space environment.
Perhaps starting with a testimony about a client’s first jump, followed by basic equipment and training needed, and finally a reference to your organization may help you define your document. While the history may be fascinating, and may serve as a topic in itself for another day, it may add too much information in this persuasive letter. Your specific purpose may be to increase enrollment, but your general goal will be to communicate goodwill and establish communication. If you can get your audience to view skydiving in a positive light and consider the experience for themselves, or people they know, you’ve accomplished your general purpose.
Focus on Key Points
As a different example, let’s imagine that you’re the office manager for a pet boarding facility that cares for dogs and cats while their owners are away. The general manager has asked you to draft a memo to remind employees about safety practices. Your general purpose is twofold: to inform employees about safety concerns and to motivate them to engage in safe work practices. Your specific purpose is also twofold: to prevent employees from being injured or infected with diseases on the job, and to reduce the risk of the animal patients being injured or becoming sick while in your care.
You’re an office manager, not a veterinary or medical professional. Clearly, there are volumes written about animal injuries and illnesses, not to mention entire schools devoted to teaching medicine to doctors who care for human patients. In a short memo, you can’t hope to cover all possible examples of injury or illness. Instead, focus on the following behaviors and situations you observe:
- Do employees wash their hands thoroughly before and after contact with each animal?
- Are hand-washing facilities kept clean and supplied with soap and paper towels?
- When cleaning the animals’ cages, do employees wear appropriate protection such as gloves?
- What is the procedure for disposing of animal waste, and do all employees know and follow the procedure?
- When an animal is being transferred from one cage to another, are there enough staff members present to provide backup assistance in case the animal becomes unruly?
- What should an employee do if they’re bitten or scratched?
- What if an animal exhibits signs of being ill?
- Have there been any recent incidents that raised concerns about safety?
Once you’ve posed and answered questions like these, it should be easier to narrow down the information so that the result is a reasonably brief, easy-to-read memo that will get employees’ attention and persuade them to adopt safe work practices.
Common Mistake: The Kitchen-Sink Draft
The kitchen-sink draft is the document you produce when you have refused to narrow. It includes the history of the topic, three anecdotes that almost fit, every statistic your search turned up, and an ending that trails off because you ran out of deadline. The reader experiences it as exhausting rather than comprehensive. The fix is not to write shorter sentences. The fix is to commit to a narrowing decision before you draft—one sentence that says what this particular document is about and, by implication, what this document is not about. If you cannot bring yourself to narrow, try the test question: If I could only make one point on one page, what would it be? The answer to that question is the spine of your document. Everything else is either support for the spine or scaffolding you should remove before delivery.
Planning Your Investigation for Information
Now let’s imagine that you work for a small accounting firm whose president would like to start sending a monthly newsletter to clients and prospective clients. The president is aware of newsletter production service vendors that provide newsletters to represent a particular accounting firm. You’ve been asked to compile a list of such services, their prices, and practices, so that the firm can choose one to employ.
If you’re alert, you’ll begin your planning immediately, while your conversation with the president is still going on, as you’ll need more information before you can gauge the scope of the assignment. Approximately how many newsletter vendors does your president want to know about—is three or four enough? Would twenty be too many? Is there a set budget figure that the newsletter cost must not exceed? How soon does your report need to be done?
Once you have these details, you’ll be able to plan when and where to gather the needed information. The smartest place to begin is right in your office. If the president has any examples of newsletters from other businesses, you can examine them and note the contact information of the companies that produced them. You may also have an opportunity to ask coworkers if they know or even have copies of any such newsletters.
Assuming that your president wants to consider more than just a couple of vendors, you’ll need to expand your search. The next logical place to look is the internet. In some companies, employees have full internet access from their office computers; other companies provide only a few terminals with internet access. Some workplaces don’t allow internet access; if this is the case, you can visit your nearest public library.
As anyone who has spent an entire evening aimlessly web surfing can attest, the internet is a great place to find loads and loads of interesting but irrelevant information. Knowing what questions you’re seeking to answer will help you stay focused on your report’s topic, and knowing the scope of the report will help you decide how much research time to plan in your schedule.
Staying Organized
Once you open up a web browser such as Google and type in a search parameter like “newsletter production,” you’ll have a wealth of information to look at. Much of it may be irrelevant, but even the information that fits with your project will be overwhelming, making it challenging to keep track of it.
Perhaps the most vital strategy for staying organized while doing online research is to open a blank page in your word processor and title it “Sources.” Each time you find a web page that contains what you believe may be useful and relevant information, copy the URL and paste it on this Sources page. Under the URL, copy and paste a paragraph or two as an example of the information you found on this web page. Err on the side of listing too many sources; if in doubt about a source, list it for the time being—you can always discard it later. Having these source URLs and snippets of information all in one place will save you a great deal of time and many headaches later on.
As you explore various websites of companies that provide newsletter production services, you’ll no doubt encounter new questions that your president didn’t answer in the original conversation:
- Does the newsletter need to be printed on paper and mailed? Or would an email newsletter be acceptable, or even preferable?
- Does your firm want the newsletter vendor to write all of the content customized to your firm, provide a menu of pre-existing articles for your firm to choose from, or let your firm provide some—or even all—of the content?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of these various options?
You also realize that to get any cost estimates, even when the above questions are settled, you’ll need to know the desired length of the newsletter (in pages or in words), and how many recipients are on your firm’s mailing list. At this point in your research and investigation, it may make sense to give your president an informal interim report, summarizing your findings and what additional questions need to be answered.
Having a well-organized list of the information you’ve assembled, the new questions that have arisen, and the sources where you found your information will allow you to continue researching effectively as soon as you’ve gotten answers and more specific direction from your president.
Try It: Sources Page Starter
Pick a writing assignment that’s due in the next two weeks—for school, work, or a personal project. Open a blank document right now. Title it [Project name] — Sources. Spend exactly twelve minutes searching for background material. Every time you find a page that looks useful, paste the URL, the date you found it, and a three-sentence summary of what the page offers. Don’t read anything fully. Don’t open more than twelve minutes’ worth of tabs. When the timer goes off, count your entries. If you have five or more, you already have more usable research than most drafts ever get. If you have fewer than five, either the assignment needs better search terms or you’re in a research desert and should talk to a human source before you keep clicking.
A Sources document is an insurance policy against the most expensive research mistake: finding a perfect sentence at 10:15 a.m. and losing track of it by 3:30 p.m. Imani’s notebook and her Sources document are not fancy tools. They are discipline made visible. The fanciest research software in the world cannot fix the habit of searching without recording.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- Think of a time when someone asked you to gather information to make a decision, whether for work, school, or in your personal life. How specific was the request? What did you need to know before you could determine how much and what kind of information to gather? Discuss your answer with those of your classmates.
- Make a list of all the ways you procrastinate, noting how much time is associated with each activity or distraction. Share and compare your results with a classmate.
- You are the manager. Write an email requesting an employee to gather specific information on a topic. Give clear directions and due date(s). Share your results with the class.
- How do you prepare yourself for a writing project? How do others? What strategies work best for you? Survey ten colleagues or coworkers and compare your results with your classmates.
- Take the Piedmont grant from the opening case. Draft Imani’s one-sentence narrowing statement for the grant as if you were writing it yourself, and then list three topics that sentence excludes on purpose. Defend each exclusion in a sentence.
5.4 Ethics, Plagiarism, and Reliable Sources
Learning Objectives
- Distinguish plagiarism from legitimate use of source material in business writing.
- Apply the six traits of quality reasoning to evaluate a document, a dataset, or a web page before you cite it.
- Identify the funding, frame of reference, and agenda behind a source you did not commission.
- Recognize how ordinary workplace shortcuts can lead to ethical breaches you didn’t intend.
Unlike writing for personal or academic purposes, your business writing will help determine how well your performance is evaluated in your job. Whether you’re writing for colleagues within your workplace or outside vendors or customers, you’ll want to build a solid, well-earned, favorable reputation for yourself with your writing. Your goal is to maintain and enhance your credibility, and that of your organization, at all times.
Make sure, as you start your investigation, that you always question the credibility of the information. Sources may have no reviews by peers or editors, and the information may be misleading, biased, or even false. Be a wise information consumer.
Business Ethics
Many employers have a corporate code of ethics; even if your employer doesn’t, it goes without saying that there are laws governing how the company can and can’t conduct business. Some of these laws apply to business writing. As an example, it would be not only unethical but also illegal to send out a promotional letter announcing a special sale on an item that ordinarily costs $500, offering it for $100, if in fact you have only one of this item in inventory. When a retailer does this, the unannounced purpose of the letter is to draw customers into the store, apologize for running out of the sale item, and urge them to buy a similar item for $400. Known as “bait and switch,” this is a form of fraud and is punishable by law.
Let’s return to our previous newsletter scenario to examine some less clear-cut issues of business ethics. Suppose that, as you confer with your president and continue your research on newsletter vendors, you remember that you have a cousin who recently graduated from college with a journalism degree. You decide to talk to her about your project. In the course of the conversation, you learn that she now has a job working for a newsletter vendor. She’s very excited to hear about your firm’s plans and asks you to make her company “look good” in your report.
You’re now in a situation that involves at least two ethical questions:
- Did you breach your firm’s confidentiality by telling your cousin about the plan to start sending a monthly newsletter?
- Is there any ethical way you can comply with your cousin’s request to show her company in an especially favorable light?
On the question of confidentiality, the answer may depend on whether you signed a confidentiality agreement as a condition of your employment at the accounting firm, or whether your president specifically told you to keep the newsletter plan confidential. If neither of these safeguards existed, then your conversation with your cousin would be an innocent, unintentional, and coincidental sharing of information in which she turned out to have a vested interest.
As for representing her company in an especially favorable light, you’re ethically obligated to describe all the candidate vendors according to whatever criteria your president asked to see. The fact that your cousin works for a certain vendor may be an asset or a liability in your firm’s view, but it would probably be best to inform them of it and let them make that judgment.
As another example of ethics in presenting material, let’s return to the skydiving scenario we mentioned earlier. Because you’re writing a promotional letter whose goal is to increase enrollment in your skydiving instruction, you may be tempted to avoid mentioning information that could be perceived as negative. If issues of personal health conditions or accident rates in skydiving appear to discourage rather than encourage your audience to consider skydiving, you may be tempted to omit them. But in so doing, you’re not presenting an accurate picture and may mislead your audience.
Even if your purpose is to persuade, deleting the opposing points presents a one-sided presentation. The audience will naturally consider not only what you tell them but also what you’re not telling them, and will raise questions. Instead, consider your responsibility as a writer to present information you understand to be complete, honest, and ethical. Lying by omission can also expose your organization to liability. Instead of making a claim that skydiving is completely safe, you may want to state that your school complies with the safety guidelines of the United States Parachute Association. You might also state how many jumps your school has completed in the past year without an accident.
Ethical Consideration: The Tempting Share-File
Corinne Vashchenko’s offer to send Imani the Blue Ridge Harvest Alliance’s funded 2024 grant is not a villain move. Corinne means well. She is trying to help a younger colleague survive an impossible week. And yet, if Imani opens the attachment, copies the theory-of-change section, and pastes it into her Piedmont draft with a few tweaks, she is engaging in a form of plagiarism even though the “source” gave her permission. Program officers read a lot of grants. Dr. Santoro-Quintero has probably read the 2024 Blue Ridge grant herself. Sentences that worked for one agency will not sound native in the voice of another, and the borrowing is often obvious to an experienced reader. The deeper problem, though, is that a copied narrative describes a reality that isn’t quite the writer’s reality. It praises a program the writer doesn’t run, cites outcomes the writer didn’t achieve, and promises an evaluation plan the writer can’t actually execute. The shortcut buys a few hours now and mortgages the organization’s credibility for years. Use borrowed documents the way you use a map—to understand where you are, not to pretend you have already arrived.
Giving Credit to Your Sources
You have photos of yourself jumping, but they aren’t very exciting. Since you’re wearing goggles to protect your eyes and the image is at a distance, who can really tell if the person in the picture is you or not? Why not find a more exciting photo on the internet and use it as an illustration for your letter? You can download it from a free site, and the “fine print” at the bottom of the web page states that the photos can be copied for personal use.
Not so fast—do you realize that a company’s promotional letter doesn’t qualify as personal use? The fact is that using the photo for a commercial purpose without permission from the photographer constitutes an infringement of copyright law; your employer could be sued because you decided to liven up your letter by taking a shortcut. Furthermore, falsely representing the more exciting photo as being your parachute jump will undermine your company’s credibility if your readers happen to find the photo on the internet and realize it isn’t yours.
Just as you wouldn’t want to include an image more exciting than yours and falsely state that it’s your jump, you wouldn’t want to take information from sources and fail to give them credit. Whether the material is a photograph, text, a chart or graph, or any other form of media, taking someone else’s work and representing it as your own is plagiarism. Plagiarism is committed whether you copy material verbatim, paraphrase its wording, or even merely take its ideas—if you do any of these things—without giving credit to the source.
This doesn’t mean you’re forbidden to quote from your sources. It’s entirely likely that in the course of research, you may find a perfect turn of phrase or a way of communicating ideas that fits your needs perfectly. Using it in your writing is fine, provided that you credit the source fully enough that your readers can find it on their own. If you fail to take careful notes, or the sentence is present in your writing but later fails to get accurate attribution, it can have a negative impact on you and your organization. That’s why when you find an element you’d like to incorporate in your document, at the same time as you copy and paste or make a note of it in your research file, you need to note the source in a complete enough form to find it again.
Giving credit where credit is due will build your credibility and enhance your document. When your writing is authentically yours, your audience will catch your enthusiasm, and you’ll feel more confident in the material you produce. Just as you have a responsibility in business to be honest in selling your product or service and avoid cheating your customers, you have a responsibility in business writing to be honest in presenting your ideas, and the ideas of others, and to avoid cheating your readers with plagiarized material.
Case Connection: Corinne’s Offer
Imani’s decision not to download Corinne’s attachment is the single most important ethical choice in the opening case, but notice that she does not make it in a righteous rush. She sits with the open email for twenty minutes. She is tempted. She has a real crisis coming at 7 a.m. the next morning. Ethics under pressure almost always looks like this—not a clean moment of moral clarity but a slow, reluctant, expensive decision to refuse a shortcut that would have worked. The lesson for your own writing life is not “be ethical,” which is useless advice when you are exhausted and afraid. The lesson is to build habits upstream of the crisis: document your sources as you go, tell your supervisor early when a deadline is at risk, and keep a list of the three or four shortcuts you are most likely to take when you panic, so you can recognize them when they show up wearing the face of a well-meaning mentor.
Challenges of Online Research
Earlier in the chapter, we touched on the fact that the internet is an amazing source of information. Still, for that very reason, it’s a difficult place to get the information you actually need. In the early years of the internet, there was a sharp distinction between a search engine and a website. There were many search engines competing with one another, and their home pages were generally fairly blank except for a search field where the user would enter the desired search keywords or parameters. There are still many search sites, but today, a few search engines have come to dominate the field, including Google and Yahoo! Moreover, most search engines’ home pages offer a wide range of options beyond an overall web search; buttons for options such as news, maps, images, and videos are typical. Another type of search engine performs a metasearch, returning search results from several search engines at once.
When you’re looking for a specific kind of information, these relatively general searches can still lead you far away from your desired results. In that case, you may be better served by an online dictionary, encyclopedia, business directory, or phone directory. There are also specialized online databases for almost every industry, profession, and area of scholarship; some are available to anyone, others are free but require opening an account, and some require paying a subscription fee. For example, http://www.zillow.com allows for in-depth search and collation of information concerning real estate and evaluation, including the integration of public databases that feature tax assessments and ownership transfers. Table 5.2 “Some Examples of Internet Search Sites” provides a few examples of different kinds of search sites.
| Description | URL |
|---|---|
| General web searches that can also be customized according to categories like news, maps, images, video | |
| Metasearch engines | |
| Dictionaries and encyclopedias | |
| Very basic information on a wide range of topics | |
| To find people or businesses in white pages or yellow pages listings | |
| Specialized databases—may be free, require registration, or require a paid subscription |
At the end of this chapter, under “Additional Resources,” you’ll find a list of many websites that may be useful for business research.
Evaluating Your Sources
One aspect of internet research that can’t be emphasized enough is the abundance of online information that is incomplete, outdated, misleading, or downright false. Anyone can put up a website; once it’s up, the owner may or may not enter updates or corrections on a regular basis. Anyone can write a blog on any subject, whether or not that person actually has any expertise on that subject. Anyone who wishes to contribute to a Wikipedia article can do so, although the postings are moderated by editors who have to register and submit their qualifications. In the United States, the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression. This freedom is restricted by laws prohibiting libel (false accusations against a person) and indecency, especially child pornography, but those laws are limited in scope and sometimes difficult to enforce. Therefore, it’s always important to look beyond the surface of a site to assess who sponsors it, where the information displayed came from, and whether the site owner has a certain agenda.
When you write for business and industry, you’ll want to draw on reputable, reliable sources—printed as well as electronic ones—because they reflect on the credibility of the message and the messenger. Analyzing and assessing information is an important skill in the preparation of writing, and here are six main points to consider when evaluating a document, presentation, or similar source of information.[8] In general, documents that represent quality reasoning have the following traits:
- A clearly articulated purpose and goal
- A question, problem, or issue to address
- Information, data, and evidence that is clearly relevant to the stated purpose and goals
- Inferences or interpretations that lead to conclusions based on the presented information, data, and evidence
- A frame of reference or point of view that is clearly articulated
- Assumptions, concepts, and ideas that are clearly articulated
An additional question that’s central to your assessment of your sources is the credibility of the source. This question is difficult to address even with years of training and expertise. You may have heard of academic fields called “disciplines,” but may not have heard of each field’s professors called “disciples.” Believers, keepers of wisdom, and teachers of tomorrow’s teachers have long played a valuable role in establishing, maintaining, and perpetuating credibility. Academics have long cultivated an understanding acceptance of the role of objective, impartial use of the scientific method to determine validity and reliability. But as research is increasingly dependent on funding, and funding often brings specific points of view and agendas with it, pure research can be—and has been—compromised. You can no longer assume that “studies show” something without awareness of who conducted the study, how it was conducted, and who funded the effort. This may sound like a lot of investigation and present quite a challenge, but again, it’s worth the effort.
Real-World Application: The Six Traits in Ten Minutes
Here is a practical ten-minute version of the six-trait evaluation for anyone who has ever wondered how to vet a source without reading every word.
- Purpose (60 seconds): Look at the top of the page, the “About” link, and the URL. What is this source trying to do—inform, persuade, sell, entertain, or recruit? Write one sentence.
- Question (60 seconds): What specific question does the source claim to answer? If you can’t find one, be suspicious.
- Evidence (two minutes): Skim for the data. Is it a single study, a meta-analysis, a customer survey, a blog post’s personal opinion? Where did the numbers come from?
- Inferences (two minutes): Does the conclusion actually follow from the evidence? Look for the gap between “the data says X” and “we recommend Y.”
- Frame of reference (two minutes): Who is funding the source? Whose interests does the conclusion serve? Who is not quoted?
- Assumptions (two minutes): What does the source take for granted? What would a reasonable skeptic challenge first?
Ten minutes. Six questions. You will never look at a source the same way again.
Information literacy is an essential skill set in the process of writing. As you learn to spot key signs of information that won’t serve to enhance your credibility and contribute to your document, you can increase your effectiveness as you research and analyze your resources. For example, if you were researching electronic monitoring in the workplace, you might come upon a site owned by a company that sells workplace electronic monitoring systems. The site might give many statistics illustrating what percentage of employers use electronic monitoring, what percentage of employees use the internet for nonwork purposes during work hours, what percentage of employees use company email for personal messages, and so on. But the sources of these percentage figures may not be credited. As an intelligent researcher, you need to ask yourself whether the company that owns the site performed its own research to get these numbers. Most likely it didn’t—so why are the sources not cited? Such a site would also be unlikely to mention any court rulings about electronic monitoring being unnecessarily invasive of employees’ privacy. Less biased sources of information would be the American Management Association, the U.S. Department of Labor, and other not-for-profit organizations that study workplace issues.
The internet also encompasses thousands of interactive sites where readers can ask and answer questions. Some sites, like Askville by Amazon.com, WikiAnswers, and Yahoo! Answers, are open to almost any topic. Others, like ParentingQuestions and WebMD, deal with specific issues. Chat rooms on bridal websites allow couples who are planning a wedding to share advice and compare prices for gowns, florists, caterers, and so on. Reader comment sites like Newsvine facilitate discussions about current events. Customer reviews are available for just about everything imaginable, from hotels and restaurants to personal care products, home improvement products, and sports equipment. The writers of these customer reviews, the chat room participants, and the people who ask and answer questions on many of these interactive sites aren’t experts, nor do they pretend to be. Some may have extreme opinions that aren’t based in reality. Then, too, it’s always possible for a vendor to “plant” favorable customer reviews on the internet to make its product look good. Although the “terms of use” that everyone registering for interactive sites must agree to usually forbid the posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks, some sites do a better job than others in monitoring and deleting such material. Nevertheless, suppose your business writing project involves finding out how the “average person” feels about an issue in the news, or whether a new type of home exercise device really works as advertised. In that case, these comment and customer review sites can be very useful indeed.
It may seem like hard work to assess your sources, to make sure your information is accurate and truthful, but the effort is worth it. Business and industry rely on reputation and trust (just as we individuals do) to maintain healthy relationships. Your document, regardless of how small it may appear in the larger picture, is an important part of that reputation and interaction.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- Before the internet improved information access, how did people find information? Are the strategies they used still valid and how might they serve you as a business writer? Interview several people who are old enough to have done research in the “old days” and report your findings.
- Visit the website of the United States Copyright Office at http://www.copyright.gov. Find something on the website that you didn’t know before reviewing it and share it with your classmates.
- On the United States Copyright Office website at http://www.copyright.gov view the multimedia presentation for students and teachers, “Taking the Mystery out of Copyright.” Download the “Copyright Basics” document and discuss it with your class.
- Look over the syllabus for your business communication course and assess the writing assignments you’ll be completing. Is all the information you’re going to need for these assignments available in electronic form? Why or why not?
- Does the fact that internet search results are often associated with advertising influence your research and investigation? Why or why not? Discuss with a classmate.
- Find an example of a bogus or less-than-credible website. Indicate why you perceive it to be untrustworthy, and share it with your classmates.
- Visit the parody website The Onion at http://www.theonion.com and find one story that you think has plausible or believable elements. Share your findings with the class.
- Pick any recent statistic you have seen shared on social media—about the economy, a health issue, or a policy debate—and run the ten-minute six-trait evaluation on its original source. Report what you find.
5.5 Completing Your Research and Investigation
Learning Objectives
- Manage research time so that the gathering phase ends before the drafting phase is starved.
- Describe the seven stages of the compiling process and recognize each stage in your own work.
- Build incubation and revision into every research project, even ones on tight deadlines.
Once you become immersed in your sources, it can be easy to get carried away in the pursuit of information and lose sight of why you’re doing all this research and investigation. As a responsible writer, you’ll need to plan not only how you’ll begin your information gathering, but also how you’ll bring it to a conclusion.
Managing Your Time
Given the limited time for research involved in most business writing, how can you make the most of your information-gathering efforts? Part of learning to write effectively consists in learning to read quickly and efficiently while conducting research. You’re not required to read each word, and if you did, you would slow yourself down greatly. At the same time, if you routinely skip large sections of print and only focus on the bullet lists, you may miss valuable examples that could inspire you in your writing.
How can you tell when to skim and when to pay attention to detail? One strategy is to look for abstracts (or summaries of information) before you commit time to reading an article in full. Look for indexes to identify key terms you might want to cover before eliminating them as you narrow your topic.
As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, it’s smart to make a list of your sources as you search; you may also want to bookmark pages with your web browser. Sometimes, a source that doesn’t look very promising may turn out to offer key information that will drive home an important point in your document. If you’ve done a good job of recording your sources, it will be easy to go back to a site or source that you initially overlooked, but now think may make a relevant contribution.
Compiling Your Information
Patricia Andrews, James Andrews, and Glen Williams provide a useful outline of a process to consider when compiling your information. Compiling involves composing your document out of materials from other documents or sources.[9] This process has seven major steps, adapted from the Andrews, Andrews, and Williams model, which we’ll consider: sensitivity, exposure, assimilation and accommodation, incubation, incorporation, production, and revision.[10]
Let’s say your letter introducing skydiving to a new audience was relatively successful, and the regional association asks you to write a report on the status of skydiving services in your region, with the hope that the comprehensive guide may serve to direct and enhance class enrollment across the region. Your task has considerably expanded and involves more research, but given the opportunity this assignment presents, you’re excited at the challenge. As you begin to research, plan, and design the document, you’ll touch on the process of compiling information. If you’re aware of each step, your task can be accomplished effectively and efficiently.
Sensitivity refers to your capacity to respond to stimulation, being excited, responsive, or susceptible to new information. This starts with a self-inventory of your current or past interests and activities. If you’re intrigued by a topic or area of interest, your enthusiasm will carry through to your document and make it more stimulating for your reading audience. You may not have considered, or even noticed elements or ideas associated with your topic, but now that you’ve begun the process of investigation, you see them everywhere. For example, have you ever heard someone say a word or phrase that you never heard before, but now that you’re familiar with it, you hear it everywhere? This same principle applies to your sensitivity to ideas related to your topic. You’ll notice information and it will help you as you develop your awareness of your topic and the many directions you could take the speech. Cognitive psychologists use the term priming to refer to this excited state of awareness.[11]
Exposure involves your condition of being presented views, ideas, or experiences made known to you through direct experience. If you’re going to select a topic on flying but have never flown before, your level of exposure may be low. Your level of awareness may be high, however, in terms of the importance of security on airplanes, after reading about, watching on television, or hearing on the radio stories about the events of September 11, 2001. You may decide to expose yourself to more information through a range of sources as you investigate the topic of airline security. And the more you become exposed to the issues, processes, and goals of your topic, the more likely you are to see areas of interest, new ideas that might fit in your speech, and form patterns of awareness you didn’t perceive earlier. We’ve previously discussed at length the importance of selection as a stage in the perceptual process, and selective exposure is one way you gain awareness. You may want to revisit this chapter as you develop your topic, choose where to look for information, or decide what kinds of information to expose yourself to as you research your topic.
Assimilation and accommodation refer to the processes by which you assimilate (or integrate) new ideas into your thinking patterns and accommodate (or adopt, adapt, or filter out) new sources of information as they relate to your goal. You may have had preconceived notions or ideas about airline security before you began your investigation, but new information has changed the way you view your topic. You might also find issues (e.g., right to privacy) that may be points of conflict with your beliefs as you review information. This stage is vital to the overall process of developing your topic, and it takes time. You need time to contemplate, review, and reflect on how the new information fits or fails to connect clearly to your chosen topic.
Incubation is the process by which you cause an idea or ideas to develop in your mind. This might not happen all at once, and you might spend time thinking about the new information, directions, or ways you might develop or focus your topic. Consider the meaning of the word as it relates to chickens and eggs. An egg may be produced, but it needs time and a warm environment to develop. You might have an idea, but you need to create an environment for it to grow. This might involve further investigation and exploration, or it may include removing yourself from active research to “digest” or “incubate” what you’ve already learned. You may feel stuck on an idea or struggle to move forward with your ideas or topic, and giving it a rest may be the best course of action. You may also find that just when you least expect it, an idea, fully formed, flashes in your mind and you think, “Why didn’t I see that before?” Before the idea escapes you, write it down and make sure you can refer to it later.
Incorporation refers to the process by which you bring the information into a whole or complete topic. By now, you’ve investigated, chosen some information over others, and have started to see how the pieces will come together. Your perceptions of how the elements come together will form the basis for your development of the organization of your document. It will contribute to the logos, or logic, of your thought and its representation in your document, and help you produce a coherent, organized message that your audience can follow clearly.
Production involves the act of creating your document from the elements you’ve gathered. You may start to consider what comes first, what goes last, and how you’ll link your ideas and examples together. You may find that you need additional information and need to refer back to your notes to find the source quickly and easily. You may also start to communicate with friends, sharing some of the elements or even practicing the first drafts of your document, learning where the connections are clear and where they need work.
Revision is the process by which you look over again to correct or improve your message. You’ll notice elements that need further investigation, development, or additional examples and visual aids as you produce your document. This is an essential step to the overall production of your message, much like revising an essay for an English course. The first time you said, thought, or wrote something it may have made sense to you, but upon reflection and after trying an idea out, you realize it needs revision to work effectively as part of your document. You may revisit the place in which you started (and start all speeches) by reconsidering the rhetorical situation and see if what you’ve produced is in line with the expectations of the audience. Your awareness of the content, audience, and purpose of the rhetorical situation will guide you through the revision process and contribute to the production of a more effective document.
Once you’ve gathered what you think is enough material—or, perhaps, once your eyes begin to glaze over—take a step back and return to the general and specific purpose of the document you set out to write. Look again at the basic elements (i.e., who, what, when, etc.) and fill in the “answers” based on what you’ve found. It’s not unusual at this stage to have some “holes” in the information that require more research to fill. You may also realize that your research findings have disproved part or even all of your original agenda, making it necessary to change your message significantly.
Leave enough time before your deadline so that you can sketch out a detailed outline and rough draft of your document, and leave it alone for at least a day. When you look at it again, it will probably be clear which additional details need more support, and you can perform targeted research to fill in those gaps.
Case Connection: Incubation in an Eight-Day Sprint
Students often push back on incubation. “I don’t have time to incubate. I have a deadline.” Imani’s Piedmont sprint is exactly the situation where incubation seems impossible and turns out to be essential. Eight days is not enough time to linger, but it is enough time to build two overnight gaps into the schedule. If Imani drafts the narrative by end of day Tuesday and doesn’t touch it until Wednesday morning, she gets an incubation gap whether she wants one or not. The trick is planning the gap on purpose instead of leaving it to whenever the panic runs out of gas. On a short deadline, incubation is not a luxury; it is a scheduled appointment with your subconscious. Put the appointment on the calendar.
Pro Tip: The 24-Hour Rest Before Revision
Whenever you can, finish a first draft at least twenty-four hours before the revision pass. Print it. Walk away. Do something physical—a walk, a run, a sink full of dishes. Your subconscious mind will keep working on the draft without your permission. When you come back, read it aloud in one sitting. You will catch at least three errors your eye missed on the screen. You will hear the sentences that tangle your tongue. You will know which paragraph is secretly in the wrong place. The twenty-four-hour rule is the single highest-return habit in business writing, and almost nobody uses it, because almost everybody writes at the last minute. Beat the averages.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- Choose a topic related to a career that interests you and think about how you would research that topic on the internet. Set a timer for fifteen minutes. Ready, set, go! At the end of fifteen minutes, review the sources you’ve recorded in your list and think about the information you’ve found. How well did you use your limited time? Could you do better next time? Try it again.
- Complete an internet search of your name and report your findings to the class.
- Complete an internet search of your favorite product or service and report your findings to the class.
- You’ve been assigned to a marketing team tasked to engage an audience just like you. Make a list of what services or products your target audience would find attractive. Pick one and develop a slogan that’s sure to get attention. Share your results with the class.
- Map a recent writing project of your own onto the seven-step Andrews compiling process. At which step did you spend the most time? Which step did you accidentally skip? What happened to the final document as a result?
5.6 Reading and Analyzing
Learning Objectives
- Distinguish reading from analyzing and describe how readers do both to the same document.
- Write documents that serve skimmers, analyzers, and everyone in between without betraying any of them.
- Use informative headings, topic sentences, and bottom-line placement to make your main points findable at a glance.
When you read, do you read every word? Do you skim over the document and try to identify key terms and themes? Do you focus on numbers and statistics, or ignore the text and go straight to the pictures or embedded video? Because people read in many diverse ways, you, as a writer, will want to consider how your audience may read and analyze your document.
Ever since Benjamin Franklin said that “time is money,” business managers have placed a high value on getting work done quickly.[12] Many times, as a result, a document will be skimmed rather than read in detail. This is true whether the communication is a one-paragraph email or a twenty-page proposal. If you anticipate that your document will be skimmed, it’s in your interest to make your main points stand out for the reader.
In an email, use a “subject” line that tells the reader the gist of your message before they open it. For example, the subject line “3 p.m. meeting postponed to 4 p.m.” conveys the most important piece of information; in the body of the email you may explain that Wednesday’s status meeting for the XYZ project needs to be postponed to 4 p.m. because of a conflict with an offsite luncheon meeting involving several XYZ project team members. If you used the subject line “Wednesday meeting” instead, recipients might glance at their in-box, think, “Oh, I already know I’m supposed to attend that meeting,” and not read the body of the message. As a result, they won’t find out that the meeting is postponed.
Case Connection: Writing for the Board Chair Who Skims
Wesley’s emergency board meeting at 7 a.m. is the perfect teaching moment for skim-first writing. Everett Macintyre-Okafor, the board chair, will have roughly two minutes to read Imani’s one-page executive summary before the meeting opens. He will not read every word. He will read the heading, the first sentence of the first paragraph, the boldface numbers, and the last paragraph. If the key information is not in those four places, the board will vote on whatever they remember from the hallway rumor mill instead of whatever Imani actually wrote. Imani’s job is not to write a perfect paragraph. Her job is to build a one-pager that survives being skimmed by a well-meaning volunteer board chair at 6:58 a.m. on a Tuesday.
For a longer piece of writing, such as a report or proposal, here are some techniques you can use to help the reader grasp key points.
- Present a quick overview, or “executive summary,” at the beginning of the document.
- Use boldface headings as signposts for the main sections and their subsections.
- Where possible, make your headings informative; for example, a heading like “Problem Began in 1992” is more informative than one that says “Background.”
- Within each section, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence that indicates what the paragraph discusses.
- When you have a list of points, questions, or considerations, format them with bullets rather than listing them in sentences.
- The “bottom line,” generally understood to mean the total cost of a given expenditure or project, can also refer to the conclusions that the information in the report leads to. As the expression indicates, these conclusions should be clearly presented at the end of the document, which is the place where the time-pressed reader will often turn immediately after reading the first page.
Try It: Informative Heading Rewrite
Take the table of contents of any business report, textbook chapter, or long email chain you can find. Look at the headings. How many of them are generic placeholders—”Background,” “Introduction,” “Overview,” “Analysis,” “Conclusion”? Now rewrite each generic heading as an informative heading that tells the reader what the section actually says. For example:
- Background → Program Began in 2018 With $80,000 in Seed Funding
- Analysis → Three Drivers of the Revenue Decline Since 2023
- Conclusion → Board Recommended to Approve the Cold-Storage Expansion
Notice that informative headings are often longer than generic ones. That is the point. A heading that is three words longer and tells the reader what to expect is worth ten paragraphs of expanded text that nobody reads.
Imagine how unhappy you’d be if you submitted a report and your audience came away with a message completely different from what you had intended. For example, suppose your manager is considering adopting a specific new billing system in your office and has asked you to report on the pros and cons of this system. You worked hard, gathered plenty of information, and wrote a detailed report which, in your opinion, gave strong support for adopting the new system.
However, the first few pages of your report describe systems other than the one under consideration. Next, you presented the reasons not to implement the new system. Throughout the report, embedded in the body of several different paragraphs, you mentioned the advantages offered by the new system; but they weren’t grouped together so that you could emphasize them with a heading or other signpost for the reader. At the end of the report, you reviewed the current billing system and stated that few problems were encountered with it.
When you delivered your report, the manager and colleagues who received it missed your most important information and decided not to consider the new system any further. Worse, your manager later criticized you for spending too much time on the report, saying it wasn’t very informative. Situations like this can be avoided if you provide a clear organizational framework to draw your reader’s attention to your main points.
Analyzing is distinct from reading. When you read, you attempt to grasp the author’s meaning via words and symbols, and you may come away with a general emotional feeling about what the writer has written instead of an arsenal of facts. When you analyze a document, you pay more attention to how the author assembled the information to present a coherent message. Business writing often involves communication via words and symbols in ways that meet audience expectations; in many cases, the audience needs to be able to analyze the content, and reading is secondary. For this reason, a solid organizational pattern will greatly enhance your document’s effectiveness.
Pro Tip: The Bottom Line First
When you draft a business document, write the bottom line—the single most important conclusion, recommendation, or request—in one sentence at the top of your working draft. Not as a title. As the first actual sentence after the greeting. Then build the rest of the document around that sentence. You can always move the bottom line later in the revision pass. But starting with it accomplishes three things at once: it forces you to know what you are trying to say before you say it, it protects you against a last-paragraph bottom line that nobody sees, and it gives skimming readers the headline they need before they drift to the next item in their inbox. In journalism, this is called “not burying the lede.” In business writing, it is simply respect for the reader’s time.
Key Takeaways
Exercises
- Take a news article and mark it up to reveal its organizational structure. Does it have an informative opening paragraph? Does each additional paragraph begin with a topic sentence? Does it use subheadings? Is there a conclusion that follows logically from the information presented?
- Find an article that you don’t like and review it. State specific reasons why you dislike it and share your opinion with your classmates.
- Find an article that you do like and review it. State specific reasons why you like it and share your opinion with your classmates.
- You’ve been assigned to a sales team that hasn’t been performing at optimal levels. Develop an incentive program to improve the team’s performance. Present your idea to the class.
- Draft the board one-pager Imani owes Wesley by 7 a.m. Use informative headings, topic sentences, a bottom-line-first opening, and bullet points where they fit. Hand it to a classmate and ask them to skim it in sixty seconds and tell you back what they remember. Revise until the skim-recall matches your intent.
Closing Case Analysis: Back to the Forty-Thousand-Dollar Sentence
Return to Imani at her desk at 5:07 p.m. on Monday. Corinne’s unopened email on the right monitor. Her notebook, her Sources document, and the Piedmont RFP on the left monitor. Eleven sources, a one-sentence narrowing statement, a program officer profile, and fourteen hours until she stands in front of the board. Let’s walk her decision back through the six content sections of this chapter.
From 5.1 (Think, Then Write). Imani’s first ninety-one minutes were not writing preparation. They were avoidance. Her critical-thinking recovery began when she asked a specific, answerable question—Who is the program officer?—and opened a new document to answer it. Her three fears were real: a negative orientation from the March rejection, a risk of failure on a promotion-defining grant, and the unfamiliarity of a foundation narrative. Naming all three out loud, even silently to herself, was the single move that moved her from frozen to functional. The Hemingway rule applied: you bite on the nail. You don’t wait for the mood.
From 5.2 (The Planning Checklist). Imani’s panic dropped as soon as the twelve-item checklist replaced the blank page. Her general purpose was to persuade; her specific purpose was $425,000 for cold-chain infrastructure. Her audience was not a vague “the foundation” but one program officer with a documented preference for honest arithmetic over narrative pyrotechnics, plus one external reviewer and a handful of skimmers. Her channel was not her own word processor but a foundation portal with a strict format. Every one of these answers narrowed the job in front of her. None of them made the writing easier to do. All of them made the writing possible to start.
From 5.3 (Research and Investigation). Imani narrowed her research to one sentence: This grant is about one cold-storage room and its effect on the weight of fresh produce distributed per week for one year. With the sentence in place, she could tell the difference between a source that was useful and a source that was merely interesting. She built a Sources document before she wrote a single paragraph. She resisted the kitchen-sink draft by treating the narrowing sentence as a filter, not a tagline. Everything that supported the sentence was in. Everything that did not was cut, even if it was fascinating.
From 5.4 (Ethics, Plagiarism, and Reliable Sources). This is the section where Imani faced her hardest choice, and the section where the chapter’s ethics machinery did the most work. Corinne’s attachment would have saved her Monday night and possibly gotten a polished narrative in front of the board by 7 a.m. But Corinne’s narrative was Corinne’s agency’s narrative. Borrowing it would have described a program Imani doesn’t run, praised outcomes NCFN hasn’t achieved, and proposed an evaluation plan NCFN couldn’t execute. It would also have been instantly recognizable to a program officer who has read Piedmont grants for eleven years. The Southern Food Justice Coalition’s advocacy brief presented the opposite temptation: striking numbers from a source whose funding gave it a built-in agenda. Imani applied the six-trait evaluation and decided to flag the brief, not cite it. She used USDA, Feeding America, and county health department data instead—sources whose frame of reference she could describe in a sentence and whose funding she could defend under questioning. Both decisions cost her time. Both decisions bought her credibility she could spend later, on the harder parts of the document.
From 5.5 (Compiling Your Information). Imani’s eight-day sprint looks, at first, like the opposite of the Andrews seven-step process. How do you incubate in eight days? You don’t incubate for weeks. You build two overnight gaps into the plan on purpose. Imani’s version: draft the narrative by Tuesday end of day, let it sit Tuesday night, revise Wednesday morning. Draft the budget narrative Wednesday afternoon, let it sit Wednesday night, revise Thursday morning. Submit Thursday afternoon with a three-hour buffer. The sensitivity and exposure stages compressed into Monday. Assimilation and accommodation compressed into Tuesday. Incubation became two scheduled eight-hour gaps. Incorporation and production happened in parallel on Wednesday. Revision—two passes—happened Thursday morning. The seven stages did not disappear under deadline. They just got smaller.
From 5.6 (Reading and Analyzing). Imani’s 7 a.m. board one-pager served skimmers. Her full grant narrative served analyzers. The board one-pager had a bottom-line-first opening sentence, four informative headings, a bulleted budget table, and a boldface recommendation at the end. The grant narrative had a full executive summary, a detailed theory of change, an evaluation plan with specific metrics, and a budget justification that could withstand line-by-line questions from a skeptical program officer. Each document was written for exactly one reading style. Neither betrayed the other.
Imani’s final move on Monday night, after she closed Corinne’s email unopened for the third time, was to open her notebook and write a new sentence at the top of the next page: Tonight’s job is the one-pager. The grant is not tonight’s job. She wrote the board summary in two hours. She slept from midnight to 5:30. She made coffee, read the summary out loud once, caught two small errors, and walked into Wesley’s office at 6:45 a.m. with a printed copy in her hand. The board voted to endorse the grant. On Thursday at 2:11 p.m., she hit Submit on the Piedmont portal. On the following Tuesday, Dr. Santoro-Quintero emailed Wesley to say the grant had cleared internal review and was advancing to the funding committee. The week after that, Piedmont funded the grant in full.
Imani kept her job. She kept her credibility. She kept her voice. None of that was guaranteed by the week she had. All of it was made possible by a series of small, disciplined moves that this chapter’s six sections describe. The grant was not written by courage or by talent. It was written by preparation, by a twelve-item checklist, by a narrowing sentence, by an evaluated source list, by a compiling process under pressure, and by a document that respected how its readers would actually read it.
Case Discussion Questions
- When Corinne called with the offer of the 2024 Blue Ridge Harvest Alliance grant, she was acting with good intentions. Describe the ethical harm that would have occurred if Imani had accepted the offer, and explain who, specifically, would have been hurt.
- Imani’s ninety-one-minute panic spiral is a recognizable experience for most writers. Using the three fear categories from section 5.1, diagnose exactly which fears were operating and explain why each one applied to her specific situation.
- Run the six-trait evaluation on the Southern Food Justice Coalition advocacy brief as Imani did. Defend her choice not to cite it, and describe the one circumstance under which citing it could have been appropriate.
- Map Imani’s week onto the seven stages of the Andrews compiling process. Which stages got the least time, and what risk did that create for the final grant? What could she have done differently with two more days?
- Imani chose to write the board one-pager for skimmers and the full grant narrative for analyzers. What would have gone wrong if she had used the same structure for both documents? Use specific structural elements—headings, topic sentences, bottom-line placement—to explain your answer.
- The Piedmont portal imposed strict formatting requirements. Discuss how channel constraints can be a gift to a writer rather than an obstacle, and offer one example from your own experience where a formatting restriction improved your writing.
End-of-Chapter Materials
Review Questions
- Explain the difference between a general purpose and a specific purpose in business writing, and give one example of each.
- List the three most common fears writers bring to a blank page and name one strategy for reducing each.
- Define confirmation bias, egocentrism, and sociocentrism, and explain how each can distort business writing.
- Name five of the twelve items on the Thill and Bovée planning checklist and explain why each matters to an audience-centered writer.
- What are the six information elements (who, what, when, where, how, why) in an informative message, and under what condition is “why” optional?
- Compare the strengths and weaknesses of an instant message, an email, a memo, and a formal letter as channels for business communication.
- Describe at least three strategies for staying organized during online research.
- Distinguish plagiarism from legitimate use of source material, and give an example of each in a business writing context.
- List the six traits of quality reasoning used to evaluate a document or source, and apply them briefly to a source you have read recently.
- Name the seven stages of the Andrews, Andrews, and Williams compiling process and describe what happens at each stage.
- Contrast reading with analyzing, and describe at least three structural techniques a writer can use to serve readers who will skim the document.
- Explain why an informative heading is more useful than a generic heading, and give two examples of each.
Matching: Key Terms
Match each term in the first column to its best definition in the second column.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| 1. Critical thinking | A. The perception of integrity of a message based on association with the source. |
| 2. Confirmation bias | B. Composing a document from materials drawn from other sources. |
| 3. Egocentrism | C. Self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, self-corrective thinking. |
| 4. Sociocentrism | D. Paying attention only to information that reinforces one’s existing beliefs. |
| 5. Negative orientation | E. The use of self-centered standards to determine what to believe and what to reject. |
| 6. General purpose | F. The use of society-centered standards to determine belief. |
| 7. Specific purpose | G. A pre-existing negative association with a task or activity. |
| 8. Credibility | H. The overall communication goal—to inform, persuade, entertain, motivate, or facilitate. |
| 9. Channel | I. The desired outcome or concrete result of a piece of writing. |
| 10. Plagiarism | J. The medium through which a message travels from sender to receiver. |
| 11. Compiling | K. Taking another person’s work, ideas, or expressions and representing them as your own. |
| 12. Sensitivity (Andrews model) | L. Capacity to respond to stimulation and notice new information relevant to a topic. |
| 13. Exposure | M. Being presented views, ideas, or experiences through direct contact. |
| 14. Incubation | N. The process by which an idea develops in the mind over time, often during rest. |
| 15. Incorporation | O. Bringing research findings into a whole or complete topic. |
| 16. Production | P. The act of creating a document from gathered elements. |
| 17. Revision | Q. Looking over a draft to correct and improve the message. |
| 18. Informative heading | R. A section title that tells the reader what the section actually says. |
| 19. Executive summary | S. A brief overview of the main points at the beginning of a long document. |
Answer key: 1-C, 2-D, 3-E, 4-F, 5-G, 6-H, 7-I, 8-A, 9-J, 10-K, 11-B, 12-L, 13-M, 14-N, 15-O, 16-P, 17-Q, 18-R, 19-S
Application Exercises
- The Blank-Page Recovery. Pick a writing assignment you have avoided for at least three days. Spend exactly thirty minutes applying the first three items of the Thill and Bovée checklist—general purpose, specific purpose, and realistic purpose—plus a one-sentence narrowing statement, and submit those four sentences instead of a draft. Write a one-paragraph reflection on whether the thirty-minute preparation made starting the actual draft easier or harder.
- The Source Evaluation Audit. Find a recent social media post or news story that cites a statistic. Identify the original source. Apply the six-trait evaluation to that source. Write a 400- to 600-word memo to a skeptical manager explaining whether the statistic should be used in a business document your team is preparing, and defend your recommendation.
- The Skim-and-Analyze Pair. Choose a topic relevant to your field of study. Write two documents on the same topic: a one-page executive summary designed to be skimmed in ninety seconds, and a three- to four-page analytical report designed to be studied line by line. Use informative headings and bottom-line-first structure. Ask a classmate to skim the summary and read the report, then describe back to you the main recommendation. Revise until the skim-recall matches your intent.
Discussion Questions
- Imani’s negative orientation came from a single rejection email she re-read forty-one times. What role does personal history play in a writer’s current confidence, and what obligation, if any, do managers have to help a junior writer recover from a rejection?
- In an era when AI tools can generate a first draft of almost any business document in seconds, what becomes of the traditional case for writing preparation, critical thinking, and narrowing a topic? Does the Thill and Bovée checklist become more or less important?
- The chapter argues that channel selection is a moment of craft rather than a matter of habit. When was the last time you chose a channel on purpose rather than on autopilot, and what happened? When was the last time you defaulted to the easiest channel available, and what did it cost?
Extended Project: The Capacity Grant Draft
Step into Imani’s shoes. Assume you have inherited the Piedmont Community Foundation capacity grant assignment. You have a project scope (cold-storage expansion, refrigerated box truck, part-time produce coordinator), a budget ceiling of $425,000, an eight-day timeline, and a skeptical program officer with an eleven-year track record. Produce the following package (1,500–2,000 words total):
- A one-paragraph narrowing statement for the grant that explains what the grant is about and what it is not about.
- A completed twelve-item Thill and Bovée planning checklist with a one-sentence answer for each item.
- A Sources document with at least eight entries, each including the URL (or citation), a three-sentence summary, and a one-sentence six-trait evaluation of the source.
- A one-page board executive summary written for skim-first reading, with a bottom-line-first opening sentence, informative headings, bullet points where appropriate, and a boldface recommendation.
- A two-page excerpt of the full grant narrative (your choice of section) written for analytical reading, with topic sentences and careful source attribution.
- A 250-word reflection on which of the three fears (negative orientation, risk of failure, fear of the unknown) you experienced most strongly during this assignment, and which strategy from the chapter helped most.
Submit the package as a single document with the six components clearly labeled. Peer review partners should apply the six-trait evaluation to the Sources document, attempt to skim the executive summary in ninety seconds and describe back the main recommendation, and identify at least one place in the analytical excerpt where the reasoning needs better support.
Self-Assessment: Looking Back at Before You Read
Return to the four Before You Read diagnostic questions at the front of this chapter and answer them again without looking at your original responses. Then compare.
- When you face a blank page now, can you tell the difference between preparation and avoidance? What changed between your first answer and this one?
- If a colleague offered you a template document today, which specific questions would you ask before saying yes or no? How does your new answer compare with your first answer?
- Look at the last three business communications you received. Having read the chapter, do you now see signs that their writers thought about skimmers and analyzers? What would you change if you had to rewrite any of them?
- Name your current writing fear. Which of the three fear categories does it fit, and which strategy from section 5.1 will you use on it next week?
The gap between your first set of answers and your second set is, in miniature, the measurable gain this chapter was designed to produce. If the gap is small, pick one application exercise or one tool from the chapter and commit to using it on your next writing assignment. Preparation is a habit, not a trait, and the only way to build a habit is to begin.
5.7 Additional Resources
The Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of the U.S. Congress. It’s also the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps, and manuscripts in its collections. http://www.loc.gov/index.html
The Copyright Office of the Library of Congress offers a wide variety of resources for understanding copyright law and how to avoid plagiarism. http://www.copyright.gov
Plagiarism.org is designed to help educators and students develop a better sense of what plagiarism means in the information age, and to teach the planning, organizational, and citation skills essential for producing quality writing and research. https://plagiarism.org/
The New York Public Library’s Science, Industry, and Business Library (SIBL) is the nation’s largest public information center devoted solely to science and business. http://www.nypl.org/research/sibl
The Lippincott Library serves the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the world’s top business schools. http://www.library.upenn.edu/lippincott
The Wall Street Journal is one of the most widely read sources of business news. https://www.wsj.com/
Personalize your business news and analysis with Business Week‘s member service, Business Exchange. http://bx.businessweek.com
As an example of an industry trade association, the Association of Construction Project Managers (ACPM) is a voluntary association of specialist project management professionals working in the built environment. http://www.acpm.co.za
The United States Government’s Small Business Administration has a mandate to aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concerns, to preserve free competitive enterprise, and to maintain and strengthen the overall economy of our nation. http://www.sba.gov
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sets the standards and conducts inspections to ensure safety and prevent accidents in the workplace. http://www.osha.gov
The Society for Human Resource Management is a key source of news and information on HR topics. http://www.shrm.org
Yahoo! Finance is a useful site for tracking the Dow, S&P 500, and other major stock indices in the United States and abroad; it also has areas for financial news, investing, and personal finance. http://finance.yahoo.com
The Occupational Outlook Handbook, published every two years by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, describes hundreds of different types of jobs, the training and education each job requires, the typical earnings in that job, and more. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
CareerBuilder.com, which describes itself as the largest online job search site, offers a vast online and print network to help job seekers connect with employers. http://www.careerbuilder.com
According to its website, Fast Company “sets the agenda, charting the evolution of business through a unique focus on the most creative individuals sparking change in the marketplace.” http://www.fastcompany.com
LinkedIn, which has been described as the professional counterpart to social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. http://www.linkedin.com
Intuit, maker of QuickBooks, Quicken, TurboTax, and other accounting software, provides a small business information center on its website. What would you expect to find here that’s different from the resources a noncommercial source would offer? http://smallbusiness.intuit.com
The Foundation for Critical Thinking offers free miniature guides, videos, and resources on Paul and Elder’s model of critical thinking, including the six traits of quality reasoning discussed in this chapter. https://www.criticalthinking.org/
The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides free guides on research, source evaluation, plagiarism avoidance, and citation practices, and is widely used in business communication courses. https://owl.purdue.edu/
- Nickerson, R. S., Perkins, D. N., & Smith, E. E. (1985). The teaching of thinking. Lawrence Erbaum Associates. ↵
- Gilovich, T. (1993). How we know what isn't so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York, NY: The Free Press. ↵
- Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2007). The miniature guide to critical thinking: Concepts and tools. Dillon Beach, CA: The Foundation for Critical Thinking Press. ↵
- Gudykunst, W. B., & Kim, Y. Y. (1997). Communicating with strangers: An approach to intercultural communication (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill. ↵
- Thill, J. V., & Bovée, C. L. (2004). Business communication today (8th ed.). Prentice Hall ↵
- American Management Association. (2007). Electronic monitoring & surveillance survey: Over half of all employers combined fire workers for email & Internet abuse. Retrieved from http://press.amanet.org/press-releases/177/2007-electronic-monitoring-surveillance-survey ↵
- Ordoñez, J. (2008, July 14). The technologist: They can't hide their pryin' eyes. Retrieved from http://www.newsweek.com/id/143737 ↵
- Adapted from Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2007). The miniature guide to critical thinking: Concepts and tools. The Foundation for Critical Thinking Press. ↵
- Andrews, P. H., Andrews, J., & Williams, G. (1999). Public speaking: Connecting you and your audience. Houghton Mifflin Company. ↵
- Andrews, P. H., Andrews, J., & Williams, G. (1999). Public speaking: Connecting you and your audience. Houghton Mifflin Company. ↵
- Yaniv, I., & Meyer, D. E. (1987). Activation and metacognition of inaccessible stored information: Potential bases for incubation effects in problem solving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13(2), 187–205. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.13.2.187 ↵
- Franklin, B. (1748). Advice to a young tradesman, written by an old one. B. Franklin and D. Hall. ↵
