Writing of Business, The
Robert P. Inkster
Judith M. Kilborn, both of
St. Cloud State University
Description
The Writing of Business sees
writing as an essential tool for creating personal and organizational strategies for
managing an increasingly complex workplace. To help students use their writing to attain
these goals, the authors have employed a powerful heuristic: GRACE. GRACE represents five
essential kinds of generative questions Goals, Readers, Arguments, Conventions, and
Expression for analyzing a writing situation and generating specific questions
leading to effective written documents.
Grounded in rhetoric, The
Writing of Business contextualizes traditional sentence and paragraph conventions within
the realities of the business world, such as globalization, outsourcing, and constantly
changing technology. A business writing text that is reader-friendly in both content and
voice, The Writing of Business equips students for a radically changed workplace. This
book presents a vision of writing as an activity that is central and essential to doing
business in the 21st Century
Appropriate Courses
Designed for courses in
Business Writing, Professional Writing, and Business Communication.
Features
- The
GRACE heuristic goals, readers, arguments, conventions, and expression yields
specific questions and answers for individual writing situations, literally putting
argument at the center of the writing process. GRACE is invoked in each chapter to address
a new problematic writing situation or genre.
- Extensive,
up-to-date discussion of electronic communication in business addresses e-mail, page
design, HTML, Web résumés, and electronic research which is integrated throughout.
- Coverage
of business writing genres includes documents often overlooked such as minutes, agendas,
vision and mission statements, job descriptions, performance reviews, and business plans.
- Extended
treatment of argument in conflicted, emotional situations acknowledges the ethical and
emotional dimensions of professional discourse and lays out strategies for resolving
differences.
- Treatment
of project management in document creation and of teamwork in writing projects helps
writers prioritize writing tasks.
- Vignettes
provide context to help explain the use of a GRACE analysis.
- Exercises
and activities both individual and collaborative provide practical application
of GRACE and other chapter concepts.
- Strategies
for formulating and expressing visions and company mission statements are included in a
unique Chapter 4, "Writing to Negotiate and Express Institutional Goals, Values, and
Practices" discusses.
- A
unit on career planning and job search (Chapters 7-9) contextualizes the writing of the
job search while offering specific strategies for finding and persuading prospective
employers.
- Chapter
14 on oral presentations addresses audience needs, conventions, and modes of expression
for effective oral reports.
- Extended
discussion of international/multicultural readers in Chapter 15 considers the implications
of cultural differences in written and oral communication.
- Questions
of grammar, usage, punctuation, spelling, and style are answered in "The Business
Writer's Quick Reference," which includes strategies for revising, editing, and
proofreading business documents.
Table Of
Contents
Most chapters conclude with
"Activities and Projects" and/or "Endnotes," "Bibliography," and "A Summary
Checklist."
Preface
I. WRITING AS STRATEGIC
MANAGEMENT OF A COMPLEX ORGANIZATIONAL WORLD.
1. Managing Complexity and
Risk with GRACE.
Managing from the Center: Locating Yourself in Your Organizational Environment.
Writing to Manage Yourself and Your Work.
Writing and Risk.
Identifying What You Know and What You Need to Know.
2. Managing Your Writing Is
Managing Your Work.
Useful Assumptions about Writing.
Analyzing Your Writing Situation, Conditions and Constraints, and Assumptions.
Using GRACE to Examine Your Assumptions about Your Writing Situation.
Using Computers to Generate, Revise, and Edit Your Writing.
II. WRITING TO BUILD UNITY
AND SUSTAIN AN ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE.
3. Writing to Manage Daily
Work and Enhance Group Productivity and Accountability.
Take a Memo!
Print and Electronic Memo-Writing Situations.
GRACE for Memos and E-mail.
Key Differences between Memos and E-mail.
Determining if Your Memo Should Be Print or Electronic.
Collaboration and Teamwork in Organizations.
4. Writing to Negotiate and
Express Institutional Goals, Values, and Practices.
Talking the Talk and Walking the Walk.
Expressing Missions and Visions.
Writing Strategic Plans with GRACE.
Using GRACE to Improve Policies and Procedures Manuals.
Job Descriptions and Performance Reviews.
III. WRITING TO BUILD AND
MANAGE RELATIONSHIPS ACROSS ORGANIZATIONAL BOUNDARIES.
5. Contexts and Conventions
of Business Letters.
When Should You Write a Letter?
Letter-Writing Contexts, Situations, and Their Conventions.
6. Writing with GRACE in
Difficult Situations: Conflict, Disagreement, Emotion.
Three Generic Conflict Situations and Their Goals.
Four Principles for Successfully Negotiating Conflicts and Handling Difficult People.
Engaging the Conflict with GRACE.
7. Managing Your Career
Search.
GRACE and the Writing of Your Career.
Career Search Exercises.
Six Things You Can Do to Manage Your Career Search.
8. The Résumé: Making the
Most of Your Life.
Developing Your Résumé with GRACE.
GRACE for Online Résumés.
9. Building Effective
Employment Letters.
Situations and Contexts for Employment Letters.
Making GRACEful Contact with a Prospective Employer.
Other Contexts, Goals, and Readers in the Employment Search.
IV. WHEN A LETTER OR MEMO IS
NOT ENOUGH: PROPOSALS, BUSINESS PLANS, AND OTHER FORMAL REPORTS.
10. Design Conventions for
Long, Complex Documents.
How Busy Professionals Read Long Documents.
Helping Readers Navigate Long, Complex Documents.
Summaries: Answering Readers' Primary Questions Quickly.
Other Conentions of Long, Complex Documents.
The Power and Importance of Graphics.
11. Beyond the Library:
Information Resources and Research Strategies in the Contemporary Organization.
Deciding What You Need to Know and Where to Look for It.
Using Your Information Resources Creatively, Responsibly, and Effectively.
Conducting Interviews, Focus Groups, and Surveys.
Using Electronic Sources.
12. Proposals and Business
Plans: Getting to "Yes."
Writing Proposals with GRACE.
Proposals Checklist.
13. Formal Reports.
Developing Your Report with GRACE.
14. Presenting Reports
Orally.
Presenting Oral Reports with GRACE.
V. SPECIAL RISKS AND
CHALLENGES: WRITING FOR THE GLOBAL MARKETPLACE.
15. Opportunities and Risks
in Cross-Cultural Communication.
Cultural Signposts Underlying Cross-Cultural Communication.
Making Cross-Cultural Oral Presentations.
Writing to Readers from Other Cultures.
VI. THE BUSINESS WRITER'S
QUICK REFERENCE.
Generating Strategies for
Revising, Editing, and Proofreading.
Strategies for Increasing
Reader Comprehension.
Editing Strategies for
Specific Sentence-Level Errors.
Grammar Problems.
Other Conventions in Written
Professional Discourse.
Beyond the Spellchecker:
Commonly Misused Words and Expressions.
References.
799 pages
