Course Name

Writers at Work: A Review for Professionals - Part 4: Achieving a Professional Tone and Style

Contact Hours: 10

Course Description

Professional writing includes more than just grammar, punctuation, and the arrangement of ideas. The tone and style of your message can keep your readers engaged or it can make them want to hit the delete key. Part IV presents strategies to ensure the tone of your document is appropriate, positive, and professional. Learn to integrate basic graphic design techniques so that your documents are visually effective and readable. Master parallel writing structure to create sentences and bulleted lists that flow smoothly. Demonstrate your competence to readers by eliminating problems with commonly confused and misused words. Readings and exercises help reinforce your understanding of the concepts. You will receive personal feedback from the instructor on at least three writing assignments. The instructor is available at all stages of the course for tutoring.

Outcome

Upon successful completion of the course, you will gain the following skills: - Write documents with a professional tone. - Use basic design techniques to create emails and documents that are visually effective and pleasing. - Use parallelism when writing sentences, lists, and headings. - Identify and correct common word usage errors.

Assessment

You will complete self-check exercises in each lesson. You will write at least three documents and receive personal feedback from the instructor.

Outline

Week 1: Learn techniques for writing with a professional and positive tone. Understand how to improve the professional tone of any document. Know 12 words to avoid using in email. Week 2: Learn how to use basic graphic design elements, such as white space, headings, etc. Week 3: Learn to use parallel writing structure with sentence elements, lists, and headings. Week 4: Review commonly confused and misused words.