The following outline was used for a guest lecture to seniors of a Technical Writing course at Pace University, New York City. It may be useful in creating guidelines for newer writers whose work you will review or use as part of a project.

Make a Plan

• Plan what you will write
  • Important to have a structure for your document
  • Plan doesn’t guarantee that your structure is good
  • Enables you to look at the big picture before you’ve written for several hours and find it isn’t working the way you thought it would
  • Also useful if you want to get an opinion from someone else before you dive into the detail

• General business writing
• Technical writing

• Template
• Format
• Style
• Tone

• Usually be provided
• Be in the company’s files

General business writing includes:

• Letters
• Memos
• Status Reports
• Meeting Summaries

• Training
• Procedures
• Policies
• User Guides
• Job Descriptions

Important to know to whom you are writing

• The real audience
  • Professionals
  • Clerks
  • Factory workers
• The reviewers

• Familiarity with the subject / content
• Word economy / Simple sentences
  • Make every word count
  • Hemingway
  • Poetry
  • Prepositional phrases (keep to a minimum)
  • He / she and other pronouns (the better your writing, the less you will need to use pronouns)

• Bullet and Dash: Multi-level bullets are slightly more confusing for the reader than numbers or an outline system but much easier to revise when content is constantly changing
• Punctuation and grammar: Get a good handbook and use it. Gregg Manual provides good standards

Absolute must in a business setting

Proofread after spell check

Use proofreading marks

• Check off each correction after completing it

• Depends on who reviews your work
• What they know; how demanding they are