Guidelines for Great Slide Decks

March 14, 2023 by Jenny Morse in Audience-focused writing, Business Skills, Communication

Slide decks come in two major types: those meant to accompany you talking and those meant to be read. The rules are different for these two types because one is supporting material and the other is center stage.

What they have in common is image and color. Slide decks allow for visuals in a way that reports, memos, letters, and emails don’t. The slide is meant to be seen rather than read. We expect a slide to have more color than black and white. We expect the text to be accompanied by images. We appreciate colorful headings, highlighted words, background colors, and other design elements that are typically not part of other written formats.

Persuasion: Imagining you are the other person

February 21, 2023 by Jenny Morse in Audience-focused writing, Business Skills, Communication

Aristotle is to be blamed for teaching us the so-called “rhetorical triangle” of ethos (credibility), logos (logic), and pathos (emotion). Of course, the reason teachers are still teaching ethos, pathos, and logos is because we have centuries of testing that shows they work. Your ability to persuade is determined by whether the audience can trust you, whether you can provide logical and relevant evidence, and whether the audience has an emotional stake in your content. We won’t listen to people we don’t trust (ethos): credibility is the foundation for all effective communication. But we also don’t listen to people who we don’t *care* about, or who don’t make us *feel* something (pathos). We want to feel connected or inspired or powerful; maybe we want to feel angry or sad. Whatever the emotion, persuasion will only work when we *feel* it.

Introductions and Conclusions for Reports

September 14, 2022 by Jenny Morse in Formatting, Business Skills, Audience-focused writing

This month’s blog post is on introductions and conclusions to help those of you who write reports feel more confident about how you are starting and ending those documents. Most writing guide books will tell you that the introduction sets the stage for the report, and the conclusion summarizes. You might have heard the idea “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.” Conceptually, that’s about right. More specifically, we will give you the concrete elements that should appear in both your introduction and conclusion to create the strongest frame for your report and the best reading experience for your audience.

Report writing is primarily about sharing information with an audience. The goal of the report is to present that information in a logical and organized way that helps the reader digest the content and understand how the content could be applied or what it might mean.

What is Professionalism?

April 10, 2022 by Jenny Morse in Business Skills, Audience-focused writing

… Knowing how to be professional for a particular audience in a particular context is what allows us to build, create, or maintain credibility…Professionalism linked to suits in the workplace is one example of the ways we generalize “professionalism”, even though suits in the workplace aren’t professional for every situation and every audience. Professionalism really depends on the context rather than a fixed set of rules…

Closings: How do you say goodbye?

March 13, 2022 by Jenny Morse in Business Skills, Email, Communication

If you read our January blog post, then you already know: Email is a slow, written conversation. Once you start that conversation, you will inevitably need to end it.

The closing is important because it marks the end of the message. It reassures the reader that they have received your complete thoughts, all that you intended to send them…

Mimicry: One Tool to Build Trust

September 11, 2021 by Jenny Morse in Formatting, Communication, Business Skills, Audience-focused writing

Recently, a few videos on “psychological tricks” have been popping up in my social media feed. One of the tricks that gets a fair amount of attention is that of mirroring. The idea is that if you mirror people’s body language, they are more likely to trust you. For example, if a person reaches for their drink, and then you reach for your drink, the similarity of the action subconsciously suggests that you are alike, which can build trust. So, if the person leans forward, you lean forward; if the person crosses their legs, you cross your legs.

Communication as a Top Skill in the Business World

February 12, 2020 by Jenny Morse in Communication, Business Skills

We learn to write in middle school; how to get our own ideas out of our heads and onto the page. In college, we learn to add adjectives and extra words as “fluff” to fill space on the page. By the time we get to our careers, most people are still using the skills that they acquired as younger, less qualified versions of the people they are now.

Credibility

June 15, 2016 by Jenny Morse in Business Skills, Audience-focused writing

Why does writing well matter? So much of grammar seems arbitrary, annoying, and irrelevant to communication.

The real reason correct and clear writing matters is credibility.

Cover letters

January 19, 2016 by Jenny Morse in Business Skills

A cover letter is a document that pretty much all of us have to write. It's that thing that goes with your resume, a letter required by your potential employers. But what is the purpose of this letter? Your resume should tell the employer everything they need to know: where you went school, where you've worked, what responsibilities you've had, how long you've been at a job or in school, what your computer skills are, etc. What else do these people need from you?

Overuse of Thanks

September 17, 2015 by Jenny Morse in Communication, Business Skills

I'm not sure if it's the happy and optimistic millenials flooding the job market or the newest generation of students who feel entitled to everything and expect rich praise for even the most basic of tasks, but I've noticed a serious increase in the use of "Thanks" in business writing.

Plan, Write, Revise

March 26, 2015 by Jenny Morse in writing, Business Skills

Today, a seminar participant wrote on his feedback form: "This seminar took writing, which seems complicated and difficult, and made it really simple: plan, write, revise.

Some people are afraid of the blank page. Planning gets those writers started so that they are never faced with a blank page. The page has, at a minimum, their responses to the planning prompts.

Writing for work

December 02, 2014 by Jenny Morse in Business Skills, Communication

I’m preparing to conduct my first business writing seminar, and I’m a little nervous. Sure, I’ve taught business writing for a while, but I’ve been focusing my teaching efforts on college students for so long that what I’m nervous about is tailoring the material to people who actually know what writing for work is like.

Writing Habits

October 17, 2014 by Jenny Morse in Business Skills, writing

Recently, I’ve been reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. The ideas in it are fascinating. Basically, a habit is a routine that happens in response to a particular cue and leads to a particular reward. Habits are shortcuts for our brain, ways of transforming everyday tasks into automatic ones. In Duhigg’s book, he explains how it works and how certain people and companies have used this built-in system to improve or create new habits.

Formal writing

October 02, 2014 by Jenny Morse in Business Skills, Formatting, writing

“Formal” means having form, relying on conventions, following established etiquette. It is not a synonym of nonsense, complicated, thesaurus-like.

Titles

September 18, 2014 by Jenny Morse in Business Skills, Audience-focused writing

When we write to people we don’t know, we have to consider what to call them. Should we use their first name? First and last name? What about their title?

Writing well is hard (for everyone)

February 01, 2014 by Jenny Morse in Business Skills, Communication, writing

I've been teaching writing for almost 10 years. I've had a lot of students. The ones who succeed feel challenged and work to surpass that challenge. They recognize that writing requires practice, and they work at it.

Context

January 30, 2012 by Jenny Morse in Business Skills

Recently, my students have been struggling to participate in our online discussions about our assigned readings. Each week, I assign several short articles and a person to be the discussion leader in charge of each reading. That person posts a summary of the article and five questions for discussion. The questions have been really interesting, but tend toward personal reflection and experience rather than conversation about the article. I want students to connect their own experiences with the reading, so these questions are positive approaches to integrating the material with each student's life, but I've been asking them to make sure they connect their personal experience to specific moments in the text. They are having trouble doing this and keep insisting that the discussion leader has already posted a summary so anything they say about the text will be redundant. Redundant!

To email a stranger

August 23, 2011 by Jenny Morse in Email, Communication, Business Skills

Advancing technology has altered our perceptions of generic conventions in interesting ways. What exactly is the difference between a text message and an email? Do we expect them to have different kinds of writing in them? To address different people in our lives? Do we accept different responses as "timely"?