What’s the Best Way to Send a Message? It depends.

August 08, 2023 by Jenny Morse

Before cell phones and the internet the means of sending a message were limited. Anytime in the late 19th century or earlier, there were basically two ways to send a message: find the person and talk to them or send a letter or a note or a calling card (ok, there were choices, but we don’t have to worry about most of those mechanisms any more). Then the phone was invented, and now you could actually hear the person’s voice even when you weren’t in the same space with them. The phone was a channel for communication between talking to them in person and sending a written message. And it was revolutionary.

But here in the 21st century, our means of communication have proliferated. Of course, you can still talk to people in person (if you want). And you can call them (that is a function the device we call a “phone” still has). But you can also FaceTime (aka video call), text, post/chat/DM on any one of the ever-multiplying social media platforms, instant message through Slack or Google Chat (or those same social media platforms), email, or send a voice message, video message, meme, gif, or any other communication object through any of these platforms.

The ways to communicate are infinite.

So how do we make choices about which ones to use when?

Giving and Receiving Feedback is Hard: Try to Think of It As a Gift

July 13, 2023 by Jenny Morse

I don’t think I am great at giving or receiving feedback. Yet. But I do know what we *should* do. And I know why we should do these things. I hope that by sharing them with you, you can practice these skills and keep working to develop the trust in others and trust in yourself that giving and receiving good feedback requires.

How long is too long for an email?

June 19, 2023 by Jenny Morse

The purpose of email is to communicate the task, question, need, or invitation. Once we start explaining the how or the why, our message will start to get longer than the audience may need or want to read.

A good rule of thumb for an email is to think that if we have to scroll down, the content is too long.

The non-verbal signals we send with our written communication

May 18, 2023 by Jenny Morse

I recently read Erica Dhawan’s book Digital Body Language, which has such great insights about how people are evaluating trust based on the signals we send when we communicate. Her point in the book is that trust is built by more than the language we read: the combination of all our choices creates a signal for the audience. What she emphasizes is that we read the contextual signals of written communication much like we read body language during a face-to-face conversation.

We know what you mean when you say “We’re going to have to take another look at this” because we can hear your voice, see your face, read your posture. All those things add up to tone, the emotions we ascribe to a bit of communication. And, Dhawan suggests–despite our long-held belief that writing doesn’t have a voice or a face or posture, that writing doesn’t have tone in the way that we know speaking does–it turns out that writing does have non-verbal signals that we can interpret as positive or negative, enthusiastic or uninterested, overwhelmed or bored. And we need to be aware of those signals so that we can make choices about the signals we send.

Emojis are not Professional, are They?

April 05, 2023 by Jenny Morse in Punctuation, Grammar, Communication, Audience-focused writing

Have you used an emoji in an email at work? Seriously, have you? I bet you have. At least one smiley face. AT LEAST a wink;)

But if I asked you if emojis are “professional,” most of you would probably say no.

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.

Routine Messages: Start with the Ask

January 24, 2023 by Jenny Morse in Audience-focused writing, Communication

Routine messages are messages that are…routine, as in you write them all the time or you get the same kind of messages all the time. These are your day-to-day, the main things you do, the things you probably should have built templates for so that you can just swap out the names at the top.

Active and Passive Voice: What is it and why does Microsoft Word (and every other grammar check tool) hate it so much?

December 15, 2022 by Jenny Morse in Grammar, Audience-focused writing

You may have been told in middle school not to use passive voice. Or your high school or college writing teacher used red pen and underlined sentences marking them “Passive voice!!” as if you should’ve known what that meant and why it mattered. Or you see Microsoft Word’s squiggly blue line under a sentence and read “Passive voice” and then just accept whatever suggestion the AI offers. It’s ok. You don’t have to know everything about writing, and using grammar check is a good habit! But this is one technique that you may want to know how to use.

The Complete Sentence

November 14, 2022 by Jenny Morse in Grammar

A complete sentence in English has to have two things: a subject and a verb. The subject = who or what the sentence is about. The verb = what the subject is doing (which might be just being).

Colons: You’re (Probably) Using Them Wrong

October 11, 2022 by Jenny Morse in Grammar

Let’s make sure we all know what we’re talking about. The colon is the punctuation mark with two dots stacked on top of each other:

That’s right. If you look closely, you’ll see that I used a colon at the end of my sentence to introduce…the colon. And that’s because the colon’s job is to…

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 are headings and why would I need them in a report?

August 07, 2022 by Jenny Morse

Headings are the titles and subtitles that name a document or name sections and subsections of a document. So, for example, the title of this blog post is a heading.

Are you allowed to use “I” in reports?

July 11, 2022 by Jenny Morse

"...Since a report’s job is to present information, the content, organization, and formatting of the report work towards that purpose...Of all the challenges capturing information in an easy-to-read report presents, perhaps the hardest is avoiding the word “I”. Many of us were told that we couldn’t use the word “I” in a report. It was a rule given to us by our biology teacher for our lab reports or our English teacher for a book report. The rule seemed arbitrary and made us write in strange ways..."

Listening is 50% of effective communication

June 13, 2022 by Jenny Morse in Grammar

When we think about communication, we often focus on what we are trying to say to another person. But the act of producing language–whether writing or speaking–is only half of communication. Effective communication requires a reader or a listener. If you write something and no one ever reads it, the content is not communicated. If you say something but no one hears you, your message hasn’t been communicated. In other words, effective communication isn’t just what we produce, but also how well we listen.

What You Don’t Say Still Speaks

May 10, 2022 by Jenny Morse in Grammar

As an expert in business writing, I focus mostly on how we use language to communicate ideas effectively. But communication is more than words.

Grammar "Rules"

May 05, 2022 by Jenny Morse in Grammar

Recently I got into a little text message exchange with my aunt. She wrote to me about sitting next to someone on the plane who had terrible grammar. They were talking and the other person kept saying things like “Me and my friend” instead of “My friend and I.” Which made my aunt a bit crazy. She texted me because, since I’m an English person, she thought I would understand her frustration.

And I do understand. But I don’t think speech has the same grammar rules as writing. And I definitely don’t think it’s appropriate to correct a stranger’s grammar on an airplane.

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…

What makes a great subject line in business writing? ACTion

February 05, 2022 by Jenny Morse in Grammar

Subject lines are a critical part of email format. They’re the first thing people read. They can help a person decide whether to open the message or not. And they can help a person find an email in their messy inbox at a later date.