RE: Teaching a practical business writing class and looking forprofessional rubrics

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Erika Yanovich wrote: 
 
> The most annoying problem I see is writers relating to raw material
from
> engineers as sacred. They don't dare leaving anything out and they
don't
> realize other info is missing. Instead of thinking what would be the
best
> way to organize what material, they just massage some existing doc.

I completely agree. But this might be a good time to point out that Rob
isn't putting together a _technical_ writing class, he's putting
together a _business_ writing class. It seems to me that many of the
responses have wandered off topic.

Of course, we're largely technical writers... But it would be more
helpful to Rob to focus on matters that are more general in nature and
apply to expository writing of many kinds, rather than things specific
to technical writing (like SME issues, software procedure issues, etc.).


I'll second Wendy's list -- and with due respect to Leonard's
contrapuntal response, passive voice and $500 words are _rarely_
necessary (far, far more rarely than they're used). Leonard is right,
though, that " all business writing is marketing," and that would be a
good subject to discuss in the class. How and to what extent is there a
marketing aspect to non-marketing business writing? How does one meet
that need without the dreaded "marketing-speak" that Wendy referred to? 

On a more narrow, concrete level, a list of common usage errors would be
helpful. One that I've seen several times recently is confusing diffuse
and defuse, as in "diffuse the situation." That makes my teeth hurt.
Another one that makes me cringe is "for all intensive purposes." 

Richard


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------








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