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9781592574247

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Business Letters and Memos, 2nd Edition

by
  • ISBN13:

    9781592574247

  • ISBN10:

    1592574246

  • Edition: 2nd
  • Format: Package
  • Copyright: 2005-11-01
  • Publisher: DK Publishing, Inc.
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List Price: $21.95

Summary

You're no idiot, of course. You know how important a formal sales letter or personnel memo can be in the workplace. But when your eight-hour day is consumed by meetings and a full in-box, communicating with your colleagues tends to consist of hastily scribbled memos or informal one-sentence e-mails.

Author Biography

Tom Gorman is a business book author and collaborator. He holds an MBA from NYU and is former director of editorial services at DRI/McGraw-Hill, where he edited the monthly Forecast of the US Economy. He-'s the author or editor of hundreds of articles, analyses, white papers, and speeches and the author of the DRI chief economist-'s statement before the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, along with The Complete Idiot-'s Guide to MBA Basics, Second Edition, and The Complete Idiot-'s Guide to Economics.

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Business of Business Writing
1(36)
Letters and Memos and E-mail-Oh My!
3(6)
The Characteristics of Greatness
3(3)
Grab the Reader's Attention
4(1)
Make a Recommendation or Ask for Action
4(1)
Support Your Position
5(1)
Mention Next Steps and Deadlines
5(1)
Strive for Greatness
6(1)
The Importance of Written Communication Skills
6(1)
What People Mean by ``Communication Skills''
6(2)
Put Mutual Interests First
7(1)
Make the Message Clear
7(1)
Show Sensitivity to Others' Feelings
7(1)
The Reader Is King
8(1)
Business Writing Problems-And Solutions
9(6)
Problem: ``I Hate to Write''
9(1)
What Can You Do?
10(1)
Problem: ``I Was Never Good in English''
10(1)
What Can You Do?
11(1)
Problem: ``I Have No Time''
11(1)
What Can You Do?
11(1)
Problem: ``I Have No `Style'''
11(1)
What Can You Do?
12(1)
Problem: ``I Don't Write Well and Others Do It Better''
12(1)
What Can You Do?
12(1)
Assessing Your Business Writing Skills
12(1)
Where We Go from Here
13(2)
The Right Tool for the Writing Situation
15(12)
Letters: Professional, Yet Personal
15(2)
Memos: A Bit More Official
17(3)
Using the ``CC'' to Get Action
18(1)
Memos to the File: A Record-Keeping Tool
18(1)
Memorandum
19(1)
Memorandum
19(1)
E-mail All Over
20(4)
E-mail in Action
22(2)
The Impact of an E-mail
24(1)
Handwritten Notes: Very Personal, Very Proper
24(1)
When to Use a Letter, Memo, or E-mail
25(2)
E-mail Mastery
27(10)
E-mail Basics, Bells, and Whistles
27(1)
Why Bother to Write Good E-mails?
28(2)
Yes, but Is E-mail Really Writing?
30(1)
Five Steps to E-mail Excellence
31(4)
Choose Loyal Subjects
31(1)
What's Your Point?
32(1)
Be Brief
32(1)
Style: Formal, Informal, or Friendly?
33(2)
Check Your Work
35(1)
Emotional Rescue
35(2)
Part 2: Writing is Easier Than You Think (So Please Relax)
37(50)
Three Easy Steps to Eloquence
39(6)
Step One: Plan (Decide What to Say)
39(1)
How Planning Helps You
40(1)
Does an E-mail Need a Plan?
40(1)
Step Two: Draft (Say It)
40(1)
Step Three: Edit (Improve the Way You Said It)
41(1)
The Benefits of Three Steps
41(2)
Run Around the Block
42(1)
Overcoming Resistance to the Three-Step Process
43(1)
Budgeting Your Writing Time
43(1)
As Easy as One-Two-Three
44(1)
Step One-Know Where You're Going and Who You're Taking with You
45(10)
An Exercise in Pointlessness
45(3)
What's the Problem?
46(1)
To Make a Point, You Must Have a Point
47(1)
Reader Analysis
48(1)
How Can I Help the Reader?
48(1)
How to Establish Credibility
48(1)
Do Your Homework
49(1)
Getting and Organizing Your Ideas
49(4)
Generating Ideas
50(2)
Question Yourself
52(1)
Getting Organized
52(1)
Sequencing: First the Good News, Then the Bad News
53(2)
Step Two-Get Those Fingers Moving
55(8)
How Do I Follow a Plan?
55(1)
One Idea per Paragraph
56(1)
The Topic of Topic Sentences
56(1)
What's So Terrific About Topic Sentences?
57(1)
Building Paragraphs, Sentence by Sentence
58(1)
Keep Writing
58(1)
A Few Words on Sentence Length
58(1)
How Long Is Too Long?
59(1)
What About Paragraph Length?
59(1)
Paragraph Length Guidelines
60(1)
Putting the Reader in the Picture
60(3)
Say ``You''
61(1)
``Well, Jim ...''
61(2)
Step Three-Fast Fixes and Quick Repairs
63(8)
Leave It Alone
63(1)
Finding What Needs Fixing
64(4)
He Used a Plan---What Happened?
65(1)
Fixing Poor Organization
66(1)
Fixing Vagueness and Lack of Clarity
66(1)
Fixing Wordiness
67(1)
Put Your Writing on a Diet
68(1)
Cut Down on Bothersome Phrases
68(1)
Eliminate Redundancy
69(1)
Compress Modifying Statements
69(1)
Editing the Easy Way
69(2)
What About Format?
71(10)
Great First Impressions
71(3)
Formatting Tools That Work
74(1)
How Long Is Too Long?
75(2)
How to Shorten Long Memos
76(1)
Using Exhibits
76(1)
Other Formatting Tools
77(4)
Charts
77(1)
Boxes and Callouts
78(3)
Where the %&@# Do the Commas Go?
81(6)
What's It All About?
81(1)
What Will People Think?
81(1)
Comma, Comma, Comma
82(1)
Colons: When Should You Use Them?
82(1)
Don't Fear the Semicolon; Instead, Learn to Use It
83(1)
The Apostrophe's Uses
83(1)
I Say, ``Learn How to Use Quotation Marks.''
84(1)
The Hyphen Is a First-Rate Helper
84(1)
Dashes---How Dashing!
85(1)
Parentheses Work Together (and Travel in Pairs)
85(1)
Wow! The Exclamation Mark
86(1)
Part 3: Polishing Your Correspondence
87(36)
Put Your Personality into Your Writing
89(10)
What Is Style?
89(1)
Shouldn't We Write Just the Way We Talk?
90(1)
Choosing the Right Style
91(1)
Let's Get Stylish
92(6)
Your Approach to the Material
92(1)
How You Address the Reader
93(1)
Word Choice and Sentence Structure
93(2)
Using Active Voice
95(1)
Changing Passive Voice to Active Voice
96(1)
When to Use Passive Voice
97(1)
Don't Be Tone-Deaf
98(1)
Nail Down the Basics
99(12)
Grammar Matters
99(1)
The Parts of Speech
100(1)
Fixing the Most Common Errors
101(3)
Dangling Modifiers
101(1)
Lack of Parallelism
102(1)
Faulty Comparison
102(1)
Unclear Pronoun Reference
103(1)
Incorrect Pronoun Case
103(1)
Common Mistakes in Word Usage
104(6)
Affect and Effect
104(1)
All, Each
104(1)
As
104(1)
As Such
105(1)
Assure, Ensure, Insure
105(1)
Bad, Badly
105(1)
Can and May
105(1)
Cannot
105(1)
Continual and Continuous
105(1)
Center Around
106(1)
Compare with, Compare to
106(1)
Complement, Compliment
106(1)
Data
106(1)
e.g. and i.e
106(1)
Etc.
107(1)
Fewer, Less
107(1)
Former, Latter
107(1)
Good, Well
108(1)
Imply, Infer
108(1)
Its, It's
108(1)
Lay, Lie
108(1)
Numbers
108(1)
Principal, Principle
108(1)
Reason Is Because
109(1)
Regards, Regard
109(1)
Time
109(1)
Their, They're
109(1)
Very
110(1)
Your, You're
110(1)
Avoiding Jargon and Buzzwords
110(1)
How It Looks Is How You Look
111(12)
Neatness Counts
111(1)
The Professional Look
111(1)
Getting Rid of Mistakes
112(1)
Choosing the Right Format
112(5)
Accepted Closings
115(2)
Page Numbers for Letters and Memos
117(6)
Marginal Thinking
118(1)
Customary Layout of Extra Information
118(2)
Letterhead and Stationery
120(1)
Print Quality
121(2)
Part 4: Letters, Memos, and E-mail for Every Situation
123(158)
Requests for Action That Get People to Act
125(10)
What Do You Want Done?
125(1)
E-mailing Requests
126(1)
Simple Requests
126(4)
Requests via E-mail
130(1)
Complex Requests
131(1)
How to Be Persuasive
131(2)
Using Threats and Consequences
133(1)
Follow-Up Strategies for Requests
134(1)
Writing Up Poor Performance
135(10)
When Should You Write a Reprimand?
135(1)
The Role of the Human Resources Department
136(1)
Focus on the Problem
137(2)
Begin Planning Early
137(2)
An Outline for a Reprimand
139(1)
The Letter Itself: Loud and Clear
140(2)
Using the Outline
140(2)
What's Next?
142(1)
The Final Warning
142(1)
Termination Letters
142(1)
What About E-mail?
143(2)
Announcements That Spread the Word
145(12)
What's New?
145(1)
E-mailed Announcements: Jewels or Junk?
146(1)
Good Timing
147(1)
An Outline for Announcements
147(1)
People Come, People Go, People Get Promoted
148(4)
When Someone Joins the Organization
148(1)
When Someone Leaves
149(1)
When Someone Is Promoted
150(2)
Announcing Organizational Changes
152(1)
Announcements for Special Events
153(4)
Recurrent Scheduled Events
153(1)
Announcing Structural Changes
154(1)
Announcements Regarding News Events
155(2)
Media Communications That Draw Great Publicity
157(14)
Why Try to Get Publicity?
157(1)
Query Letters That Get Attention
158(1)
What Editors Need
159(1)
How to Target Publications
159(2)
How to Develop Story and Article Ideas
160(1)
Outline for a Great Query Letter
161(3)
The Growing Role of E-mail
164(1)
Press Releases
165(1)
Press Releases That Get Attention
166(2)
Outline for a Press Release
166(2)
Making Your Own News
168(1)
Do's and Don'ts When Writing to the Media
169(2)
Sales Letters Are Your License to Print Money
171(12)
The Challenge: Getting Attention
171(1)
A Word About Mailing Lists
172(1)
Two Ways to Write a Letter
173(2)
Short and Sweet Sales Letters
173(2)
What's at Work in This Letter?
175(1)
Features and Benefits: The Difference and Why It Matters
176(1)
What About Sales E-mails?
177(1)
More Examples of Good Sales Letters
178(3)
Increasing Your Response Rate
181(2)
Decent Proposals (and Business Agreements)
183(12)
Is It Worth the Paper It's Printed On?
183(1)
How to Write an Attractive Proposal
184(1)
Ask Questions
185(1)
Outline for a Proposal
186(1)
Sample Letter Proposals
187(2)
How a Proposal Works
189(4)
A Letter of Agreement
193(2)
Customer Correspondence That Keeps Customers Close
195(14)
Why Write if You're Not Selling?
195(1)
The Role of E-mail in Customer Correspondence
196(1)
Guidelines for Customer Correspondence
196(2)
Outline for Customer Correspondence
198(1)
Nice to Know, Need to Know, or Absolute Must?
198(6)
Nice to Knows: Management and Product Changes
199(2)
Need to Knows: Changes in Policies, Procedures, or Prices
201(2)
Absolute Musts: Product Problems and Recalls
203(1)
Customer Contact Correspondence
204(1)
When Trouble Comes: Crisis Communications
205(3)
E-mail Reminders and Flags
208(1)
Complaints and Collection Letters That Shine Rather Than Whine
209(16)
When Things Go Wrong
209(1)
Rules for Effective Complaining
210(1)
Propose a Specific Solution
210(1)
Keep the Moral High Ground
210(1)
Complain to the Right Person
210(1)
Keep Good Records of All Contacts
211(1)
Be Persistent
211(1)
When to Write
211(1)
Get the E-mails Moving
212(1)
Analyzing the Reader
212(1)
Outline for a Letter of Complaint
212(5)
A Sample Letter of Complaint
213(1)
Another Letter of Complaint
213(3)
An Opener and a Follow-Up
216(1)
Collection Letters
217(1)
Credit 101
217(1)
The Collection Process
218(1)
Collection E-mails
218(5)
Sample Collection Letters
220(3)
Collection Do's and Don'ts
223(2)
Rejections, Apologies, and Answers to Complaints
225(14)
E-mail and Rejections, Apologies, and Answers
225(2)
Acknowledgment Letters
227(2)
Acknowledging a Resume
227(1)
Acknowledging an Individual Request
227(1)
Acknowledging a Proposal Conditionally
228(1)
Rejection Letters: A Matter of Timing
229(1)
High-Volume Rejection Letters
230(1)
Rules for Rejection
230(4)
Letters of Rejection
231(2)
Keep Rejection Short and Sweet
233(1)
The Sorrow and the Pity
234(5)
Letters of Apology
234(1)
Do's and Don'ts of Apologizing
235(1)
Answering Customer Complaints
236(3)
Cover Letters That Open Doors
239(16)
Breaking Out of the In-Box
239(1)
Four Rules for Cover Letters
240(1)
A Cover Letter Can't Compensate for a Poor Resume
240(1)
Be Personal, Write Well, and Demonstrate Interest
240(1)
Keep It Short and to the Point
241(1)
Zero Errors Is the Goal
241(1)
An Outline for Cover Letters
241(3)
Sample Cover Letters
242(2)
How to Make a Cover Letter Stand Out
244(1)
Write Something Self-Revealing
244(1)
Show Genuine Interest in the Company
244(1)
Use the Right Kind of Humor
244(1)
Two Job Hunting Approaches: Shotgun and Rifle-Shot
245(4)
Shotgun Job Hunting: Target Broadly
245(1)
Sample Letters for Shotgun Job Hunting
245(2)
Rifle-Shot Job Hunting: Target Carefully
247(1)
Sample Letters for Rifle-Shot Job Hunting
248(1)
Seeking an Interview for Information
249(3)
About E-Recruiting
252(3)
Online Cover Letters and Comments
252(3)
References and Recommendations That Help People Get Ahead
255(12)
Who Is Asking and Why?
255(1)
What About Negative References?
256(1)
How Do I Refuse to Give a Reference?
257(1)
What if They Didn't Ask?
257(1)
Help, I Need a Reference
257(4)
Employment References
258(1)
Blanket Recommendations
259(2)
Character References
261(1)
Recommended Style for References and Recommendations
262(1)
Academic References
263(1)
Letters of Introduction
264(1)
What About E-mail References and Recommendations?
265(2)
Using E-mail and Thank-You Notes to Network Like a Pro
267(14)
An Update on the Art of Networking
267(1)
The Role of Writing
268(1)
The Role of E-mail
268(3)
E-mail Openings
269(2)
The Thank-You Note
271(2)
Thank-You Letters After Job Interviews and Client Meetings
273(4)
Thank You for the Interview
273(2)
Thank You for the Meeting
275(2)
All About ``Flower Mail''
277(2)
Finding Reasons to Write
278(1)
Do's and Don'ts of Thank-You Letters and E-mails
279(2)
Part 5: Writing Well in Special Circumstances
281(28)
Writing for Your Boss or a Committee
283(10)
Situations When You Write for Others
283(2)
Writing for Bosses
284(1)
Writing for a Committee
284(1)
Specific Problems in Writing for Others
284(1)
Six Steps to Writing It Right for Others
285(6)
Understand the Goal and the Message
285(1)
Analyze the Audience
286(1)
Get Ideas---and Agreement---Up Front
286(1)
Write Alone
287(1)
Obtain and Enter All Edits
288(2)
Get Final Sign-Off
290(1)
Editing Someone Else's Work
291(2)
Writing for Readers Around the World
293(8)
The Language of Business
293(2)
It Can't Hurt to Be Humble
294(1)
Avoid Lincoln Tunnel Vision
294(1)
Writing to Non-Native Speakers
295(2)
Additional Refinements
296(1)
Observe the Formalities
296(1)
Do the British Speak English?
297(2)
Is Politically Correct, Correct?
299(1)
Gender-Neutral Language
299(1)
Global E-mail and Global English
300(1)
When You're Under the Gun
301(8)
Keep Your Head While Others Lose Theirs
301(1)
Getting Out of the E-In-Box
302(1)
Prioritizing Your Writing Tasks
303(2)
Create Systems That Support You
305(2)
Electronic File Backup Options
306(1)
Use Mail Merge for Mass Mailings
307(1)
Want to Be a Dictator?
307(1)
Keep on Writing
308(1)
Appendix: Working with Your CD-ROM 309(2)
Index 311

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