Customer Reviews

Business Writing: What Works, What Won't

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With business people today spending an average of 30% of their work time writing, this book offers simple techniques (along with practice situations) to make your message more clear and powerful. This book was helpful to me because most writing skills taught in business schools today are not comparable to the writing demands faced by these same students in the business world. This book also helped me discard my academic view that writing features lengthy paragraphs and big words and taught me to use concise paragraphs to get the job done. Look at me now! This review was originally five pages!

Wilma Davidson's _Business Writing: What Works, What Won't_ is that rare book that fully addresses its title's premise. This book will have you writing more effective business correspondence and documents right away.

As a freelance commercial writer, my work depends on skillfully communicating on point. This book shows how to do just that. Davidson minces no words, either. She finds the current state of business writing deplorable, filled with pointless buzzwords, passive voice, data overload, and too much pomposity. She gears her book to addressing those major problems and does so effortlessly.

You'll learn how to

* Restructure documents for quick reading

* Tighten sentences and paragraphs by eliminating extraneous words and phrases

* Use "real English" instead of business buzzwords that hinder communication

* Move from dull, passive voice to a more natural active voice that holds readers' attention

* And much more.

Best of all, the author provides numerous outstanding examples of the distinctions between poorly written documents and their more professionally written counterparts. The book includes quizzes, asking readers to fix broken paragraphs and sentences. Unlike some other books that test readers, Davidson provides her suggestions for those fixes so the reader isn't left to wonder what the repair might be. Her section on switching from passive to active voice may be one of the best I've ever read, offering illustrations and clever examples that help beginning business writers grasp the concept.

Considering I work as a writer and have read on the topic widely, it's a rarity for me to pick up a book on the subject of writing and say, "What a superlative book!" _Business Writing; What Works, What Won't_ is just that, and I recommend it without hesitation. If business writers read this book and put its recommendation into practice, we'll have a whole lot less of "It is suggested that we leverage a paradigm shift" and more of "Let's try a new direction."

Business Writing: What Works, What Won't is a business writing book that indeed does work very well. The author gets right to the point and gives just the right amount of information on most business writing aspects, with a terrific section on e-mail and letters. She uses humor throughout the guide, making an otherwise dry subject more entertaining. More importantly, the book is full of useful examples that illustrate the rule, technique, or principle discussed. For example, she doesn't just urge the reader to use the active voice, she includes almost a dozen examples of the proper way to use the active voice (and avoid the passive voice). Highly recommended.

The open, inviting and easy-to-read format was the first thing that attracted me to Wilma Davidson's book. Next was the content. She covers all the major areas that most people need to work on to become more effective and efficient writers. Her book provides solid, practical information right up front, with a of easy-to-understand examples. Last but not least is the endorsement given in the forward by Janet Emig, who revolutionized the approach to writing being taught in school systems around the world today. I use Business Writing, What Works What Wont to supplement the principles and techniques I teach in my writing workshop, which is aimed at professionals in technical fields, and they love it too, saying it is a great help and excellent resource.

Dr. Davidson's _Business Writing: What Works, What Won't_ is not only a useful manual, but an indispensable guide to writing.

Most writing handbooks are painfully ineffective. Grammar manuals are bland. "Idiot" guides make people feel like uneducated laymen. Other business writing books are obsolete with their incongruous and enormous paragraphs, sure discouragement to any writer-in-a-bind. Fortunately, Dr. Davidson's professional writing masterpiece makes accessible the eloquent writing professionals crave. Without talking down or writing up to any business class, she includes the necessary tenets of professional writing: overcoming "page fright," formatting a message, choosing tone wisely, using grammar correctly, mastering deadline writing, and maintaining good correspondence. But the most helpful characteristic of the book comes in an unexpected form: graphics.

Graphs are good, charts are better, but cartoons are best. _What Works, What Won't_ includes 56 cartoon graphics, not including the numerous graphs, charts, and memo examples. It is easy enough to comprehend the communication process, but it is even easier to understand if a man is shown tapping out a Morse code with another man receiving it through headphones (page 144). For a college student overwhelmed by 3" thick textbooks filled with incomprehensible prose, this book is a breath of fresh, artfully crafted air.

Rather than elevating the content to inaccessible heights, Dr. Davidson writes to the common person, any individual who wishes to write better. Yes, it is a book about professional writing, but what other manual teaches you how to make writing rhythmic (page 77) or how to split an infinitive for special emphasis (page 204)?

To do this book justice, it is important to understand its effect on future professionals. Here it is, straight from the horse's mouth: this is a book which taught me how to write, think, and speak better; it is a book which belongs in the offices of students and professionals alike; most of all, it is a book I could never relinquish to a bookstore or overlook in a time of need.

Thank you, Dr. Davidson, for gifting your skill in the form of a book. It has left an indelible mark on this student's writing.

For me the book was a vital part of my learning this semester. Every time we moved to a new topic I would examine the examples. For me to be able to see what a good memo looked like and what a bad memo looked like was invaluable. The different lists throughout the book, like easily misspelled words pages 208-212, were easy to use and extremely helpful.

Business Writing What Works, What Won't by Dr. Davidson - 20 dollars

Tuition for ENC 3250 - 399 dollars

Learning to write a professional memo that will keep you from looking uneducated - PRICELESS

Business Writing - What Works, What Won't is a no-nonsense textbook that provides invaluable information for practical on-the-job writing skills that everyone needs to know. Along with insightful techniques for honing your grammar skills, the author provides office decorum tips that help anyone succeed in the delicate diplomacy that is essential in the workplace of today. So often our only communication with co-workers or clients is conducted via email; therefore, the nuances of visual communication can be lost in "cyber" translation. Dr. Davidson's tips provide ways to direct the "humanization" of your communication.

Oh, and I love the illustrations by Durell Godfrey, which can be so tongue-in-cheek in getting the point across. Overall, this book certainly helped me to un-clutter my business writing, while also eliminating overused and outdated clichés.

The highlight of the book is that it can be something that I would leave on my desk as a guide. The book does not read like a textbook. It is written in plain English and offers wonderful side by side comparisons of good and bad writings. A very useful tool within the book (since we all try to sound smarter in our writing) is the getting rid of sentence clutter chapter. Keeping words simple keeps the reader from pulling out a dictionary or to even stop in the middle of reading to understand your meaning.

In choosing your words wisely, I realized I use negative words. I do not intend to use them, they just happen. On p. 146, the alternatives suggested are beneficial as it will help get my point across without being judgmental.

Grappling with grammar is an excellent chapter in that I never fully understood the meaning behind e.g. and i.e. and while I can write, I have always hated the grammar portion. Having a quick reference on a few tagged pages is useful on many levels.

Having read through part six, I feel more confident in editing my writing. I can comfortably remove excess words and get to the point while cleaning up my document.

I am grateful for a book that is an easy read when I want a quick answer. The book gets to the point all the while adding humor. The white space within the book makes for an easier read from start to finish and as a result I am more likely to pick it up over and over again.

This book is an excellent guide to better writing.

For me, Business Writing: What Works, What Won't is a highlighted keeper. As a Professional Writing major, I need to know how to write results-oriented business documents and this book teaches "how"--- with a flair.

Taught are ways to get messages across in a professional and sincere tone. Dr. Davidson gives us permission to replace worn-out clichés with sincere words. A "monkey see, monkey write" society is the easy way, but not the most actionable way. As Dr. Davidson suggests in the book, a supportive work climate is a more productive work climate. This is a message that is needed in today's stress-filled, power-hungry workplace. We can whistle while we work, and we can get things done...effectively. Not only does this book offer ideas on creating a sincere, authentic tone, there are also ways to help business writers become concise, complete and clear. We can achieve this through our writing and in the visual presentations or our documents. For those of us with a creative bone and a bit of computer proficiency ---providing "eye candy" makes business writing fun.Other text highlights include:

· Most frequently misspelled words - p 191 is a favorite carton caption

· Forming plural words - love the poem on p 213

· Getting rid of sentence clutter/"unsmothering" words - and the fun captions on pages 105-07

This book is a keeper, too, because it's different from other business books out there - it's full of cartoons and humorous examples. Business Writing: What Works, What Won't doesn't only tell, it shows.

This book truly helped improve my professional writing not only at school, but at work as well. Two of my managers even commented on the memos I recently sent out to my team members to address various issues. They said I got straight to the point, my tone was even-tempered, and overall the memo was extremely effective. They also said they saw a huge difference from when I first started with the company two years ago. I said it was all because of the Business Writing book I purchased.

The two areas of the book that I found most valuable were chapter 9 and chapter 14. Chapter 9 dealt with removing clutter from my sentences. I struggled with this problem in my writing before, but the chapter really helped me to avoid these mistakes. It helped me eliminate redundancy and made my writing more concise.

I found chapter 14 to be extremely valuable because I use email all the time for work and school. I did not realize, though, how important it was to bottom-line and be brief in my messages. I have a tendency to dance around the topic in my emails, but this was simply not acceptable when writing memos in the business world. Time=Money!! This chapter helped me to tighten up my writing and forced me to get to the point.

After reading this book I feel so much more confident when I write. I no longer worry about what my coworkers or managers will think about my memos or how they will react to them. You get the best of both worlds with this book, it is inexpensive and it improves your writing tremendously.