Customer Reviews

Strategies for Business and Technical Writing (6th Edition)

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This book is supposed to be a new edition but there are only a few articles that have changed. Some outdated ones still remain. Unfortunately, there aren't any standards for what constitutes a new edition. This is a shame because students pay more for books that are almost identical to previous editions.

If you are looking for a topical discussion of technical and business writing, I think you can do better.

That said, the book is a quick, informal, benign read. Though it purports to be updated, some of the essays go back to the early 60s.

Some of the techniques discussed don't quite agree with the methods discussed in Mike Markel's "Technical Communication" or Carolyn Rude's "Technical Editing."

If your instructor requires it for a course, buy it used. You'll likely sell it to someone else when you're done, as I will. It makes no sense to lose that much value on the resale.

I'm an instructor of Business Communication and this is the textbook we utilize for the class. I find that most of the articles in this book are good ones; however, there is a lot of repetition, especially when they are referring to the writing process. YAWN. Boring. How many ways can you reiterate "clear, precise, and to the point" as the main idea?

Otherwise, some of the other articles in there are great for those beginning in the world of business writing.