Customer Reviews

E Writing: 21st Century Tools for Effective Communication

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I manage a team of software developers. Like me, they and other technical people tend to be too verbose in their emails, not being clear about what action needs to be taken, formatting poorly, etc.

What we learn liberal arts colleges is an academic communication style that is too verbose, takes too long to get to the point, and full of information in all the wrong places. Technical schools, on the other hand, often don't teach anything about writing, sometimes leaving their graduates unclear on how to communicate except on detailed, technical subjects.

Booher has written a very accessible book that addresses good writing from a non-pedantic, not-your-high-school-english class perspective.

I kept this book at my side while writing a proposal that had to be content-dense yet short and readable. I have since bought several copies of her book to hand out to people around the office.

Communication is very difficult, made even harder by the 'words only' content of email. Today we are interacting primarily in email with our customers and the management chain. Booher explains how to significantly increase the chance that your emails are read and acted upon, providing good boosts to your career, reduced chances of "what do you mean you asked me to do something?" problems, and ways for you to improve your reputation as an effective, competent employee.

Her attention to whitespace and formatting is, in my opinion, very useful. I've since become a lot more aware of how much more readable my communications are when I take time to include lists, blank lines, headers, etc. to help the reader break up my content into digestable chunks. A key learning: remembering that the reader is not simply waiting on the edge of his chair to devour every word of my carefully crafted email but, rather, sees it as yet another stream of words in the midst of a flood that he has to quickly evaluate for its usefulness and relevance.

She includes many "Good", "Bad", "Okay but could be better" examples for those who learn by example, rules for those who like rules, and just the right amount of verbiage to convey the concepts without violating her own rules of conciseness.

I have not found the 'email ettiquette' portions nearly as useful, nor the detailed grammar section. But if you're new to office email, or need a brushup on your high school grammar (complete with good examples), you will find them helpful.

Despite those two sections, I found the book gave more than enough value for its cost, and it has earned a place on my short 'review on occassion and keep close to hand' list of books.

From the length of this review, you can see I haven't completely mastered all of her techniques. But she has led to noticable improvements in my writing, and I'm on the right path.

When I first picked-up this book, I expected a pedantic approach to creating quick-and-dirty e-mails. There is some attention to e-mail correspondence, but this volume is considerably more comprehensive than what I expected. Young people, particularly, highly oriented to computers and e-mail will benefit greatly from this book. So will people in administrative roles where writing clearly and succinctly is so critically important in this sped-up world.

After 60-some pages on writing for the electronic medium, Booher launches into a wealth of material on good writing principles in general. On one hand, one could say this content takes us away from the title of the book. On the other hand, what Booher has done is really valuable for the reader: everything you need to know to put together good letters, memos, reports, proposals, meeting minutes-it's all here in one place. There's even a five-chapter section on editing!

Want more than this? Bonuses include a glossary of grammatical terms (Miss Hardy would have loved for me to know all this stuff back in high school). E-Writing will serve as a good reference manual as well as a helpful book to read from cover to cover. The layout makes it easy to understand, as well as find what you're looking for. The comprehensive index is also helpful.

The book reiterates e-mail etiquette (Netiquette) originally published by Sally Hambridge as RFC1855, but adds valuable advices that are frequently overlooked by the other authors who write about e-mail etiquette in their books and web sites. Such advices are:

- If you don't have something to say, don't say it - not all e-mails deserve responses;
- Use internationally recognizable dates, and measurements when appropriate. (Is 3/9 meant to be read as March 9 or September 3?);
- Don't post "Action or Else" messages if action is irreversible;
- Use "For Your Information Only" tags (to the messages that require no action) to help others manage their e-mail volume;
- Don't forward messages without adding your own note to tell the recipient why;
- Keep one topic in each e-mail
However, some of the author's suggestions seem to fit only dumb e-mail clients. Such suggestions are "highlight responses in colour to aid reading" or "cut and paste rather than big Reply on long, continuing e-mails". The e-mail clients like "The Bat!" that naturally support quoting have these problems already solved, the quotes there are automatically highlighted and you can type your reply paragraphs between the original text without being afraid of messing the lines.

The author encourages composing clear, to-the-point messages. She proposes to highlight the readers' action, to not be cryptic, and to not remove the actors. By examples she helps to create informative subject lines that get quick responses and help readers prioritize.

Seven pages of the book will tell you how to manage high-volume e-mail effectively. "Use last-in-first-out, group read later emails into a file and out of sight". I would recommend the book "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" by David Allen who addresses the issue of stress-free e-mail management much better than Dianna Booher.

In the chapters about writing on the paper or online, she proposes so-called "Descending Outline" and the MADE™ format (Message-Action-Detail-Evidence).

She also mentions the "idea wheel" outlining method to arrange your thoughts, which is a simplified technique of Tony Buzan's "mind maps". I would like to recommend you "The Mind Map Book" Tony Buzan and the other books by this author to maximize your brain's untapped potential.

A major chapter of this book is devoted to English grammar. You have probably learnt this at school, but a good repetition should still be helpful. The other big chapters are devoted to layout, clarity, conciseness and style, own chapter per each of the points. I will be working further on these grammar, clarity, conciseness and style chapters, and will be for sure re-reading them in future.

If you're swimming in email and are responding to each email you receive you're adding to the problem each of us face every time we hear "You've got mail!" Dianna Booher is the queen of communication and in her latest book "E-Writing: 21st-Century Tools for Effective Communication" she explains the rules of email etiquette. The book starts with the basics on how to decide if you should phone instead of sending an email reply, how to use a signature line, what spam is, and when and if to flame. Wondering how to get email you've sent noticed, read, and replied? Dianna has the answer how to effectively manage your email including what to read and what to delete; what to archive and how to manage your files. Then she moves on to the real meat and potatoes: Effectively writing on Paper or Online. You'll find this book is a mini-college course in effective written communication. Her MADE Format will change the way you write both in your traditional and online communications. It's another Booher masterpiece to add to your business library!

The book is not really all about E-writing. Most of the techniques can be used for writing letters as well. Most of the information is common sense. It also gets rather wordy;
if you like details about writing anything and everything, this book is for you.

While the author rehashes some basic business writing theory, she consistently fails to follow her own rules:
- The text is full of fluff
- The style is flippant instead of useful
- The lecture style puts you to sleep

There are much better books on the subject. A textbook approach is necessary for this subject. Not this dopey-run-on-crap.

Reading this book is a breeze. Dianna Booher had organised and written E-writing as an easy reference and guide. I do not find the first 13 chapters useful because these chapters provide fundamentals that all writers should be aware. I found the rest of the book of varying usefulness: -
Chapter 14: Edit for Grammar provides a brief and useful guide on the common pitfalls. Referring to the contents is easy due to the layout.
Chapter 15: Edit for clarity, Chapter 16: Editing for Conciseness, Chapter 17: Edit for Style are comprehensive but limited use to writers who have already read on these topics.
Chapter 18: Guidelines for document variations on the MADE(trademark)format and Chapter 19: Meeting Minutes have high practical use. The examples used will save the writer blushes and score high on impact.
Chapter 20 to Chapter 24 provides the reader a glimpse of points to note when writing in various scenarios.


Easy of reading: 5 star. Take me less than 2 weeks to finish
Usefulness: 3 star. Usefulness as listed above
Value for money: 3 star. I measured this by the number of useful chapters to me against the amount I paid for the book
Ease of reference: 4 star. Well organised layout that provide ease of reference

This is the best business writing book I have read (I read a dozen of them). The presentation of the material is well organized and you can make copy of them and pin the copies on your office wall for a quick reference. Most of all, after having read it, my email readers agreed that my emails are succinct and clear. They can get to the point I want to make quickly.

Thumb up!!!

While reading this book, I was absolutely sure Dianna Booher had been spying on my e-mail in-basket. The pitfalls outlined in Chapter 8 (Counterproductive communication habits) present themselves every day in corporate America. Not only did she pinpoint many points of pain -- she also gave me several extremely practical ways to focus on effective electronic communication. Memorable tools like the MADE formula are now tucked away for continual use.

For those of us that are challenged with hundreds of e-mails a day, her tips for managing high-volume e-mail are invaluable. I'm slowly freeing myself from the habits that had me chained to my in-basket. Fellow "freedom seekers": read this book!

This book offered little new information for me. [To be fair, I have been a professional Senior Technical Writer for over 25 years, so I've learned a lot of what is in the book over the years.]

A large portion of the book is focused on the "proper" [my word] use of email, and how to use it effectively. Things that I already knew.

One thing that the author specifically discussed, and that I am now implementing, is to make the Subject line more indicative as to the purpose or content of the email. For example, to put "FYI:" at the beginning of the Subject line when all you want the reader to know is that the message requires no action on their part.

Like many How-To books, the author came up with an acronym to emphasize her point, her structure. I felt that the acronym was a bit forced and artificial, but there you go. The acronym is MADE, which stands for:
* Message
* Action
* Details
* Evidence

You must read the book to find out what is intended, or figure it out on your own. While I will keep this book as a reference, I might not seek its wisdom often.