Writing At Work (text only) 1st (First) edition by E. Smith by S. Bernhardt

by E. Smith S. Bernhardt

Writing At Work : Professional Writing Skills for People on the Job [Paperback] Edward Smith (Author), Stephen Bernhardt (Author)

Genres: Writing, Communication, Nonfiction, Reference

Paperback

First published December 31, 1899

Reviews

[Kristin Pedder · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an excellent one to keep on the desk. Worth referring to if you need to write a report that is structured for your audience’s needs.

[Murray Irwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought I could write business documents like emails, letters, memo’s, reports and submissions pretty well. But as I continually have to remind myself there is always something more you can learn or improve on. Writing at Work is one of those books that challenged the way I always did things and the result has been for the better. There is now a sticky note attached to my screen that reads SFDAP.

SFDAP stands for Simple, Formal yet friendly, Direct, Active and Personal. These are some of the key lessons I got from the book on writing clearly and effectively. The book is broken up into 4 sections: planning, structure, expression & review. Planning discusses your readers, content and structure. Structure adds more detail about the focus, persuasion, coherence and design. Expression gets into the nitty gritty of tone, grammar, words, clutter, verbs and sentences. And finally review talks about punctuation, style, editing and proofing.

There is lots of helpful information in this book. Checking my copy I have 10 placeholders that lead me to key tools that I reference most. Things like the table of transitional words, tone scale, seven elements to adjust your tone, unnecessary sentence starters and hidden & ‘to be’ verbs. One of the best things about the book is that it follows its own advice and is written in plain english.

I did not know what it took to be a good writer until I wrote my non fiction book. Thankfully I had a professional structure and copy editor to help me along the way. It made me realise that I needed to learn lots more. Writing at Work was the book I found the most helpful during the writing process because it strived to help you communicate clearly and write less not more words. I am a strong believer in the philosophy that less is more but it was something I failed to recongise in my writing style until I read this book. I would highly recommended it to be on everyones book shelve at work.

[Ernest · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not as good as the cover promised, this book contained useful and practical advice. This book would appear to be best used in tandem with current work, and would appear to have great benefit if regularly reread.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of good suggestion

A lot of very good advice and reviews of grammar that can get lost over the years. The only reason I didn't give full stars is because the end could be updated to match current tools available on the computer.