Effective Business Writing and Communications

Archive for the ‘General Communications’ Category

The culture of communication is a way of achieving socially important purposes, reflecting the interests of people on the basis of free expression and action. This is a set of values, which includes freedom, justice, rights and duties, responsibility and self-consciousness, and the way of implementing them in a social, economic and cultural relations system, based on the disclosure of individual capacities and abilities of the individual.

The lack of culture in business communication is manifested in the fact that, first of all, people stop making their own decisions; managers are afraid to take risks; secondly, fear of starting a new business where there is a lack of funds, and thirdly, the Culture of Conduct and lively discussion of conflict situations are not present anymore.

There is a need of such business relationship, when there is no need for individuals to depend on one another in order to achieve their goals. The success depends on the person, as well as on communication techniques. A person may find themselves in the full and versatile implementation of his skills into work and realizing that his well being is not based on the suffering of others. Business relationships inevitably unite people. Managers are beginning to understand that personal happiness should be sought in the happiness of others. This is where they will find the greatest success in their activities.

The culture of business communication offers great opportunities for personal development. Non-cultured, non-educated, ignorant people are not prepared to methods, standards, technology, activities, actions and life values. People who deny the discipline, order, law, the normative regulation of the individualistic social behavior, are culture destroyers. Business communication is impossible outside the development of the general culture of a person’s behavior, thinking and knowledge. The culture of communication is also the culture of agreements, the interaction between people, aligning their interests and actions. Thus, the culture of the organization of business communication represents the knowledge, ideas, evaluations, attitudes, motives underlying in the basis of active social behavior, in the decision-making and normalized speech.

Major areas with which a writer must be concerned in order to appeal to a reader’s visual sensibilities start of with the font. The font used on any paper, manual, and instructions is very important. You have to use a font that is easy on the eyes but at the same time not plain. Using plain font may cause a lost of interest of the reader, but also a fancy font might be hard to read.

Next, would have to be the size of the fonts used. Using very large fonts can cause a usage of paper and can be interpreted incorrectly, but using small size font can be hard to read and understood by the reader. So using a reasonable size for the font is important. Another would have to be the colors used.

Normally anything in writing comes in black and white, but using a different color could be easy on the eyes and could catch the attention of the reader. How spacing is used in writing is important because too close makes it hard to read and to separate it makes it hard to understand.

While creating a set of technical instructions, the organizational technique known as chunking will be very effective.  With the tactful addition of section headings, white space, and dividers with make any information much easier to follow and locate.

In addition to chunking, the appropriate and sparing use of typefaces will help create order by allowing certain uniformity.  Colors should be used to highlight certain headings or graphics.  However, colors should also be used carefully so as not to confuse the reader’s eye or to lose the information altogether with badly chosen colors.

Another small but effective design component includes bulleted and/or numbered lists.  This is easy to format and is particularly effective to draw attention to important details.

Finally, one of the most effective components in document design is the use of graphics.  Graphics can be used to easily demonstrate a complicated task or description to save time, space, and confusion.

Research is very important in web design because of the need to research what your client wants. This means deciding on style, user interface, content, functionality. Researching the topic would help show your prospective employer that you have researched their company and are very interested in joining them. Researching all  about the company is effective for impressing prospective employeers since it not just shows you’re interested, but it gives the oportunity to advertise the employeer’s needs.

Using establishing a focus and researching your topic prewriting techniques, one will be able to write a clear and precise paper that fully answers what your prospective employer is asking. By using the focus, when you get to the data collection aspect, the focus assists in determining whether the data is beneficial to the point you are trying to substantiate or not. Establishing a focus would help to focus your research and steer you in the direction that would benefit you in the eyes of a prospective employer.

When enough research has been done to firmly have a grasp on the subject matter, it will be time to sit down and brainstorm different ideas.  Just by listing ideas that you might cover as they come to mind,  it’s time to immediately start choosing which supporting details are important and which are not.  When you’ve ironed out what to include in the paper, you can then begin an outline to guide your writing process and make sure there are no holes in the logical progression. During the brainstorming process you can do the page layout or draft to see how many pages will be required and decide what content will be required on each page.

Before you sit down to write a business letter, you should think carefully about your purpose, audience and tone. Your letter should be brief and to the point. You should keep in mind that the purpose of your letter is to convince your readers of the strength of your claims. Support your points with reasonable arguments. You need to be sure that you maintain a rational tone; it should be firm but reasonable. Then you have to revise your letter with your reader in mind: if your reader is unfamiliar with your case, begin with an overview; arrange events in logical order using transitions. Try to end in a positive note.

Comparing interpersonal and business communication there are differences in tone and audience. In business writing you use a stricter and firmer tone. Try to be as formal as possible and put all the information that you need to send in. You are not supposed to be so firm when communicating interpersonally because you might assume the person knows more than you do. The purpose and content can be much the same, except in business writing purposes are various, and more than one could be included.

Another areas that should be considered when writing an interpersonal letter is the use of different colored letters fonts, or emoticons. You should get straight to the point and not mess around. When I am writing a personal letter I seem to beat around the bush and don’t get straight to the point. I tend to use emoticons and may make my letters a different color or size.

First of all in order to overcome communication barriers one needs to develop self-esteem and self-confidence. It also helps to build up the ability to see every act of inadequate human manifestation of his psychological characteristics and perhaps psychological problems.

Typical communication mistakes:

• False expectations of the partner (the wrong expectations arise as a result of the following error: If we don’t know a person enough, but only some of his positive or negative things, we often complete his image as positive or negative, and then connect our expectations with the image we have created ourselves).

• We think that a partner must guess what we feel (it is better to clearly articulate our expectations, explain the reasons, etc.).

• We fail to grasp the subtext of the conversation (often we do not assume that our partners also might not directly express their wishes and true mood).

• If others’ behavior make us uncomfortable, we presume that they treat us bad, and even doing it to spite us (however, the reason can be quite different; people are usually saddened and irritated by the unjust accusations of abuse; it turns out that we ourselves provoke conflict)

• We try to meet the expectations of the interlocutor (in communication with a person, this leads to unnatural relationships, which are often found at the most inopportune moment; on the contrary if we are manipulated, the impact is even worse).

Life confronts us with different people. Very rarely it gives us the opportunity to communicate with those with whom barriers would not arise. Therefore, we should be lenient to manifestations of uncommunicativeness and be able to avoid conflicts. To overcome communication barriers, you need to diagnose yourself or your partner, and build your behavior so that will reduce or eliminate the barrier.