Writing Skills Training
Practical writing skills training for real life work situations.
It's all about results
My in-house writing skills workshops get people thinking about what they want to achieve with each piece of writing: what do they want their readers to know, think, feel, do?
Because that's what writing at work is all about. It's not a literary exercise. It’s a practical business activity that should be making a positive impact and achieving real results for your organisation.
Writing at work is tricky
So much depends on it – yet so much can go wrong. And often does.
Poorly-written emails make organisations (and their staff) look unprofessional. Rambling reports leave managers none the wiser about what's really going on. Muddled communications cause misunderstandings, delays and confusion.
And that's just the start.
If you're relying on your people to develop customer relationships and bring in business by their writing, they need real-life writing skills they probably won't have learnt at school.
How my training works
I design each workshop around your business and your specific needs. Whatever your chosen topic, your team will learn straightforward tactics they can use every day to help them write documents that people will read, understand, and act on.
Participants look at relevant writing examples, consider what works and what doesn’t, and explore how to apply the best ideas to real-world writing tasks. If you want to use and review your own material, I'll build it in.
There's plenty of discussion and lots of thinking, plus time for individual practice activities. And even participants on my scientific report-writing courses have been known to admit they had fun.
Core content
Typically, I base my programmes around the following core principles:
Setting your goals
Why you need to set a goal for each piece of writing - and how to do it.
Meeting the needs of your readers
Who your readers are, what’s important to them, and how you can help meet their needs.
Understanding readability
Why readability matters, how to measure it, how to improve it.
Writing efficiently
How to get started, keep going, and meet deadlines.
Sorting out structure
How to structure and organise information so readers get the key messages quickly and easily.
The power of plain English
Why some words work better than others, and how to choose the right ones for each piece of writing.
Writing clear and concise sentences
How to spot that's going wrong and sort it out.
Checking grammar and punctuation
How to avoid common writing mistakes.
Learn more about the courses available from Writing Point here...