The Electronic Writing Course

Introduction

The Electronic Writing Course teaches you everything you need to know to become a good writer and editor. Polish your writing skills at your own pace by working through the ideas, lessons, tips, quizzes, exercises and workshops.

The Course teaches you how to:

• Plan and organize effectively
• Write clearly
• Write concisely
• Write correctly
• Edit thoroughly

The Course teaches professional writing tips and tackles different writing tasks such as letters, reports, regulations, instructions, and e-mails. Based on training tools we designed for US Federal Government employees, the Course teaches you everything you need to know to become a good writer. At only $75 (UK and EC £50 + £8.75 VAT), you can now sign up for a professional writing course to work at your own PC and at your own pace.

We've organized the Course into nine major sections:

• Introduction
• Clear Thinking
• Concise Writing
• Clear Writing
• Correct Writing
• Editing Skills
• Writing Tips
• Writing Tasks
• Workshops

Introduction

Here's the first Section - The Introduction. It includes Welcome to the Course, Using the Course, Writing in Plain Language and Plain Language Standards. It explains why you should write in clear and concise plain language style. It also explains how you can use StyleWriter to back up the training in the Course and set standards to measure how your writing improves.

Clear Thinking

This covers learning to write well by thinking through your writing task before you start. It teaches the essential ideas of thinking about your Aim, Audience, Content and Plan.

Concise Writing

This concentrates on six poor habits that make writing too wordy. It teaches you to overcome these habits and to learn to write concisely.

It covers:

• Sentence length
• Passive verbs
• Hidden verbs
• Wordy phrases
• Business Clichés
• Overwriting

Remember, StyleWriter shows you where to cut words from your draft. You will soon find you can write concisely so your reader concentrates on your message and does not have to fight through the waffle and padding so common in writing.

Clear Writing Style

This part of the Course teaches you how to write clearly by using simple, everyday words and avoiding jargon and abstract writing.

It covers:

• Complex words
• Jargon
• Abstract writing
• Abbreviations and acronyms
• Foreign Expressions
• Legal words
• Signpost language

Correct Writing

This Section is a crash course in proofreading and correct English usage. It points out the mistakes and pitfalls most often found in writing. By learning what specifically to look for when you read your draft, you'll soon become an expert proofreader.

It covers:

• Correct spelling
• Correct punctuation
• Correct grammar
• Correct word use

Editing Skills

This Section draws together what you have learnt in the previous sections of the Writing Course. You'll work on exercises designed to cut, simplify and correct writing examples. By working through each example, you'll improve your proofreading and editing skills.

Writing Tips

This Section contains a host of writing and editing advice. It explains some of the main ways professional editors turn average documents into high-quality ones.

Writing Tasks

This Section looks at the key drafting and editing techniques to use when writing and editing different documents.

Next: Learning to Edit
Buy the Electronic Writing Course