|
|
|
Dealing With Difficult People
When we bang against a difficult person then It may cause us to lose our center. We may come across them in our own families,our customers in our workplace, a boss, just people who wait on us in a store, or they may even be ourselves. What you have...
Engage Your Customer – Write About Benefits
You’re welcome to publish this article free of charge provided: - you include the byline - byline includes a functioning link to http://www.divinewrite.com - you don’t change the article in any way - you provide a courtesy copy once...
Fight The Fluff!
The first and final rule of quality writing is this: what doesn't strengthen your writing, weakens it. There are no neutral words when you're trying to be persuasive - every word must be doing real work and every sentence must be necessary. Don't...
Hiring Students for Summer Jobs? Update Yourself on the New Child Labor Laws
Soon, school will be out for the summer, and students will be seeking summer jobs. If your company employs anyone under 18, be aware that federal child labor laws, as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), have changed. Here is a summary of...
Selling With Your Own Web Site
Many people have their own product, a book, a CD, a craft, or other product that they would like to sell with their own Web site, but they can't find simple instructions on how to get started. In this article, I'm going to explain how to sell...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Keep Business Reports Brief
Keep Business Reports Brief
By Arthur Cooper
(c) Copyright 2004
The point of a business report is to communicate information, or an opinion, and sometimes to persuade or convince. To do this effectively the two keywords are brevity and clarity.
When you read some reports you wonder what they are trying to achieve. They are too long, too verbose, and too vague. When you get to the end you wonder what was the point of it.
Don’t say in a hundred words what you can say in ten. It does not impress in a business environment. You are not trying to win literary prizes. You are trying to transfer information from one person to another. Don’t use flowery phrases when you can spell it out with short and simple words.
Don’t use jargon when it is not universally understood. Don’t use acronyms without an explanation. Explain all specialist terms and abbreviations. Use footnotes or an appendix if this helps to prevent breaking up the flow.
Don’t assume pre-existing knowledge in the reader unless you are certain of it. Don’t assume that he hold the same initial opinions as
you if your report builds upon them. If everything you say flows logically from an initial assumption, you need to establish the truth of that first.
Split up your document into easily read paragraphs. Get to the point early. Then back up what you have said with details if required – not the other way round. Some people will read the first paragraph (or the ‘executive summary’) and go no further, unless you have captured their interest immediately.
So remember these simple rules:
Make sure you are clear about your report’s purpose
Keep it brief
Keep it simple
Keep it clear
Don’t assume
And remember these obstacles to clarity:
Long winded, flowery, language
Obscure vocabulary
Unexplained acronyms and abbreviations
Unexplained specialist terms
Densely packed text
Unsupported assumptions
About the Author
Arthur Cooper is a business consultant, writer and publisher.
For more of his original articles go to:
http://www.arthurcooper.com/
For business articles ebooks and courses, go to:
http://www.barrel-publishing.com/
|
|
|
|
|
| Language Tools |
| Translation of text and web pages between English and several European languages. |
| www.google.com |
|
| Language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Gestures are a part of human language too. Some invented human languages have ... In human languages, the symbols are sometimes known as lexemes and the ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| English language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Estimates about second language speakers of English vary greatly between 150 million ... Distribution of first-language native English speakers by country ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| Free Translation and Professional Translation Services from SDL ... |
| SDL International is the world's number 1 provider of free and professional language translation services for websites and documents. |
| www.freetranslation.com |
|
| AltaVista - Babel Fish Translation |
| Select from and to languages, Chinese-simp to English, Chinese-trad to English, English to Chinese-simp, English to Chinese-trad, English to Dutch ... |
| babelfish.altavista.com |
|
| yourDictionary.com • Comprehensive and Authoritative Language Portal |
| Comprehensive index of on-line dictionaries in more than 200 different languages. Includes an index of on-line grammars, word of the day by email, ... |
| www.yourdictionary.com |
|
| iLoveLanguages - Your Guide to Languages on the Web |
| The Human-Languages Page is a comprehensive catalog of language-related Internet resources. The over 1900 links in the HLP database have been hand-reviewed ... |
| www.ilovelanguages.com |
|
| AltaVista - Babel Fish Translation |
| AltaVista Babel Fish provides the online text and web page language translation! ... Select from and to languages, Chinese-simp to English, Chinese-trad to ... |
| world.altavista.com |
|
| BBC - Languages - Homepage |
| Learn French, Spanish, German, Italian and other languages with the BBC. Start up with our courses or brush up with our audio magazines. |
| www.bbc.co.uk |
|
| Online Dictionaries and Translators |
| online dictionaries that assist in the conversion from one language to ... If the dictionary only translates from one language to another you will see this ... |
| www.word2word.com |
|
| The Klingon Language Institute |
| Nonprofit organization offers language tutorials, related merchandise, mailing list and membership information. |
| www.kli.org |
|
| MARC Code List for Languages |
| MARC Code List for Languages prepared by the Library of Congress Network Development and MARC Standards Office. |
| www.loc.gov |
|
| Python Programming Language -- Official Website |
| Home page for Python, an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented, extensible programming language. It provides an extraordinary combination of clarity and ... |
| www.python.org |
|
| SYSTRAN Language Translation Technology |
| Machine translation products. Free online translation available (the engine used by Altavista's Web translator) - English to French, German, Italian, ... |
| www.systransoft.com |
|
| Project MUSE - Language |
| Language, the official journal for the Linguistic Society of America, ... Edited by Brian Joseph , Language serves a readership of over 7000 and has been ... |
| muse.jhu.edu |
|
| Learn a Language :: English, Spanish, German, Italian, French ... |
| English language courses online: e-learning, learn English online, ... English language learning events,news, conferences, workshops and seminars ... |
| www.edufind.com |
|
| Parlo - Welcome to Parlo - learn to speak a new language. |
| Parlo helps you learn English, French, Spanish and other languages with free online courses, music, a magazine, flash cards, chat rooms, message boards and ... |
| www.parlo.com |
|
| PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor |
| PHP is a server-side HTML embedded scripting language. It provides web developers with a full suite of tools for building dynamic websites: native APIs to ... |
| www.php.net |
|
| Ethnologue, Languages of the World |
| Home page of ethnologue.com, a searchable database of language resources. |
| www.ethnologue.com |
|
| Language Log |
| Weblog run by University of Pennsylvania phonetician Mark Liberman, with multiple guest linguists. |
| itre.cis.upenn.edu |
|
|