Business and education
We customize each workshop below after discussing your culture with you and analyzing your documents. The curriculum is not generic—it’s made up of practical tools your people can take away and apply immediately. The exercises, manual, PowerPoint, and even instructing style are tailored for the group of writers who will attend.
Effective Writing at Work
The Effective Writing at Work workshop is core training for all writers and our most popular session. This workshop covers the essential skills for writing successfully in the workplace: how to write stronger documents more quickly, create clear text, and review and edit efficiently. We deliver it either through:
a live webinar divided into three, three‐hour modules
an in‐person session over one‐and‐a‐half days
We can also offer any module as a standalone session. The content is practical, immediately applicable, and confidence building—participants in every session say they wished they had access to this information about writing years ago. More.
Module One: Write stronger documents more quickly
This session looks at the common problems that plague business writing:
documents that are too long and unnecessarily complex
confusing structure
underdeveloped analysis
hide‐and‐seek messages
a writing and review process that takes too much time
We give writers the tools to get clear about what they need to say and then deliver it in clear, efficient messages. We also teach people how to draft more quickly with much less stress. Participants say it takes them half as much time to write after this training. If you plan to book only one module, we recommend this one.
What Module One covers:
Adapting to the needs of different audiences and purposes
Structuring documents for readability
Avoiding common problem patterns in business writing
Building strong analysis
Learning a new process for writing
Drafting faster (and making the reviewers’ job faster too)
How to measure the success of a document
Creating usable documents
Module Two: Create clear text
This module teaches the clear, efficient style that’s highly valuable at work (and which many writers struggle to develop). This is nuts-and-bolts content about conciseness, clear sentence structure, effective word choice, and avoiding common problems that make writing confusing. These are not obscure principles of English—they’re practical plain language tips that create an impressive improvement in clarity.
What Module Two covers:
How style choices determine readability
Writing in a direct, reader-friendly way
Writing concisely on three levels
Translating specialized or technical content for a non-technical audience
Using verbs effectively, including active voice
Structuring sentences for precision and power
Perfecting tone in a document
Module Three: Review and edit effectively (for yourself and other writers)
Most writers exert superhuman effort to get a document “right.” Despite this, many managers end up editing and revising in after-hours time. This costs too much time and frustration for both. This session gives editors at both levels the tools to work much faster, more systematically, and more effectively. It also explains ways to divide up tasks between the writer and reviewer to make their collaboration smoother and more effective.
What Module Three covers:
A repeatable formula for editing more quickly and with less stress (for both writers and reviewers)
All the best editing tips and checklists
Effective proofreading
Using peer review to give and receive constructive feedback, why it matters, and a chance to see it work
Formatting documents to be clear and appealing
A quick refresher of key grammar and punctuation rules
General notes on all the modules
All modules include:
customized content that’s based on your input and documents
team teaching with two instructors to keep the pace lively
interactive rather than passive learning
exercises, before-and-after examples, rich visual content, conversation, and individual and small-group work
a printed manual and desk reminder card
Workshops for:
From participants:
I really enjoyed the real-life examples and the length of the workshop.
This workshop was extremely engaging and valuable. I also appreciate the quality of the materials.
Very good tips. Good examples to illustrate what clarity looks like.
Instructors were very approachable, helpful, and knowledgeable.
The course addressed the need to write clearly and simply in a way that’s effective for the audience.
This will lead to producing better documents when under pressure.
The workshop met my objective of writing clearly to a range of audiences.
I think my writing will show noticeable improvement as a result of attending this workshop.
Everyone in the organization would benefit from this course.
Effective Writing Refresher
This half-day workshop follows up with writers who have been through Effective Writing. It reinforces, deepens, and applies concepts to real documents. More.
This is a working session in which attendees redraft key internal documents to refresh and apply skills learned in our core workshop. We cover the common writing and editing problems writers run across in everyday work. The session will:
reinforce and apply skills you learned in the core workshop
fill in gaps from the first workshop
resolve questions that came up after the core workshop
From participants:
Enjoyed trying to re-write real examples and applying the tools.
Very well done. The tips were presented clearly and in a way that resonated.
Content was meaningful and the classroom presentation was exceptional.
The instructors did a good job of integrating their best practices into our actual practices.
Specialized workshops
We also deliver workshops on report writing, technical writing, briefing notes, tone, and other specialized content. Workshop length varies depending on your needs.