We give your people the tools to improve everything they write
We offer three stages of progressive training to transform your workplace writing. Together, teams:
learn best practices and a new process for writing
make decisions and agree on a common approach (which saves significant review time)
get the tools to work efficiently and collaboratively
leave feeling inspired and motivated
Change the way your team writes
I received so much good feedback about the training. Leaders were really blown away. One of them told me she saw many improvements in her people's reports, and it's saved her lots of review time. That’s what we wanted as a result! Kudos to you.
Manager in police service
Stage 1. Build the foundation
Effective Writing delivers the core skills for strong workplace writing
Participants consistently tell us this is the best workshop they’ve ever taken. We show you how to turn the way you learned to write upside down and write consistently excellent documents. The tools we give are useful even for very experienced writers. We deliver this workshop in every industry imaginable.
Length and delivery
Online—3, 3.5-hour modules
In-person—1.5 days
-
1. Think Deeper to Write Faster
Learn what goes wrong with workplace writing, why it’s time consuming, and how to resolve those problems. We walk you through a step-by-step process to drafter stronger, more readable documents (in half the time).
-
2. Create Clear, Readable Text
Develop a crisp, modern, professional style. We cover best practices for readability, including writing concisely, structuring sentences for clarity, preventing confusion, and translating specialized content for non-specialist readers.
-
3. Edit and Review Effectively
Learn to edit more systematically and effectively for yourself and others. This approach ends the time-consuming, superhuman effort that most editors exert trying to get a document “right.”
Other foundational courses
-
Write Effectively with AI
This is a practical course about how to use AI to generate and edit content. It looks at what AI does well, common pitfalls and how to avoid them, and how to use AI to speed up the process.
-
Use AI to Think More Deeply and Get Smarter
Get the right relationship with AI as an analysis tool. Use it to gather information, test assumptions, identify risks, and develop capacity for more thorough and refined thinking.
-
Effective Editing
Get the step-by-step process Wordsmith uses when we edit. You’ll learn to pinpoint, resolve, and communicate issues in structure, language, and formatting. This course includes a takeaway checklist.
Stage 2. Practice and deepen
This training is for writers who want to make sure their new skills stick and continue to develop. It refreshes, practices, deepens, locks in, and encourages the foundational skills.
-
Refresher training
This is a working session. Attendees revisit and deepen the principles by applying them to internal documents they’ve developed since Effective Writing.
-
Practice workbooks
Develop specific skills with our workbooks—they are built to progress difficulty in stages and take you to mastery.
-
Document-specific training
Specialized training in the problems and solutions for the documents you create most often. Based on our experience with that document type, and input from your organization.
-
Audit a document
Measure how well a document aligns with best practices for clarity and readability. This applies to individuals wanting feedback or organizations that are measuring training results.
Stage 3. Advance towards mastery
These courses cover advanced skills, resolve the trickiest problems in workplace writing, and build internal capacity in your organization.
-
Advanced training
These are highly customized workshops built around your unique goals. We assess where you are and build the content around the final gaps that need filling. They can focus on broad writing principles or unique document types.
-
Skill-specific training
These courses focus on problem solving the trickiest aspects of workplace writing, such as handling high volumes of information, delivering negative messages effectively, or translating complex technical information.
-
Train the trainer
Give strong writers and editors in your organization specialized training. We develop skills to coach, strengthen documents and writers, review and give effective feedback. Trainees may also run ongoing in-house writing training programs.
-
Certification
Coming 2026
We are building an exam to test writers’ mastery of workplace writing skills. Passing requires a high standard of skill and staff who pass will receive a proficiency certificate from Wordsmith.
What we teach you to do
-
![]()
Before
30 words
-
![]()
After
17 words
-
![]()
Before
51 words
-
![]()
After
50 words
-
![]()
Before
26 words
-
![]()
After
11 words
-
![]()
Before
32 words
-
![]()
After
13 words
-
![]()
Before
48 words
-
![]()
After
33 words
-
![]()
"Best writing course I have ever taken."
Benoît Clément, Director of Financial Innovation at Verra
(5 star Google review) -
![]()
“One of the best workshops I've attended. Inspiring and motivating to get better at writing."
Kris Samraj, Councillor for City of Medicine Hat
(5 star Google review) -
![]()
"This was the most immediately applicable training I have ever taken. Our whole team got excited. We went back and applied what we learned to our Proposal Guide and cut the page count by 50%."
Lorraine Brekke, Manager of the Cumulative Impacts Monitoring Program
-
![]()
"Wordsmith facilitators are as confident, clear and helpful as your writing aims to be. More to learn about effective writing than many might think."
Chris Taylor, Alberta Education
(5 star Google review) -
![]()
"I highly recommend Wordsmith. I learned a systematic approach to writing more quickly, clearly and with more persuasion. It was one of the best courses that I've taken since becoming a professional.
Samantha H
(5 star Google review) -
![]()
"Sessions were well led by presenters who were very aware of the briefing note process in government. This meant I was able to get maximum value from the information."
Victoria Laidlaw, Alberta Education
(5 star Google review)
