New article

Just found out that the article I wrote about our work with the organization mentioned in the earlier blog post will be published in the next four to six weeks--very exciting!

Got back from Vegas this morning (took the red-eye) after teaching a technical writing class in Boulder City, NV, for the Bureau of Reclamation. Interesting group in that all of the participants had to write different kinds of documents. Fun to analyze the differences and discuss. I've been asked to return in Feb. and April, and have already been out there two other times teaching business and technical writing.

Business letters

Just got some great news from a medical credentialing organization about the class we taught there. They were sending out voluminous letters that were extremely convoluted. We were able to reduce the size of the letters, help them with understanding how to emphasize the appropriate information, and use technology to their advantage. They've actually gotten letters from their diplomates thanking them for making the letters clearer! The organization gained various efficiencies: it's saved money on postage because most correspondence is sent electronically, the Director no longer has to proofread and edit the correspondence that's sent because the firm has been able to create a couple of templates that its writers can use, and the organization is spending much less time answering questions about its correspondence. These are the kinds of stories we love to hear!

Online Writing Training

Why Consider Online Training?

According to a recent study published by the Conference Board, “The Ill-Prepared U.S. Workforce,” many of today’s new hires lack “crucial basic and applied skills,” an issue that affects individual businesses and the nation’s overall economy. Since many businesses are looking to cut costs while attracting and retaining top talent, online training is becoming a more prominent solution. Online training is also more time-efficient, cost-effective, and eco-friendly since it saves money on materials and employee productivity lost through onsite training.

Hurley Write offers the solution! We’ve worked with large corporations, small businesses, and nonprofits for more than 20 years. One of these nonprofits, America Reads-Mississippi (ARM), recently leveraged our online writing courses to improve reporting and enhance member development. Before leveraging Hurley Write, ARM was finding it difficult to obtain clear written communication from its 350 full-time members. We developed a series of customized online writing modules that enabled ARM to gain efficiencies in the reporting process while saving significant time and money. We also recently developed an online writing course for MITACS in Canada and are working with roughly 75 of its students. Need a customized online solution? Contact us!

Case Study

My marketing firm just completed a case study on us in terms of the impact our training has had on various firms. While people may say that you can't measure writing skills and/or their impact, I beg to differ. We did two case studies, and in both cases the firms said that they've seen marked improvement in the writing their staff does, which has resulted in fewer questions by readers.

Writing Business Letters

We've been asked to create a half-day course on writing business letters, and the letters that this organization writes are unique in that they have to give either good or bad news without alienating the reader. We just completed an online module on writing business letters of this kind, so we're very familiar with the topic. The organization sent me an example of one letter: it was from a physician who was upset that the font on the organization's newsletter was too small for her to read on her computer. A valid complaint, of course, but the style that the physician used to voice her complaint gave the impression that her inability to read the newsletter was the end of the world! It was crazy--perhaps she should take the course to learn how to voice complaints so that they don't alienate readers! Writers often forget that how they write and how they broach a subject has much to do with how their complaint/request or whatever will be addressed. Readers have choices in terms of the action they take and when and how they take it, and writers should remember that and carefully plan how they're going to write the letter and what action they want their readers to take.

Fall Webinars

So, I'm sitting at my computer (as always!) working on a series of writing webinars that Hurley Write can put on in the fall. These webinars are always immensely popular, but I'm always at a loss in terms of which modules I should offer (we offer about 25 online modules). For this fall, I chose "Writing the Informed Consent" (for the pharma crowd), "Editing and Proofreading," "Using Language Effectively," "Writing Business Letters," and "Writing Emails." People seem to like the more pratical, rather than the theoretical, modules. In addition, we're going to offer them as stand-alone modules after the webinars are over, so that people can listen to them at their leisure. It will be interesting to see how many people choose the latter option. We're sending out the info to those on our email mailing list; www.hurleywrite.com if you want to get on this list or request copies of newsletters or articles.

Do Writers Sometimes Add Unnecessary Words to Sound More Professional?

I had an interesting question from a participant in one of my online classes. This person is a graduate student in engineering, and one of the writing options for the week was to find an article in his field and critique it based on the concepts discussed in the lecture. He found one and indicated that the article seemed to violate many of the concepts discussed in the module, especially in terms of being concise and precise. In fact, he questioned if many writers didn't purposefully include more words than necessary to get their point across so that they would sound more "professional." It's a good point and certainly worth considering. Anybody want to weigh in on this?