[SOLVED] discussion 5 - Business Finance - Economics

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BUS202 Discussions Week 5 – Discussion Forum!

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Week 5 – Discussion Forum 24 27

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Your ini!al discussion thread is due on Day 3 (Thursday) and you have un!l Day 7 (Monday) to respond to your classmates. Your grade will reflect both the
quality of your ini!al post and the depth of your responses. Refer to the Discussion Forum Grading Rubric under the Se”ngs icon above for guidance on
how your discussion will be evaluated.

Clear, Direct, and Easy-to-Scan Prac!ce [WLO: 1] [CLOs: 1, 2]

Prior to beginning work on this discussion forum,

Read pages 47 to 95 of your course text, The Only Business Wri!ng Book You’ll Ever Need.
Read The Most Overlooked Factor of Content Marke!ng? Scannable Content .
Review Wri!ng Clearly & Concisely .
Review and reflect on the work you have done and the materials you have read and watched over the past four weeks in this course.

Professional wri!ng today is mostly read on a screen, whether it is an email, a memo, or a web page. When reading on a screen, we are much more likely to
read quickly or even scan. This means your professional wri!ng that will be read on any screen must be even more clear, direct, and easy to scan.

In your ini!al discussion post, discuss the following in at least 250 words or more:

Explain steps 4, 5, and 6 from the readings in the Laura Brown course text. In your response, be concise—provide needed explana!on without including
extraneous informa!on and use plain English.
Explain two significant ways you have improved your wri#en, verbal, and visual professional communica!on skills since star!ng this course.
Include a minimum of two techniques for wri!ng scannable content.
Iden!fy the two scannable wri!ng techniques you have used in wri!ng your post.

Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your classmates—your peer responses should be a minimum of 100 words each. In your responses, do the
following:

Provide feedback on what made their post clear, direct, or easy to scan, and what might be improved.

Unread $ % & Subscribe

Rachael Gordon
Wednesday

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Step 4: Be Concise – When dra$ing an email, less is more. Get straight to the point and avoid long sentences. If an email is too long or contains more
informa!on than needed, the reader will skim (or scan) what you wrote and may miss something important, or your email may be so long it becomes
confusing as to what is needed. Using easy-to-read words and avoiding unnecessary fillers or redundancies are are a few easy ways to ensure your
message is clear, short, and to the point.

Step 5: Fill in Missing Content, Delete Extraneous Content – Take the !me to review what you’ve wri#en and make adjustments as needed. Ensure all
necessary informa!on is included, and is easy to read. Remove any extra wording that distracts from the purpose of the email, or causes the reader to
lose interest.

Step 6: Writ

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Use Structure to Help You Choose Your Content

Not everyone likes to use outlines when they write. If you’re writing something very short and straightforward, an outline might be unnecessary. But sometimes with a longer document, structuring
your message with a quick outline can help you make sure your content is complete and you’re presenting it in a logical way. The outline doesn’t have to be complex; it can be a list of topics, which
you then arrange in the order in which you want to present them.

You can even outline after you’ve written a draft, to check whether you’re including the appropriate information—and nothing extraneous. Outlining after the fact is called “reverse outlining.”
Let’s look at reverse outlines of the two versions of Mona’s message above.

Original version
Diversity training is mandatory for compliance purposes.
You have to go to the diversity training once during twelve months so we can get our licensing.
If you haven’t been to a session yet, you must go to one of the two remaining ones this year.
Let me know if you have problems.

Revised version
Everyone has to do this training or we won’t get licensed again. Here are your chances.
Here are the two dates of trainings.
I’ll help you make sure it gets done; let me know if you have problems.
We have to do this.

You can see in the revision of Mona’s message that she hasn’t just added the missing information (the dates and times of the training sessions); she’s also restructured her entire message to make it
clearer to her readers.

Writing a quick outline doesn’t have to be a big deal, but it can make a big difference in the content and quality of your message.

How to Get the Content Right

If you like to plan before you write, you should think about your content in light of the work you did for Step 1, Get the ask clear, and Step 2, Write for your reader. Ask yourself these
questions:

What content must I include to achieve my purpose in writing?
What content does my reader need?

If you’re the kind of writer who likes to create a first draft and then edit, make sure you do a content check as part of your revision process. Including extraneous content often
comes from the writing equivalent of “thinking out loud”—mulling over or reviewing content in your own mind without considering if your audience needs it. Sometimes it’s helpful to
your thought process to write everything out. But if the content isn’t useful to your reader, you should go back and cut it out. If you’ve already got a draft, take a quick pass over your

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You Don’t Have to Start at the Beginning

Introductions and other kinds of beginnings can be difficult to write. A lot is riding on the opening of your document, and getting started can be intimidating. The good news is that you don’t have to
start your draft by writing the beginning of it. In fact, the beginning might not be the best thing to start with.

Don’t get hung up on writing your introduction, especially when you’re working on a long document like a report or proposal. Start wherever you feel most confident. That might be somewhere in
the middle of the document, a section where you feel you have the most to say or can make the most compelling argument. Go ahead and complete that section, and move on from there. If it helps,
you can try writing the document piece by piece, not necessarily in order. Once you have a full draft, you can put the pieces together, smooth out the transitions, and then write the introduction. By
this point you’ll know exactly what you’re introducing, and you’ll know what you want to emphasize in your introduction to guide the reader’s attention. Very often, introductions that are written last
are stronger and more specific than ones that are drafted at the beginning.

In the next step, we’ll look at ways to make the best possible use of your reader’s time and attention by writing concisely.

STEP 4: BE CONCISE

“Most of the e-mails I get should be 30–50% shorter than they are.”

—SURVEY RESPONDENT

In Step 1 you got the ask clear, in Step 2 you tailored your message for your reader, and in Step 3 you wrote a strong beginning. In this step, you’ll learn to make your writing more
concise.

In the business writing survey I conducted for this book, 87 percent of respondents indicated that writing more concisely was a priority for them, and 63 percent said they wished
their colleagues would write more concisely.

The ability to write concisely has a lot of benefits—for your reader, obviously, and also for you. Concise writing tends to get a better response, because your readers will quickly
learn what you want. If you get in the habit of writing concisely, you’ll spend less time writing and you’ll agonize less over what you write. You’ll also spend less time following up
with people who didn’t understand—or didn’t even read—what you wrote. Finally, if you make it a habit, you’ll get a reputation as someone who’s straightforward and doesn’t waste
people’s time—and everyone likes that kind of colleague.

For most of us, writing concisely doesn’t come naturally, especially when we’re in a hurry. When we’re in a rush, we tend to write whatever comes into our heads, and it’s often
muddy, wordy, and too long. It takes a little time to break the habit of going on too long. As you practice, it begins to come more naturally.

Before we get started, a little caveat: shorter is not always better. Sometimes you

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And sometimes you genuinely want to emphasize the object of the action, rather than the actor:

Seating arrangements at the event caused some controversy. Corporate representatives sat at the lower tables. The main table was occupied by the mayor and his special guests.

The last sentence in this short passage is in the passive voice, but it’s a good choice. It’s sensible to make “the main table” the subject of the sentence: the real issue is the seating
arrangements, rather than the mayor and his pals.

Although the passive voice is grammatically correct and sometimes preferable, you’re usually better off favoring the active voice in business writing. Many business writers fall into
the habit of depending on the passive voice because they see other writers doing it. The sound gets into their heads as the proper sound of business and professional writing, and they
simply replicate what they hear. However, active constructions have advantages over passive ones: they’re shorter, they’re more direct, they’re easier to read, and they’re more
engaging. They sound more personal—that impersonal, businessy, “official” tone isn’t always what you want—and they create a sense of agency in the sentence: there’s a person (or a
thing sometimes) who’s taking action.

As with any other style choice, your use of the passive or active voice should be your decision rather than something you fall into because you don’t know how to control it.
Learning to convert passive constructions into active ones, and vice versa, gives you more control over your own writing.

So how do you change a passive construction into an active one? Follow these three steps:

1. Diagnose the passive voice by looking for forms of the verb “to be,” like “is,” “are,” “has been,” “have been,” and so on, plus the past participle of the verb (usually ending in “-ed”). Passive sentences
will sometimes contain phrases beginning with “by” to indicate who or what is doing the action.

2. Ask yourself who or what is doing the acting in the sentence, and who or what is receiving the action.
3. Flip the sentence so the actor is the subject.

Let’s try an example:

The models are used by the teams to project revenue.

1. Form of the verb “to be” followed by a past participle? Yes, “are used.”
2. Who or what is doing the acting in the sentence? It’s the teams.
3. Flip the sentence so that the actor is the subject:

The teams use the models to project revenue.

You can see that the revision isn’t just shorter, it’s also clearer and more direct.
Here are a few samples for you to practice on. (Solutions are at the bottom of the next page.)

A. Stress testing is conducted by banks to ensure adequate capital levels.
B. The guidelines were rewritten by legal counsel to prevent future breaches.
C. Personas are used by marketers to help them understand who their target customers are.
D. The fau

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steps—at the end. Front-load as much as you can, fill in the details in the middle, and use your conclusion as a reinforcement.
If you’re an editor, the type of writer who likes to draft first and then revise, be sure you go back to the beginning of your draft with a critical eye. Put yourself in

your reader’s shoes, and ask:

Is this something I’d want to read?
Would I read through to the end of this message?

If the answer is no, consider how you might grab your reader’s attention. Is there an opportunity or risk you can bring to the fore to get her attention? Can you say
something in the beginning to motivate her to read the whole thing?

No matter if you’re writing a quick e-mail or a long report, it’s important to be sure your opening is clear and that you’re saying it in a way that will catch your
reader’s attention.

Whether you’re a planner or an editor, it’s a good idea to double-check your opening before you send your document off to the reader. Especially with longer
documents, ideas often shift while you’re writing, and your original opening might not accurately reflect what follows. When you review, you might have more clarity
about your purpose and how you’re going to appeal to your reader. As you review, ask yourself:

Is it clear to my reader why I’m writing?
Is my reader incentivized to keep reading?
Does my tone support my message? (For more information on tone, see the box “Does This Sound Okay?” here.)

SUMMARY: Start Strong and Specific

The beginning of your message is make or break. Use your opening to let readers know quickly what to expect.
Think from your reader’s point of view when you write your openings. What will make them want to read? Consider any risks or opportunities you can highlight in the
beginning to grab your reader’s attention.
Use your opening to motivate your readers to read beyond the first few lines.
Go back and check your opening once you’ve finished your draft. Does it align with what follows?

You Don’t Have to Start at the Beginning

Introductions and other kinds of beginnings can be difficult to write. A lot is riding on the opening of your document, and getting started can be intimidating. The good news is
that you don’t have to start your draft by writing the beginning of it. In fact, the beginning might not be the best thing to start with.

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Steve Strauss is a best-selling author and the senior USA Today small business columnist. He runs the website TheSelfEmployed.com.

STEP 5: FILL IN MISSING CONTENT; DELETE EXTRANEOUS CONTENT

“I hate it when I have to wade through a bunch of information I don’t need to get to the information I do need.”

—SURVEY RESPONDENT

Most of us are writing in a hurry, and one of the biggest risks of writing in a hurry is making mistakes with content—either forgetting something or including too much. When you write
a first draft, you tend to just splat out whatever is in your head. Sometimes you include information that isn’t really relevant. Sometimes you forget to include important content. That’s
perfectly normal for a first draft, but before you send your document off to its final destination, you need to be sure you’ve included the right content.

Forgetting important content usually has one of two possible outcomes. Either the reader zones out and gives up, or he has to follow up with you to get the content he needs, wasting
time on both your parts.

Including too much information can also make life harder for your reader. Extraneous content will force your reader to work to figure out why you’re saying all this and what she’s
supposed to do about it. If your message ends up being too long and vague, your reader might give up entirely.

A quick content check helps ensure that your readers are getting exactly what they need.
Let’s look at a couple of examples to see how this works.

All,
Just a reminder that next Thursday’s training session is mandatory. Everyone in the group needs to complete diversity training for compliance purposes.

If you haven’t done the diversity training module during the last twelve months, you need to do it this time. Everyone has to complete the training by the end of May, or it could affect
our licensing.

We’ve got two more slots with the vendor. Please ensure you make it to one of the two upcoming sessions. If you know you cannot make it, let me know now.
Thanks,
Mona

You can tell that Mona is concerned about making sure everyone gets this training and that she’s worried about what will happen if people miss it. She’s also worried that people are
going to blow it off. She’s so worried about these issues, she’s forgotten to provide helpful information about when and where the training will take place. First she mentions “next
Thursday,” then she refers to “two more slots with the vendor,” and the overall effect is confusing.

Mona takes a step back and thinks about what her readers really need, what’s at stake, and how to communicate it best. She realizes that she needs to add those dates.

All,
To renew our licensing, everyone in the group must complete the diversity training module by May 31. If you haven’t yet, you have two more chances:

February 11: 2–3 p.m.
March 27: 10–11 a.m.
If you don’t rememb

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done.
Thank you!
Mona

Reviewing your draft for content often helps you improve it in other ways as well. Mona has added the new information her readers need—the dates of the training sessions—and in
the process of thinking it through, she’s also managed to cut down the overall length of the message. Moreover, she has brought the issue of licensing to the very beginning of the
message, letting her readers know what’s at stake right away.

Including too much information can be as problematic as including too little. We often include too much because we’re more focused on ourselves than on our reader. A quick
review of a draft can help tighten up the communication.

Alec works for a regional bank that’s about to launch a new customer service initiative that will include getting more customers into the Elite Checking program. Currently branch
personnel are offering customers Standard Checking as a default. As a result, customers who qualify for the better account are missing out on rewards, and some are paying unnecessary
fees. Alec drafts a memo to branch tellers and other personnel introducing the new initiative. Here’s his first draft:

Hello MaxxBank AllStars!
I’m writing today to announce an exciting new initiative for MaxxBank: the EliteStar program. As part of the initiative, we have a goal to bring 20 percent more new customers into Elite
Checking accounts, and to move 20 percent of existing customers from Standard Checking into Elite.

Based on research throughout the region, we estimate that currently about 30 percent of existing customers in Standard in fact qualify for Elite based on their running daily balances.
And about 25 percent of new customers are placed into Standard Checking when they would be better served by Elite Checking. The result is that many of our customers are being
underserved and missing out on the benefits that Elite offers. These customers often incur service charges that they would not be subject to if they had Elite status. We are managing a
large volume of complaints across the branches as a result. We estimate that by moving qualified customers to Elite status, we can reduce fee-related complaints by as much as 35
percent. And the revenue from the lost fees could be offset through happier customers engaging with the bank in other ways, say, through credit cards, home loans, mortgages, or other
products.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out training to make it easier for branch personnel to recognize potential Elite customers and help them have conversations to invite
customers into the program. Keep your eyes open for more communication about this exciting initiative!

Alec puts his draft aside and comes back to review it the next day. Reading it over, he realizes that the content in the middle paragraph was on his mind because of a meeting he’d
attended that day, but it really isn’t

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done.
Thank you!
Mona

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done.
Thank you!
Mona

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2. Watch for prepositional phrases

A preposition is a part of speech defined as “a word or group of words that is used with a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction, location, or time, or to introduce an object.”†
That’s a pretty vague definition, and it isn’t terrifically helpful on its own. But remembering the definition of prepositions is not as important as your ability to spot them and understand
what they do.

Prepositions are those words like “in,” “on,” “of,” “into,” “by,” “under,” “with,” “around,” “about,” and “between” that serve as connectors in a sentence. You’ll find a long list of
common prepositions in Appendix B. They introduce prepositional phrases. A prepositional phrase begins with a preposition and has a noun or a pronoun as the object of the
preposition. Like so:

about the customer
in the office
on the phone
by my authority
under these circumstances
of the organization

Like the passive voice, prepositional phrases are perfectly correct grammatical forms. It would be hard to write in English without using them. The problem comes when they’re
overused. When writers try to sound “official,” they often fall into the trap of piling up prepositional phrases one after the other. Policy statements and anything else trying to sound
legal often feature lots of prepositional phrases strung together. Learning to identify prepositions and the phrases that follow them is an important skill in making your writing more
concise, so be on the lookout for phrases beginning with “of,” “by,” “in,” “for,” “about,” “with,” “through,” and other prepositions.

Let’s look at an example:

Participation in client negotiations with suppliers is prohibited by company policy unless (in very rare circumstances) there is advance consent of a leader of the gyro division in the client’s geography as
well as an industry leader for the supplier’s industry.

Whoa. Most people can recognize this kind of writing as bad. It’s a little harder to identify exactly what’s wrong (it’s prepositional phrases and forms of the verb “to be”) and
understand how to fix it. Let’s take this sentence apart. The prepositional phrases are in italics, and the “to be” forms are in bold:

Participation
in client negotiations
with suppliers
is prohibited
by company policy, unless
(in very rare circumstances) there is advance consent
of a leader
of the gyro division
in the client’s geography as well as an industry leader
for the supplier’s industry.

That’s a lot of prepositional phrases all strung together. How do we fix it? The first step is to figure out what the message is and say it in plain English.

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1. Watch for forms of the verb “to be”

The verb “to be” in all its various forms—“I am,” “you are,” “she or he is,” “they are,” “we have been”—occurs more frequently than any other verb in English. It’s a perfectly fine
verb, but relying on it too much can make your sentences longer than they need to be. We’ll look at two ways that “to be” can creep into your writing and make it loose and meandering:
the passive voice and “there is” forms.

THE PASSIVE VOICE
Forms of the verb “to be” can signal the presence of the passive voice in your sentence. You’ve probably heard of the passive voice, but you might not be entirely sure what this
sentence structure is. It’s called passive because the subject of the sentence is receiving the action of the sentence. Its opposite is the active voice, where the subject of the sentence is
doing the action of the sentence. The passive voice is formed using the past participle of a verb (often ending in “-ed”) and a form of the verb “to be.” Because the subject of the
sentence isn’t doing the action, it’s often necessary to add a phrase beginning with “by” to indicate who did it.

Let’s look at some examples.

Passive voice: The intruder was arrested by the security guard.
Active voice: The security guard arrested the intruder.

In the passive voice version, the subject of the sentence, “the intruder,” is being acted upon. In the active version, the subject of the sentence, “security guard,” is performing the
action.

Passive voice: Gender and annual income were cited by the research as the major drivers of purchase decisions.
Active voice: The research cited gender and annual income as the major drivers of purchase decisions.

As you can see, the “action” of a verb isn’t always physical action—it’s the “doing” part of the sentence. In the example above, “the research” is doing the action, which is citing.

Passive: The beginning of the recession was signaled by a sharp dip in stock prices.
Active: A sharp dip in stock prices signaled the beginning of the recession.

The action in this example is signaling, and it’s the dip in stock prices that’s doing it.
In all these examples, you can see that the passive version is longer than the active version. Usually it’s a difference of just a few words, but if you make a habit of relying on the

passive voice and string together a whole paragraph of passive constructions, you can end up with a lot of verbiage you don’t need.
Sometimes the actor in a passive sentence is omitted altogether:

Bus and subway fares were raised. [By whom? Surely not by the MTA?]
Mistakes were made in dealing with the crisis.
It was determined that the proper procedure had been followed.

Looking at examples like these, you can see how using the passive voice might be a handy way to avoid taking responsibility, and some writers use it for exactly that reason.

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Now that you feel confident about your content, we’ll explore how to write your message as clearly as possible.

STEP 6: WRITE IN PLAIN ENGLISH

“I find it frustrating to be somewhat trapped by a long-standing and robustly implemented ‘institutional writing voice.’ This enforced company style is overly wordy, full of run-on sentence structures
and embraces a bureaucratic, impersonal tone that might be ‘legally effective’ but not effective in motivating or communicating with the audience. Ultimately the impersonality of the tone is off-
putting to readers and can often be misunderstood as authoritative or even hostile.”

—SURVEY RESPONDENT

Business writing is often mocked for its heavy reliance on jargon and unnecessarily convoluted language. Modern-day corporate-speak comes from a variety of sources outside the
business world: from the military, from sports, and from law, among other fields, often driven by the latest trends in management thinking. As businesspeople became more interested in
warfare analogies, the habit of using military-style acronyms and specialized vocabulary grew. As businesspeople began to envision themselves as athletes, sports metaphors crept in.
And because there’s always been a close connection between business and the law, some of the worst tendencies in business English come from aping legal writing—trying to sound
authoritative and official, and muddying the meaning in the process.

The pushback against these tendencies started in the 1970s. The plain English movement arose in response to the ridiculously obscure legalistic writing in government documents.
In 1977, New York State passed laws requiring plain English in consumer contracts and leases. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter issued two executive orders mandating that government
regulations be easy to understand. There is similar legislation across the English-speaking world.

There are no laws against muddy, convoluted, jargon-ridden business writing, so it’s up to us to fix it on our own. The good news is that you can distinguish yourself by saying what
you mean in plain English.

Jargon

There are two kinds of jargon. One is the language specific to your business or industry: acronyms, abbreviations, and specialty vocabulary used as a shortcut among people who
understand it:

Will the ASB be ready in time for SteerCo? If not, I suggest we prioritize the alpha of ITB so the team can review it prior to the launch of ELF.

Almost everyone who has a job has written this way at one time or another, and most of the time it’s perfectly fine. Sometimes, though, it’s not. When you use heavy jargon outside
your immediate work circle—among people who don’t understand it—it can create a barrier to understanding. It can be a particular problem in proposals, where it can confuse, annoy,
and alienate readers.

The other kind of jargon is that common group o

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forth). Using this kind of jargon excessively, even when your audience will understand it, can flatten your writing and diminish its impact. Relying too much on jargon can make you
sound sloppy, as if you’re not willing to do the work to express what you mean accurately.

How many of the phrases below do you see in a typical workweek?

Actionable
Aligning
At the end of the day
Bandwidth
Best practice
Blue-sky thinking
Boiling the ocean
Boots on the ground
Deep dive
Delta (instead of “change”)
Disruptive
Game changer
Going forward
Hard-baked solution
Impactful
Iterate
Leading-edge
Leverage
Low-hanging fruit
Moving the ball forward
No-regrets move
Popping the bubble
Quick win
Reaching out
Reality check
Strategic
Synergy
Taking the pulse
Thought shower
Tools
Touching base
2.0
Upskill
Value add
Warning shot

I’m sure you could add to the list. Such phrases are often metaphors, as you can see, and taken in bulk they’re just comical. Things really get interesting when writers begin to mix
these metaphors; the result is often pure nonsense:

Have you noticed that the farther you move toward fulfilling your potential, the higher the needle moves forward?

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Upskill
Value add
Warning shot

Have you noticed that the farther you move toward fulfilling your potential, the higher the needle moves forward?

Wait, which way is the needle moving? Up or forward? It’s a silly example, but it came from a real document, and it illustrates what happens when people rely on these expressions
too much: they stop thinking. Consider how distinctive and refreshing your voice as a writer could be if you cut down on your use of this kind of jargon.

Instead of
Going forward, we should drill down into actionable initiatives rather than blue-sky thinking.

Try
In the future, we should focus on initiatives that we can actually implement rather than unproven ideas.

Instead of
At the end of the day, we can advance by targeting quick wins and low-hanging fruit in the market.

Try
Ultimately, we’ll succeed if we focus on easily achievable goals.

You’ll note that both of these examples do more than eliminate offending phrases. The revisions are more specific and easier to understand than the originals. They present concrete
ideas that can be discussed and perhaps disagreed with. Do we really want to stick with what we already know how to do, without exploring other avenues? Is focusing on easy goals
really the right thing to do now? When you strip these suggestions of their jargon, it becomes much easier to understand and discuss them.

Needlessly Complicated Language

In Step 4, Be concise, we looked at the bad habit of using long phrases where short ones would do. In that step, we were concerned about saving space and writing economically. Here
we’re concerned with a different issue: how using language that’s needlessly complicated can instead impinge on your ability to communicate.

What do I mean by “needlessly complicated” language? Here are some examples:

Utilize = use
Initiate = start
Subsequent to = after
Prior to = before
In light of the fact that = because or since
In the event that = if
In close proximity = near

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What do I mean by “needlessly complicated” language? Here are some examples:

Utilize = use
Initiate = start
Subsequent to = after
Prior to = before
In light of the fact that = because or since
In the event that = if
In close proximity = near
In the near future = soon
With reference to = about
With regard to = about
Regarding = about
At this time = now
At this point in time = now
By means of = by
In accordance with = under, by
In order to = to
In the absence of = without
In cases when = when

The basic pattern here is taking a small, simple word and replacing it with a bigger word or a series of words. Just as with jargon, the impulse behind this kind of writing seems to be
that it will make you look smarter or more serious or more professional. Why merely begin something when you can initiate it? Why use a thing when you can utilize it?

You’ll notice that a lot of these forms are prepositional phrases, which we discussed in Step 4, Be concise. Learning to recognize them is a useful tool in improving your writing
skills.

This kind of deliberate complication is everywhere in business. It has seeped into customer service training. Cashiers in some stores have stopped calling for the “next” customer
and started saying “following” instead, as if adding those syllables demonstrates superior customer service.

Of course, stores are not fooling customers about the quality of their service simply by having associates say “following” rather than “next.” By the same token, you’re not fooling
anyone when you use needlessly complicated language in your writing. In fact, you’ll impress people more if your writing is straightforward and clear. Let’s look at some examples:

Instead of
In the absence of relevant performance data, we are unable to make an appropriate recommendation for an alternative software solution.

Try
Without performance data, we cannot recommend alternative software.

Instead of
In the event that you encounter a program error, utilize the indicated button on your screen to restart the program.

Try
If the program crashes, click the Restart button.

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[SOLVED] discussion 5 – Business Finance – Economics

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