Business Writing: Emails, Reports and Proposals That Get Read

By the end

What you'll build

• Restructure a writer-ordered draft into a reader-ordered one, with the ask inside the first two lines.
• Write a subject line of nine words or fewer that names the topic, the action and the deadline.
• Draft an email on the four-part skeleton - ask, why, detail, next - that can be acted on from one phone screen.
• Choose and justify a register for a senior reader, a peer, a customer and a vendor, naming what you moved on directness, warmth and formality.
• Escalate a chase over four messages by adding substance each time, including an announced escalation, without leaking temper.
• Write a refusal with the no in the first three lines, one honest reason and a real alternative.
• Deliver bad news in the order orient, news, impact, action, ask, including what you do not yet know.
• Write a weekly update that reports state rather than activity, using one of three status words and a named risk condition.
• Turn messy meeting notes into a decision record with owners, absolute dates, rejected options and assumptions.
• Cut your own draft by twenty percent by removing nominalisations, hedge stacks and courtesy piles, and keep a personal style sheet of your own habits and fixes.

Curriculum

What's inside

7 modules · 48 lessons

1. 01

   Why Most Workplace Writing Fails

   7 lessons
   • Start Here: What This Course Is and Is Not
   • Writer-Ordered and Reader-Ordered
   • What a Busy Reader Actually Does
   • Lead With the Ask
   • Lab: Rewrite a Buried Askwriting lab
   • + 2 more lessons
2. 02

   The Email That Gets Acted On

   7 lessons
   • The Subject Line as a Contract
   • The Four-Part Email Skeleton
   • Fill the Blank: Subject Lines and Openingsfill blank
   • One Email, One Ask
   • Lab: The Delay Email to a Senior Readerwriting lab
   • + 2 more lessons
3. 03

   Tone, Register and Who You Are Writing To

   7 lessons
   • Register: The Same Message at Three Temperatures
   • Writing to Someone Senior
   • Peers, Clients and Vendors: What Actually Changes
   • Expressions That Carry a Registermetaphor idiom
   • Lab: One Message, Three Readerswriting lab
   • + 2 more lessons
4. 04

   Hard Messages: Chasing, Refusing, Bad News

   7 lessons
   • The Chase That Stays Courteous
   • Lab: Write Chase Two and Chase Threewriting lab
   • Saying No in Writing
   • Lab: Two Refusalswriting lab
   • Delivering Bad News in Writing
   • + 2 more lessons
5. 05

   Writing People Do Not Have to Decode

   6 lessons
   • The Status Update Nobody Has to Decode
   • Lab: The Weekly Updatewriting lab
   • Meeting Notes and Decision Records
   • Lab: From Messy Notes to a Decision Recordwriting lab
   • Writing So a Decision Survives You
   • + 1 more lesson
6. 06

   Short Reports and Proposals

   7 lessons
   • The Short Report: Summary First, Evidence After
   • Lab: Write the Executive Summarywriting lab
   • The Body: Evidence a Sceptic Can Check
   • A Proposal That Answers 'Why You' Without Boasting
   • Lab: The 'Why Us' Sectionwriting lab
   • + 2 more lessons
7. 07

   Editing, Voice and the Capstone

   7 lessons
   • Cut Twenty Percent
   • Nominalisations, Active Verbs and One Idea Per Sentence
   • Fill the Blank: Unbury the Verbfill blank
   • Register Choices, Not Errors
   • Drafting With an AI Assistant Without Losing Your Voice
   • + 2 more lessons

The shape of it

How this course works