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.
The shape of it
How this course works
Short lessons
48 lessons across 7 modules, each small enough to finish in one sitting.
Practice as you go
Every lesson ends with a small space for what you noticed — the doing is the learning.
A certificate at the end
Finish the course and earn a certificate anyone can verify with a link.
Ready when you are.
Make an account and this course opens up — your progress is saved from the very first lesson.