One of the main themes of chapter 2 is being clear and concise. Communication is important, but proper communication is even more important. They used the word concrete, which I think is a good use of word choice. When communicating with someone we do not want to be dancing around a subject and use “odds and ends” words to send a message. In writing, we must be as clear as possible to make sure whoever is reading out the message, letter, etc. can interpret it the way we wrote it. Another main theme of chapter 2 is the wording. Using proper nouns, verbs, and modifiers can help a piece flow. The idea of writing or pitching the idea to a middle schooler is a great way to figure out the audience across all boards. With that simplifying shouldn’t end up being a hard task, it should be easy. They also mention keeping everything gender-neutral, which in today’s world it is very important to do so. Shorting Chairman to Chair or Chairperson is a simple example of these easy modifications to our language. The English language is very modular as we can enhance or dumb it down. Any language can do it, just so long as we can keep it formal.
Chapter 2 overviews the 7 C’s (qualities) of good pro-biz/tech writing. The 7 C’s are clear, concise, concrete, complete, courteous, coherent (consistent), and constructive. I personally love lists, so this format was very digestible for me. I found that many of the C’s had overlapping rules, which the chapter did preface by saying. One of the bigger takeaways for me was the importance of using active verbs and avoiding nominalizations and static (weak) verbs. When done effectively, the active verb sentence should have fewer words than the passive version. This helps writing become more clear and concise. I am learning that it is important in pro-tech writing to analyze the entire sentence structure and not just the words themselves. I’m not entirely new to this idea, although maybe rusty. I’ve been taught in the past to avoid repeating prepositional phrases, as well as dangling and misplaced modifiers. (The term word salad is new to me, though). Another takeaway for me was the importance of constructive wording. In pro-tech writing, negative connotations should be avoided. Instead of stating what can’t be done, it should be stated what can. This stood out to me because as a retail worker, it is important to focus a customer’s attention on the positives above all else. Rather than saying, “Sorry, your photo order hasn’t been processed yet.” I might say, “Your pictures will be ready for pickup at 5pm.” Like the text says, if I were to use a word like “unfortunately” or “sorry” I am implying some kind of failure on my end, which I would never give a customer the satisfaction of (LOL).
Within our class textbook, chapter 2 focused on the seven Cs that work as a checklist to ensure good professional writing. One essential point that recurred throughout the reading was that these seven guidelines merge, showcasing how when business and professional writers employ one of these principles, it is more likely than not that the rest will follow. Looking at the first three Cs – clear, concise, and concrete & specific writing – it makes sense that succinct, tight, and clear writing will also emerge when using concrete and specific examples or terms.
Additionally, the grammatical necessities required for clear, concise, concrete, and complete writing feel like a link between the more specialized, audience targetted aspects of the later Cs of courtesy, coherent, and constructive writing. Once the basic mechanics of good professional writing are established, the ability to hone tactful, consistent, positive and easy-to-read writing skills can flourish. These two concepts stress how important the basics of good professional writing are as it can be broken down into almost a formula-like tool of efficiency applicable in any scenario. The ability to take the framework of any task and decipher its goal, anticipate the audience, and create a well-written document doesn’t happen without consciously applying these principles.
This chapter gives a detailed description of the “seven C’s” of writing. They are Clear, Concise, Concrete and specific, Complete, Courteous, Coherent, and Constructive. Many of these aspects go hand in hand with one another and tend to overlap, as stated in the beginning of this chapter. The overarching idea is that professional writing should be as easy to understand as possible with the smallest possible chance of miscommunication or misunderstanding. This chapter highlights the importance of being specific and clear within everything that the writer is trying to portray. It also talks quite a bit about how if the writer is going to use a complex word, that it must be defined and explained in order to make every reader understand the meaning of said word. It was also largely emphasized that in order to remain polite and professional, the writer must make their writing gender neutral. This is to make one’s writing more inclusive and provide less area to offend the reader. The seven c’s cover a ton of very important areas of writing and the aspects that the writer must pay very close attention to when crafting their original piece of professional correspondence. It is definitely a very important chapter, and one that I will likely find myself revisiting in the future.
The first thing about this chapter that is both important and sets the premise for what is necessary to take out of this chapter is the eight C’s of being a professional communicator. As the book states, these eight include: clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, constructive, and grammatically correct. It is important to note that although these are treated as separate categories, these sections will overlap and intertwine with each other in order to succeed in professional communication. Out of these, one specific one that stuck to me was under the category of clear writing. It’s described as avoiding prepositional phrases or “word salad”. This means that as one writes, they tend to include multiple “as” , “is” , or “and” phrases when it is not always necessary. Doing this can cause ones professional writing to become clunky and harder to read due to the overuse of certain phrases. The reason as to why this stuck out to me is because I catch myself doing this often even in my academic writing. When I am given something with a certain word count, I often struggle to maintain that word count due to unnecessary phrases such as those listed above. It is almost a second nature action that I then notice when editing or reflecting back on my work. In being an editor and writing fellow also, I see this happen in many students work due to (again) it being a second nature.
The other part of this chapter that stuck out to me was making sure your writing is complete. In other words, that ones writing answers the questions of who, what, where, when, how, and why. These are also known as the Five W’s plus H. I found this connected to me most because I am both a writer and journalist myself who often has to use and remember to include these elements of writing. It was interesting to see the different contexts this rule applies, especially in professional communications. In the book, it explains how leaving the reader with questions as to what happened or why is creating incomplete writing. When writing, one must provide the upmost information possible in order to have the reader understand and feel satisfied with what they read. The chapter also notes again how time is money, and it is wasting time to not be complete in writing. Complete writing goes hand in hand with producing clearer writing.
Chapter 2 is all about the 7 C’s of Good Professional Communication. The C’s, clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive, are each laid out and explained in the text individually. Something that stuck out as an important point right away and was covered in both the “clear” and “concise” sections was the use of active verbs. Both sections make it clear that active verbs are the natural way to use verbs in an English sentence. Active verbs make a given sentence clear and less wordy. Eliminating redundant or useless words that can make a sentence unclear to the reader is always positive, and the use of active verbs allows for this. The “concise” section reiterates these points and also points out that using active verbs helps eliminate the use of “to be” verbs.
Something else that stuck out to me in this chapter was the “complete” section. This section goes over the importance of answering six basic questions in your writing: Who?, What?, Where?, When?, Why?, and How? In professional writing, complete communication means clearer communication. Covering all these bases will leave the reader with little to no questions at all with a complete understanding of what was written. It is inefficient and annoying if writing does not include all the necessary information and leaves the reader/receiver hanging. In a business setting, if a superior emails their employees information about a meeting but neglects to include the meeting time and/or location, the email did not serve its purpose and the writing was not complete. Complete writing saves everyone time and makes communication easier.
The first thing that stuck out to me in the chapter was under the section of concrete and specific writing where it talks about using action verbs. I have never really been told or heard about using action verbs over passive ones so this caught my eye. The chapter says to do this because it has the subject of the sentence doing the action. This also uses less words than in passive voice which correlates with the concrete sentence idea. The second thing that caught my attention was “word salads”. Which is essentially just a long string of prepositional words that make a sentence too crowded. When a sentence becomes a word salad, its meaning gets lost in the jumble of words. This stuck out to me because it is also something I’ve never thought about before and it also can be connected back to a conversation we had in class. I feel like this is a good example of the difference between academic and business writing because in something like an essay, you’d want to be specific and make sure that all your sentences have the proper words and details. However in business writing you want to take out those extra words to get the point across as simply and quickly as possible.
Chapter two emphasized the importance of learning sentence structure with some of its main points touching on the use of active verb structure, pronouns, overusing prepositions, and dangling or misplaced modifiers. For example, the textbook used the following text to show the incorrect use of prepositions, “The results of the chemistry tests of the students at the University of Vermont were excellent,” and then the version with less prepositions, “Student chemistry test results at the University of Vermont were excellent.” The second sentence conveyed the same meaning, but it was easier to read. This goes to show the difference that following proper sentence structure and simplification can have on the reading experience. The second main point was one that spanned the length of the entire chapter and set the baseline for each writing suggestion, and that was the eight C’s which are a “checklist” to writing good quality, professional and business communications. These C’s included: clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive. Going into detail about each of these C’s and the usages of each, was a big takeaway for me, because it provided a clear guideline to follow and I found that helpful.
One should make sure that their writing follows several principles for it to be widely understood by everyone. Those principles are the eight Cs, with seven discussed in the chapter. They are clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive. I found the courteous section interesting because it talked about gender-neutral language. This is a big issue currently, with many people viewing the use of specific pronouns as not being proper English. I was wondering what the takeaway from the guide would be as it seems to view the current generations’ abilities not highly. It was a pleasant surprise for the guide not to belittle why the ‘singular they’ can be essential, but it still provides other options when pronouns are not involved. It also talked about rewriting language to make things less negative toward the recipient. This can relate to the constructiveness principle discussed. The guide talked about how initially negative language can be rewritten to be more positive. This makes it so that more readers will feel welcomed by your messengering rather than exclusion. It also pointed out that using sorry in messaging is more harmful. This is because people usually negatively react to something not being available. They might feel if the company was really sorry that a bus wouldn’t be late or a product wouldn’t be unavailable. However, as with the previous example, sometimes breaking that rule is more important. When taking responsibility, one should say sorry in messaging.
The main point of this chapter was highlighting the seven c’s of good professional communication. The seven c’s are clear, concise, concrete, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive. The two that are the most important to me are complete and coherent. Writing to be very complete in your writing not only answers all the questions the reader may have but is also a respectful use of everyone’s time. As the text mentioned, it just makes sense to write with full and complete information. Secondly, coherent writing is a top priority. Writing sentences that express one main idea helps in keeping complete and coherent writing. Using transitional words to unite sentences and paragraphs and beginning lists with the same grammatical construction will lead to overall coherent, complete writing. The seven c’s seem to overlap a bit, also.
Chapter 2 of the book goes over and reviews the importance of what is called the seven C’s, an important writing tool to help people right effective and well in the professional and business style. the chapter details how to use each of the seven C’s to it’s fullest effect for the best writing possible. the chapter details ways to help make your writing more; Clear, Concise, Concreate, Complete, Courteous, Coherent, and Constructive. the text goes over various tips and tricks to improve your professional writing in these seven ways. taking many peoples writing which have been drilled in academic writing into more simplistic plain writing or plain english.
This chapter talks about the seven “C’s” of writing, clear, concise, concrete, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive. These are all things that you will need to write a good piece of writing. Using the seven “C’s” of writing is very helpful for me because when I am editing something I wrote, I go back into the piece and go over each “C” to see if I have it. This chapter is also just talking about how to properly write a correctly formatted piece of writing. It describes how to use each of the seven “C’s” and the details that come with it. Another thing that stood out to me was to avoid repetition. This is usually very difficult for me because I feel like I just run out of things to say and new ideas. So I end up saying the same thing but just in a different way. So it taught me to avoid it with transition phrases or words that will help me move onto the next topic.
Chapter two focused mainly on the eight C’s: clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive. Many of these are very similar, those being clear, concise, and concrete. They focus on avoiding what they call ‘word salad’ while still writing in a clear, descriptive fashion. Given that we think sensory first and intellectual later, it’s important to appeal to the senses when writing to keep engagement and improve understanding. When writing, it is also important to remain largely gender neutral to remain courteous. In professional settings the pronouns you use also serve to establish tone. When addressing customers and clients, it is important to focus on the audience rather than the company. This is accomplished by using ‘you’ rather than ‘we’. Instead of saying ‘We have sent your package and it will arrive Wednesday’ say ‘You will receive the package on Wednesday’ to keep the focus on the customer. Situations where you would use ‘we’ rather than ‘you’ is when there is a more negative tone or connotation. Instead of placing blame on the customer through use of ‘you’, it’s important to keep focus on the company to avoid upsetting the customer.
13 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 3”
One of the main themes of chapter 2 is being clear and concise. Communication is important, but proper communication is even more important. They used the word concrete, which I think is a good use of word choice. When communicating with someone we do not want to be dancing around a subject and use “odds and ends” words to send a message. In writing, we must be as clear as possible to make sure whoever is reading out the message, letter, etc. can interpret it the way we wrote it. Another main theme of chapter 2 is the wording. Using proper nouns, verbs, and modifiers can help a piece flow. The idea of writing or pitching the idea to a middle schooler is a great way to figure out the audience across all boards. With that simplifying shouldn’t end up being a hard task, it should be easy. They also mention keeping everything gender-neutral, which in today’s world it is very important to do so. Shorting Chairman to Chair or Chairperson is a simple example of these easy modifications to our language. The English language is very modular as we can enhance or dumb it down. Any language can do it, just so long as we can keep it formal.
Chapter 2 overviews the 7 C’s (qualities) of good pro-biz/tech writing. The 7 C’s are clear, concise, concrete, complete, courteous, coherent (consistent), and constructive. I personally love lists, so this format was very digestible for me. I found that many of the C’s had overlapping rules, which the chapter did preface by saying. One of the bigger takeaways for me was the importance of using active verbs and avoiding nominalizations and static (weak) verbs. When done effectively, the active verb sentence should have fewer words than the passive version. This helps writing become more clear and concise. I am learning that it is important in pro-tech writing to analyze the entire sentence structure and not just the words themselves. I’m not entirely new to this idea, although maybe rusty. I’ve been taught in the past to avoid repeating prepositional phrases, as well as dangling and misplaced modifiers. (The term word salad is new to me, though). Another takeaway for me was the importance of constructive wording. In pro-tech writing, negative connotations should be avoided. Instead of stating what can’t be done, it should be stated what can. This stood out to me because as a retail worker, it is important to focus a customer’s attention on the positives above all else. Rather than saying, “Sorry, your photo order hasn’t been processed yet.” I might say, “Your pictures will be ready for pickup at 5pm.” Like the text says, if I were to use a word like “unfortunately” or “sorry” I am implying some kind of failure on my end, which I would never give a customer the satisfaction of (LOL).
Within our class textbook, chapter 2 focused on the seven Cs that work as a checklist to ensure good professional writing. One essential point that recurred throughout the reading was that these seven guidelines merge, showcasing how when business and professional writers employ one of these principles, it is more likely than not that the rest will follow. Looking at the first three Cs – clear, concise, and concrete & specific writing – it makes sense that succinct, tight, and clear writing will also emerge when using concrete and specific examples or terms.
Additionally, the grammatical necessities required for clear, concise, concrete, and complete writing feel like a link between the more specialized, audience targetted aspects of the later Cs of courtesy, coherent, and constructive writing. Once the basic mechanics of good professional writing are established, the ability to hone tactful, consistent, positive and easy-to-read writing skills can flourish. These two concepts stress how important the basics of good professional writing are as it can be broken down into almost a formula-like tool of efficiency applicable in any scenario. The ability to take the framework of any task and decipher its goal, anticipate the audience, and create a well-written document doesn’t happen without consciously applying these principles.
This chapter gives a detailed description of the “seven C’s” of writing. They are Clear, Concise, Concrete and specific, Complete, Courteous, Coherent, and Constructive. Many of these aspects go hand in hand with one another and tend to overlap, as stated in the beginning of this chapter. The overarching idea is that professional writing should be as easy to understand as possible with the smallest possible chance of miscommunication or misunderstanding. This chapter highlights the importance of being specific and clear within everything that the writer is trying to portray. It also talks quite a bit about how if the writer is going to use a complex word, that it must be defined and explained in order to make every reader understand the meaning of said word. It was also largely emphasized that in order to remain polite and professional, the writer must make their writing gender neutral. This is to make one’s writing more inclusive and provide less area to offend the reader. The seven c’s cover a ton of very important areas of writing and the aspects that the writer must pay very close attention to when crafting their original piece of professional correspondence. It is definitely a very important chapter, and one that I will likely find myself revisiting in the future.
The first thing about this chapter that is both important and sets the premise for what is necessary to take out of this chapter is the eight C’s of being a professional communicator. As the book states, these eight include: clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, constructive, and grammatically correct. It is important to note that although these are treated as separate categories, these sections will overlap and intertwine with each other in order to succeed in professional communication. Out of these, one specific one that stuck to me was under the category of clear writing. It’s described as avoiding prepositional phrases or “word salad”. This means that as one writes, they tend to include multiple “as” , “is” , or “and” phrases when it is not always necessary. Doing this can cause ones professional writing to become clunky and harder to read due to the overuse of certain phrases. The reason as to why this stuck out to me is because I catch myself doing this often even in my academic writing. When I am given something with a certain word count, I often struggle to maintain that word count due to unnecessary phrases such as those listed above. It is almost a second nature action that I then notice when editing or reflecting back on my work. In being an editor and writing fellow also, I see this happen in many students work due to (again) it being a second nature.
The other part of this chapter that stuck out to me was making sure your writing is complete. In other words, that ones writing answers the questions of who, what, where, when, how, and why. These are also known as the Five W’s plus H. I found this connected to me most because I am both a writer and journalist myself who often has to use and remember to include these elements of writing. It was interesting to see the different contexts this rule applies, especially in professional communications. In the book, it explains how leaving the reader with questions as to what happened or why is creating incomplete writing. When writing, one must provide the upmost information possible in order to have the reader understand and feel satisfied with what they read. The chapter also notes again how time is money, and it is wasting time to not be complete in writing. Complete writing goes hand in hand with producing clearer writing.
Chapter 2 is all about the 7 C’s of Good Professional Communication. The C’s, clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive, are each laid out and explained in the text individually. Something that stuck out as an important point right away and was covered in both the “clear” and “concise” sections was the use of active verbs. Both sections make it clear that active verbs are the natural way to use verbs in an English sentence. Active verbs make a given sentence clear and less wordy. Eliminating redundant or useless words that can make a sentence unclear to the reader is always positive, and the use of active verbs allows for this. The “concise” section reiterates these points and also points out that using active verbs helps eliminate the use of “to be” verbs.
Something else that stuck out to me in this chapter was the “complete” section. This section goes over the importance of answering six basic questions in your writing: Who?, What?, Where?, When?, Why?, and How? In professional writing, complete communication means clearer communication. Covering all these bases will leave the reader with little to no questions at all with a complete understanding of what was written. It is inefficient and annoying if writing does not include all the necessary information and leaves the reader/receiver hanging. In a business setting, if a superior emails their employees information about a meeting but neglects to include the meeting time and/or location, the email did not serve its purpose and the writing was not complete. Complete writing saves everyone time and makes communication easier.
The first thing that stuck out to me in the chapter was under the section of concrete and specific writing where it talks about using action verbs. I have never really been told or heard about using action verbs over passive ones so this caught my eye. The chapter says to do this because it has the subject of the sentence doing the action. This also uses less words than in passive voice which correlates with the concrete sentence idea. The second thing that caught my attention was “word salads”. Which is essentially just a long string of prepositional words that make a sentence too crowded. When a sentence becomes a word salad, its meaning gets lost in the jumble of words. This stuck out to me because it is also something I’ve never thought about before and it also can be connected back to a conversation we had in class. I feel like this is a good example of the difference between academic and business writing because in something like an essay, you’d want to be specific and make sure that all your sentences have the proper words and details. However in business writing you want to take out those extra words to get the point across as simply and quickly as possible.
Chapter two emphasized the importance of learning sentence structure with some of its main points touching on the use of active verb structure, pronouns, overusing prepositions, and dangling or misplaced modifiers. For example, the textbook used the following text to show the incorrect use of prepositions, “The results of the chemistry tests of the students at the University of Vermont were excellent,” and then the version with less prepositions, “Student chemistry test results at the University of Vermont were excellent.” The second sentence conveyed the same meaning, but it was easier to read. This goes to show the difference that following proper sentence structure and simplification can have on the reading experience. The second main point was one that spanned the length of the entire chapter and set the baseline for each writing suggestion, and that was the eight C’s which are a “checklist” to writing good quality, professional and business communications. These C’s included: clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive. Going into detail about each of these C’s and the usages of each, was a big takeaway for me, because it provided a clear guideline to follow and I found that helpful.
One should make sure that their writing follows several principles for it to be widely understood by everyone. Those principles are the eight Cs, with seven discussed in the chapter. They are clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive. I found the courteous section interesting because it talked about gender-neutral language. This is a big issue currently, with many people viewing the use of specific pronouns as not being proper English. I was wondering what the takeaway from the guide would be as it seems to view the current generations’ abilities not highly. It was a pleasant surprise for the guide not to belittle why the ‘singular they’ can be essential, but it still provides other options when pronouns are not involved. It also talked about rewriting language to make things less negative toward the recipient. This can relate to the constructiveness principle discussed. The guide talked about how initially negative language can be rewritten to be more positive. This makes it so that more readers will feel welcomed by your messengering rather than exclusion. It also pointed out that using sorry in messaging is more harmful. This is because people usually negatively react to something not being available. They might feel if the company was really sorry that a bus wouldn’t be late or a product wouldn’t be unavailable. However, as with the previous example, sometimes breaking that rule is more important. When taking responsibility, one should say sorry in messaging.
The main point of this chapter was highlighting the seven c’s of good professional communication. The seven c’s are clear, concise, concrete, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive. The two that are the most important to me are complete and coherent. Writing to be very complete in your writing not only answers all the questions the reader may have but is also a respectful use of everyone’s time. As the text mentioned, it just makes sense to write with full and complete information. Secondly, coherent writing is a top priority. Writing sentences that express one main idea helps in keeping complete and coherent writing. Using transitional words to unite sentences and paragraphs and beginning lists with the same grammatical construction will lead to overall coherent, complete writing. The seven c’s seem to overlap a bit, also.
Chapter 2 of the book goes over and reviews the importance of what is called the seven C’s, an important writing tool to help people right effective and well in the professional and business style. the chapter details how to use each of the seven C’s to it’s fullest effect for the best writing possible. the chapter details ways to help make your writing more; Clear, Concise, Concreate, Complete, Courteous, Coherent, and Constructive. the text goes over various tips and tricks to improve your professional writing in these seven ways. taking many peoples writing which have been drilled in academic writing into more simplistic plain writing or plain english.
This chapter talks about the seven “C’s” of writing, clear, concise, concrete, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive. These are all things that you will need to write a good piece of writing. Using the seven “C’s” of writing is very helpful for me because when I am editing something I wrote, I go back into the piece and go over each “C” to see if I have it. This chapter is also just talking about how to properly write a correctly formatted piece of writing. It describes how to use each of the seven “C’s” and the details that come with it. Another thing that stood out to me was to avoid repetition. This is usually very difficult for me because I feel like I just run out of things to say and new ideas. So I end up saying the same thing but just in a different way. So it taught me to avoid it with transition phrases or words that will help me move onto the next topic.
Chapter two focused mainly on the eight C’s: clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, and constructive. Many of these are very similar, those being clear, concise, and concrete. They focus on avoiding what they call ‘word salad’ while still writing in a clear, descriptive fashion. Given that we think sensory first and intellectual later, it’s important to appeal to the senses when writing to keep engagement and improve understanding. When writing, it is also important to remain largely gender neutral to remain courteous. In professional settings the pronouns you use also serve to establish tone. When addressing customers and clients, it is important to focus on the audience rather than the company. This is accomplished by using ‘you’ rather than ‘we’. Instead of saying ‘We have sent your package and it will arrive Wednesday’ say ‘You will receive the package on Wednesday’ to keep the focus on the customer. Situations where you would use ‘we’ rather than ‘you’ is when there is a more negative tone or connotation. Instead of placing blame on the customer through use of ‘you’, it’s important to keep focus on the company to avoid upsetting the customer.