Mastering Four Helpful Writing Techniques

You can improve your message by using mechanical emphasis, parallelism, voice, and well-placed descriptions.

One way to achieve emphasis is through mechanical devices.

Complete the following sentence.

Selecting a large, small, or contrasting  draws the reader's interest.

You can also improve your messages through stylistic emphasis in sentence structure and word choice. Which of these stylistic devices can be used to achieve emphasis? Check all that apply.

• Label descriptive modifiers.
• Position important ideas first or last in a sentence.
• Use complex sentence patterns.
• Use vivid words.
• Use general terms.

In some cases, it is necessary to de-emphasize an idea, such as bad news. Does the following selection emphasize or de-emphasize the bad news?

Congratulations! We would like to offer you the summer internship position.

• Emphasize
• De-emphasize

When you compose messages, you may use the active or passive voice to convey meaning. Most business messages use the active voice. Which of these are instances when you would use the passive voice in a business message? Check all that apply.

• To emphasize the recipient not the action
• To emphasize the sender not the receiver
• To emphasize negative news
• To conceal the doer of an action

Does the following sentence use the active or passive voice?

Dr. Rudolfo presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to Christina Balian.

• Passive
• Active

Parallel sentences are balanced and easy for readers to understand. Choose which sentence has the better parallel structure.

• Although the presentation was extremely long, it outlined the research, analyzed the data, and provided clear recommendations that will be useful to the feature.
• Although the presentation was extremely long, it outlined the research, analyzed the data, and provides clear recommendations that will be useful in the future.

Choose the best revision to the following sentence.

Leonie saw the recommendations flipping through the report.

• Flipping through the report, Leonie saw the recommendations.
• Leonie saw the recommendations, flipping through the report.

Effective business writers use various techniques to improve their messages. How could the following selection be improved?

The last time the board met, members discussed sending Fui to Tokyo for training on HumanPoint software, but she isn't working with HumanPoint any longer because we decided to use Point I software rather than HumanPoint, and she will no longer need to attend this training.

The problem in this ineffective selection is:

• Sentence length/comprehension rate.
• A dangling/misplaced modifier.
• Passive voice.

Writers should use words carefully and construct sentences skillfully to emphasize main ideas and de-emphasize minor ideas. Choose the best response.

Which of these uses vivid words and phrases?

• Please make a copy of the report for everyone at our next meeting.
• Please make 12 copies of the report on paper with letterhead. We'll use them in next week's staff meeting when I announce our exciting new corporate merger.