Business communication, etiquette and presentation Books

Book SynopsisThe big idea: If you want to get heard in the information age, you need to change the way you write. Now. Smart Brevity will teach you how. Brevity is confidence. Length is fear. This is the guiding principle of Smart Brevity, a communication formula built by Axios journalists to prioritize essential news and information, explain its impact and deliver it in a concise and visual format. Now, the co-founders of Axios have created an essential guide for communicating effectively and efficiently using Smart Brevity — think Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for the digital age. In SMART BREVITY: Write Less. Say More. Be Heard, Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz teach readers how to say more with less in virtually any format. They also share communications lessons learned from their decades of experience in media, business and communications.

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Book SynopsisStyle guides come in many shapes and sizes, usually focused toward scientific or academic use only. However, business writing is a space occupied by many individuals that has not been given the attention it deserves. The Style Guide for Business Writing, Second Edition, is designed specifically to assist business writers in both the public and private sector, including those publishing with English as a second language; authors of academic papers; business book authors; financial journalists; and writers of reports, proposals or even just e-mail and memoranda. This book provides a comprehensive guide to clear and precise writing that will help develop basic communication skills for the beginner, and refresh the basics for the experienced business writer. Major topics are arranged alphabetically and the cross references and index enable quick and easy access to information. Michael C. Thomsett is a market expert, author, speaker, and coach. His many books include Stock Market Math, Candlestick Charting, The Mathematics of Options, and A Technical Approach to Trend Analysis.Table of ContentsA  1 A or an  1 Abbreviation  1 Abridgement  6 Abstracts  6 Accessibility  7 Acknowledgments  8 Acronyms  8 Active and passive voice  9 Adnouns  12 Afterword  12 Agreement  12 Alphabetizing  17 Annotations  21 Annualization  22 Anonymous publication  23 Anthology  23 Antonyms  24 Appendices  25 Appositives  25 Apps  26 Archive  26 Articles  27 Artwork  29 Attribution  30 B  33 Backmatter  33 Baseline  34 Bibliography  36 Blogging  37 Budgets and forecasts  37 Bullet points  39 C  41 Callouts and sidebars  41 Capitalization  41 Captions  44 Case studies  45 Casual assertions and inferences  46 Charts and Graphs  48 Circa (ca.) 57 Circular arguments  57 Citations  58 Clauses  64 Cleft sentences  65 Cliches  66 Coinage of words  73 Colloquialism  73 Compound Words  74 Conclusions  75 Copyright  76 Cross reference  77 D  81 Dangling modifiers  81 Data analysis  81 Databases  85 Data collection methods  85 Data matrices  86 Dates and times  87 Decimals, fractions, and percentages  92 Definitions  96 Denotation and connotation  98 Derivative work  99 Descriptive statistics and inference  99 Desktop publishing  100 Dictionaries  101 Double negatives  101 Dysphemism  101 E  103 Editing and proofreading  103 e.g. and i.e. 106 Electronic mail (email) 106 Electronic mail formatting guidelines  108 Emphasis  109 Empirical approach  114 Endnotes  115 et al. 115 Euphemism  116 F  117 Fact checking  117 False subjects  117 Figure of speech  118 File naming  119 Financial reports  120 Flowcharts  122 Footnotes  124 G  127 Generalizations  127 Gerunds  128 Glossary formatting  128 Graphics  129 H  131 Headings  131 Highlighting in text  132 Homonyms  135 Hyperbole  135 Hyperlinks  136 Hypothesis formulation  136 I  139 Ibid. 139 Idiom  139 Imperative sentences  140 Indexing  141 Introductions, forewords and prefaces  143 Irony  145 J, K  147 Jargon  147 L  151 Legends, titles, and labels  151 Letters  152 Lists  163 M  169 Manuscripts  169 Mathematical symbols  171 Means testing  175 Measurement strategies  175 Memos  177 Metadata  179 Metaphors  180 Money and currency  180 N  183 Nominative, objective, and possessive pronouns  183 Numerals and numbering  184 O  191 Obfuscation  191 Objective and goal statements  192 Online etiquette  194 Op. Cit. 196 Organization charts  197 Outlining  199 P  203 Paradox  203 Paragraphs  203 Parallelism  207 Parentheses and brackets  209 Participles  213 Parts of speech  213 Patents  234 Peer review  234 Photographs  235 Planning documents  236 Possessives  239 Presentations  240 Problem statement  242 Procedures manuals  243 Proposals  246 Punctuation  248 Q  269 Quotations  269 R  273 Redundancy and repetition  273 Relative clauses  274 Reports  275 Rhetorical questions  278 Rhythm in sentences  278 Roman numerals  279 Run-in quotations  280 Run-on sentences and sentence fragments  281 S  283 Salutations  283 Sampling  285 Sarcasm  286 Scaling  287 Scientific method  289 Screen shots  290 Sentences  291 Sexist writing  296 Signs and symbols  298 Similar words  299 Similes  317 Singular and plural  318 Spacing  321 Spelling  323 Statistical references  329 Style and tone  329 Suffixes  332 Summarizing  333 Superscript and subscript  334 Symbolism  335 Synonyms  336 T, U  339 Table of contents  339 Tables  340 Technical writing  341 Tenses  342 Titles  343 Trademarks  344 Transitions  345 Translations  349 V  351 Variable measurements  351 Variable relationships  351 Video best practices  352 W  355 Webinar and conference call etiquette  355 Webpage references and citation  356 Websites  356 Word processing  357 X, Y  361 X and y axes  361 Z  363 Zombie nouns  363 Index  365

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Book SynopsisEthics in Technical Communication provides students and practitioners with a clear introduction to ethics—from Aristotle through the present—and suggests how these accounts can help technical communicators think through the kinds of dilemmas that inevitably arise in their working lives. Markel critiques current scholarship linking ethics and technical communication, then presents a flexible model for ethical decision-making that draws on the values of rights, justice, utility, and care. He then applies the model in examining the technical communicator's obligations in five critical areas: truthtelling, liability, multicultural communication, intellectual property, and codes of conduct.Markel first defines key terms, justifies the examination of ethics and technical communication, surveys the scholarly literature on the subject, and describes some of the basic assumptions underlying a serious study of ethics. Next, he presents concise overviews of Kantian rights and utilitarianism, the transitional ethical theories of the early 20th century, and several strands of contemporary ethical theory, including virtue ethics, the ethic of care, and postmodern ethics. He then explores his own approach, which calls for a fluid, non-hierarchical analysis conducted in an open-, non-coercive environment, as described in contemporary accounts of discourse ethics. This approach is used in the second part of the book, which focuses on truthtelling, liability, multiculturalism, intellectual property, and codes of conduct. In each of these chapters, Markel defines the problem, summarizes and critiques the scholarly literature, presents an approach to thinking about the problem sensitively and realistically, and concludes with a case and a response to it.Table of ContentsEthical Decision-Making Introduction Thinking About Ethics Rights Utility The Transition from Foundational Theories Contemporary Approaches to Ethics Toward an Approach to Ethical Decision-Making Issues and Cases Truthtelling in Product Information Liability and the Duty to Instruct and Warn Ethical Relativism and Multicultural Communication Intellectual-Property Issues Codes of Conduct References Index

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Book SynopsisThe acclaimed bestseller about visual problem solving-now bigger and better There is no more powerful way to prove that we know something well than to draw a simple picture of it. And there is no more powerful way to see hidden solutions than to pick up a pen and draw out the pieces of our problem.So writes Dan Roam in The Back of the Napkin, the international bestseller that proves that a simple drawing on a humble napkin can be more powerful than the slickest PowerPoint presentation. Drawing on twenty years of experience and the latest discoveries in vision science, Roam teaches readers how to clarify any problem or sell any idea using a simple set of tools.He reveals that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can't draw. And he shows how thinking with pictures can help you discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve your ability to share your insights.Take Herb Kelleher and Rollin King, who figured out how to beat the traditional hub-and-spoke airlines with a bar napkin and a pen. Three dots to represent Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Three arrows to show direct flights. Problem solved, and the picture made it easy to sell Southwest Airlines to investors and customers.Now with more color, bigger pictures, and additional content, this new edition does an even better job of helping you literally see the world in a new way. Join the teachers, project managers, doctors, engineers, assembly-line workers, pilots, football coaches, marine drill instructors, financial analysts, students, parents, and lawyers who have discovered the power of solving problems with pictures.

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