Pam Hurley's custom corporate writing courses are designed to meet your organization's writing needs and to prepare your employees to write clearly, precisely, and professionally.

Writing Basics

• Analyzing audience needs
• Understanding purpose
• Understanding the necessity of persuasion
• Maintaining a positive image
• Being concise and precise
• Using active/passive voice, concrete/abstract language, emphasis

Critical Thinking

• Understanding the role of thinking in decision-making
• Using logic to understand the impact of actions and decisions
• Avoiding assumptions

Editing and Proofreading, or "Hey, I ran the spellchecker!"

• Defining editing and proofing
• Foolproof techniques
• Becoming your best editor
• Helping others edit

Reviewing the Documents of Others

• Reviewing for content rather than style
• Understanding the importance of reader expectations
• Helping writers meet reader expectations

Understanding Organization

• Understanding the importance of good organization
• Creating outlines and more
• Exploring the vast universe of organization; or organizing sentences, paragraphs, and documents
• Summarizing

Creating Accessibility in Documents

• Defining accessibility
• Understanding the importance of accessibility
• Creating accessibility
• Designing documents to enhance accessibility

Creating and Using Graphs, Charts and Tables

• Defining graphs, charts and tables
• Designing useful graphs, charts and tables
• Labeling and call-outs
• Referring to
• Placing them

Writing to Provide Negative Information

• Maintaining goodwill when presenting negative information
• Using neutral and/or positive phrasing
• Understanding emphasis
• Using the "sandwich" technique
• Creating a positive tone

Preparing Conference Presentations

• Basic preparation techniques
• Preparing notes
• Understanding your audience
• Writing proposal abstracts
• Using graphics

Writing Emails

• Understanding the complexity of writing emails
• Emails as permanent and legal documents
• Creating the appropriate tone
• Creating readable emails

When is a Letter More than a Letter?

• Planning techniques
• Letters as documentation
• Letters as action documents
• Considering jargon
• Making sure you're heard

Writing Instructions and Procedures

• Understanding the differences between instructions and procedures
• Writing usable instructions and procedures

Writing Working Practice Documents and Standard Operating Procedures

• Defining
• Understanding the differences
• Using language to create useful WPDs and SOPs

Writing Queries

• Function and form
• Understanding audience perspective
• Writing effective queries using the communication triangle
• Writing queries that meet our goals

Writing Phone Contact Reports

• Understanding function
• Including what's important
• Creating accessibility
• Making phone contacts useful and functional

Writing Site Visit and Other Reports

• Pre-planning techniques
• Using appropriate language
• Being concise, precise, and effective
• Considering audience and purpose

Writing Proposals

• Understanding proposals as persuasive
• Outlining the components
• Using language and space to create effective proposals