Writing on the Job: Quick, Practical Solutions to All Your Business Writing Problems

WRITING ON THE JOB is easiest and most effective when aping popular magazine style: conversational, informatively short, straightforward, with a clearly identified audience whose goodwill needs to be kept; message treating one idea at a time from a strong beginning all the way to an impact closing, with text having a freshly printed look, taking up one side of a page and using a good-sized typeface, plenty of white space and visual cues such as bullets, subheads and underlining to highlight key points; and purpose, to get specific responses good for business. The organization needs to be extraordinary, by being in sync with other company documents and by putting all the necessary information in a persuasively tight order, but the tone needs to reach ordinary people. Cosmo F. Ferrara covers just about all the business writing around: audit reports; instructions; job descriptions; claim/adjustment, collection, complaint, recommendation/reference, and sales letters; memos; proposals; requests; and resumes. This clearly organized and well written book works on its own, but shares common concerns with THE AMA STYLE GUIDE FOR BUSINESS WRITING, Philip C. Kolin's SUCCESSFUL WRITING AT WORK, and Roy W. Poe's THE MCGRAW-HILL HANDBOOK OF BUSINESS LETTERS.