Organizing and composing Messages

Organizing and composing Messages

What is the central idea of a message?
The major purpose of most business messages is to inform or persuade.

Buy a gift that fits the recipient; design a message that fits the recipient.
Getting a strong mental picture of your receiver helps you tailor the message to the needs of a specific audience.
Empathy helps you anticipate the receiver’s reaction to your message.
The corporate concierge at PepsiCo makes employees lives a little easier by arranging for theatre tickets, picking up a birthday cake, and hiring someone to wait in an employee’s home for a repair or delivery person and other similar requests.
"You attitude" increases clarity and builds relationships.
How can you avoid gender-biased language?
Avoid language that reflects bias for race and ethnic group, age, religion, and disability.
The writer’s attitude toward the message and the receiver is communicated through the tone of the message.
Using euphemisms to ridicule or cause the receiver to misconstrue the meaning is unethical.
Insincere compliments are detrimental to good communication.
What would "I’m surprised your idea was approved" connote?
"I am surprised" risks conveying something like "I am accustomed to normal behavior. Yours is abnormal and therefore bad or totally unjustified".
Could "Sorry to upset you" add to (instead of soothe) irritation?
Avoid expression of surprise, doubt, and judgment when they would be interpreted as insults.
To promote goodwill, learn how to "whisper" rather than "shout" bad news.
Should you use second person to present a negative idea?
Avoid second person for presenting negative ideas. Use second person to present pleasant ideas.
Normally use passive voice to subordinate negative ideas.
What is passive voice preferred for conveying a negative idea?
When passive voice is used, the sentences retain the essential ideas, but the ideas seem less irritating for negative ideas, use passive voice.
What benefit do you gain from using subjunctive mood to convey a negative idea? What is a possible drawback?
What are 5 techniques for de-emphasizing negative ideas?

State ideas using positive language. Be cheerful and optimistic.
Avoid using 2^nd person when stating negative ideas.
Use passive voice to convey negative ideas. Presenting an unpleasant thought emphatically makes human relations difficult.
Use the subjunctive mood. Subjunctive sentences employ such conditional expressions as I wish, as if, could, would, might, and wish. Subjunctive sentences speak of a wish, necessity, doubt, or conditions contrary to fact.
Include a pleasant statement in the same sentence.

Outlining involves identifying the major and minor ideas and arranging them in the right sequence.
What does the writer gain from taking time to outline before writing?
Encourages brevity and accuracy.
Permits concentration on one phase at a time.
Save time in writing or dictating.
How does outlining benefit the receiver?
The message is more concise.
Relationships among ideas are easier to distinguish and remember.
Reaction to the message and its writer is more likely to be positive
An outline serves a writer as a blueprint serves a builder and itinerary serves a traveler.
What 3 questions must you answer before preparing an outline?
What will be the central idea of the message?
What will be the most likely receiver reaction to the message?
In view of the predicted receiver reaction, should the central idea be listed first in the outline; or should it be listed as one of the last items?
Can you identify each of the 4 receivers reactions by reading the nonverbal expressions of the 4 managers in Figure 7-2?
The deductive sequence begins with the main idea.
The inductive sequence began with the explanation and details.
When do you use the deductive and inductive sequences?
Minor ideas should be arranged in a systematic sequence.
Could a dependent clause serve as a complete sentence?
Clause is divided into 2 categories: dependent and independent.
A dependent clause does not convey a complete thought.
An independent clause conveys a complete thought.
The four sentence types are used to add variety and to place emphasis where needed. Can you classify sentences by type?
Review these punctuation rules carefully. Writing run on sentences and comma splices could reflect quite negatively on your ability.
Try to write in active voice most of the time. Using active voice suggest to the receiver that you are action oriented and decisive.
"Joan plays tennis" is active voice because Joan is performing the action.
"The tennis game is being played by Joan" is passive voice because the action is being done to Joan.
When is the use of passive voice recommended?
In concealing the doer.
In placing more emphasis on what was done and what it was done to than on whom did it.
In subordinating an unpleasant thought.
Should you place a significant idea in a simple sentence or compound sentence?
Foe emphasis, place an idea in a simple sentence.
Should significant ideas be placed in dependent clauses?
For emphasis, place an idea in an independent clause; for de-emphasis; place an idea in a dependent clause.
To emphasize a word, let it appear more than once in a sentence.
For emphasis or de-emphasis, use words that label ideas as significant or insignificant.
Where are the emphatic positions in sentences, paragraphs, compositions and speeches?
In paragraphs, the first and last words are in particularly emphatic positions.
An idea that deserves emphasis can be placed in either position, but an idea that does not deserve emphasis can be placed in the middle of a long paragraph.
Unless the purpose is to place emphasis on negatives, such words as denied, rejected, and disappointed should not appear as the last words in a paragraph.
What is the effect of placing a number before each unit in a series?
Words preceded by numbers get special attention.
When other ideas are in paragraph form, tabulated ideas are emphatic.
Describe 4 ways to punctuate an appositive and the emphasis provided by each mark.
A topic sentence may be placed at the beginning or end of a paragraph.
If a paragraph is inductive, might the receiver know the content of the topic sentence before reading it?
What techniques are useful for achieving coherence?
Are transition sentences needed between subtopics?
Because a transition sentence comes at the end of one segment and before the next, it emphasizes the central idea of the preceding segment and confirms the relationship of the two segments.
Transition sentences are very helpful if properly used, but they can be overused.
For most part, transition sentences before major headings are sufficient. The word coherence is used sometimes to mean clarity and understandability; it is used to mean cohesion.
If writing or speaking is coherent, the sentences stick together, and each sentence is in some way linked to the preceding sentences.
Avoid abrupt changes in thought, and link each sentence to a preceding sentence.
What is unity?
Receiver expects the first paragraph to introduce a topic, additional paragraph to discuss it, and a final paragraph to tie them together.
The in between paragraphs should be arranged in a systematic sequence and the end must be linked easily to some word or idea presented in the beginning.
Generally, limit paragraphs to 8-10 lines.
What is the advantage of writing short paragraphs in letters?
A short first paragraph makes a letter or memo look more inviting to read than a long first paragraph.
A short last paragraph enables a writer to emphasize parting thoughts.
First and last paragraph are normally short (1-4 lines).
Other paragraphs are no longer than 6 lines.
Should consistency be sacrificed to achieve variety?
Although variety is a desirable quality, it should not be achieved at the expense of consistency.
Using I in one part of a letter and then without explanation switching to we is inadvisable.
Using past tense in one sentence and the present tense in another sentence create variety at the expense of consistency.
Unnecessary changes from active voice to passive voice and from 3^rd to 2^nd person are also discouraged.