Tune up your business writing!
Do you want to get better results from your writing?
In this course get tips, strategies, practice, tools, and feedback to quickly improve your communication and confidence.
Why “Tune-Up”? Because writing is a vehicle. Vehicles need ongoing maintenance, effective repairs, and easy-to-use tools to maintain performance. Learn from an expert how you can adjust your writing to continue to get great results.
This course is for you if you want to fine-tune your performance as a business communicator. If you write anything from email, reports, and letters to proposals, policies, and procedures. Business Writing Tune-Up will help you achieve your goals. (The course does not focus on creative writing such as scripts and advertising pieces.)
In the course, you apply the writing tips, tools, and strategies to your own writing and to common examples. You can take as much time as you need in a lesson. Just complete the course within 90 days of your registration.
- Use a strategy to plan and write any document. Know where to start every time.
- Get results by following best practices for email etiquette and efficiency.
- Eliminate extra words that slow readers down.
- Break up long, stringy sentences for quick understanding.
- Use formatting to highlight your key content.
- Recognize when and how to change from passive to active voice verbs.
- Use positive language to build relationships and defuse potential conflict.
- Choose the right language for any audience, including global readers.
- Recognize and eliminate common errors and bad writing habits.
You will work through 22 interactive lessons to tune up your writing. When you finish, you will complete three assignments that require formatting, revising, and writing from scratch, respectively. You will be able to compare your versions to sample solutions.
When you are ready, you will plan, write, and edit a piece of your own writing, applying what you have learned. Lynn will give you detailed, specific written feedback to help you recognize your strengths, and she will suggest things to do to make your writing even better.
Your learning materials in Business Writing Tune-Up include:
- 32-page course notebook
- Writer-to-Reader Planning Checklist
- 12-Point Editing Checklist
- 30-item online test on grammar, punctuation, and usage
- 5 resource articles
- PDF of the 292 slides featured in the presentations
Once you register, you will have 90 days to complete the course.
Good writing leads to great things. Enroll in Business Writing Tune-Up, and improve your writing immediately!
What Students Are Saying
Course Curriculum
- Your Planning and Editing Checklist
- Editing Checklist Point 1: State Your Purpose
- Editing Checklist Points 2 & 3: Ask for Action, Make It Easy
- Editing Checklist Points 4 & 5: Answer Reader Questions
- Editing Checklist Point 6: Format for Easy Retrieval
- Editing Checklist Point 7: Use Clear Language
- Editing Checklist Point 8: Communicate in Clear Sentences
- Editing Checklist Point 9: Eliminate Extra Words
- Editing Checklist Point 9 Exercise: Cut Through Thick Writing
- Editing Checklist Point 10: Use Active Verbs Primarily
- Editing Checklist Point 10: Practice Making Passive Verbs Active
- Editing Checklist Point 11: Use Positive Language
- Editing Checklist Point 12: Use Correct Grammar, Punctuation, and Spelling
- Test on Errors in Grammar, Punctuation, and Usage
What's included?
Lynn Gaertner-Johnston
Writing Expert, Founder of Syntax Training
About the instructor
Lynn Gaertner-Johnston is a gifted teacher.
She has helped thousands of professionals improve their business communications. In her corporate teaching career of more than 25 years, Lynn has worked with executives, engineers, administrative professionals, scientists, sales staff, managers, public employees, and others, helping them get their messages across clearly, concisely, and correctly.
Her 100+ clients include REI, MasterCard, Microsoft, Ledcor, Boeing, Tennessee Valley Authority, PACCAR, Precor, Puget Sound Energy, Port of Seattle, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She also taught managerial communications in the MBA programs at the University of Washington and UW Bothell.
She knows her subject well.
Lynn is the author of the award-winning book Business Writing With Heart: How to Build Great Work Relationships One Message at a Time. Her blog, Business Writing, attracts more than 6 million annual visitors from six continents. She has been quoted on business writing etiquette in The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, Atlantic, and other media.
She earned her M.A. in communication from the University of Notre Dame and her B.A. in English from Bradley University. She studied proofreading and editing at New York University.
Lynn teaches with a love of her subject and a pleasure in sharing its practical value. She is dedicated to helping people communicate more effectively.
What Students Are Saying
“My work in policy development requires extensive writing and editing. Because of the courses I've taken from Syntax Training, I am more confident in my ability to write clearly and concisely, apply correct grammar and punctuation, and edit documents."
—Linda Harris-Proctor, Business Analyst, Bonneville Power Administration
“Your teaching is absolutely superb.”
—Mary Russell, Systems Analyst–Integration, ZirMed