Professional Writing is designed to provide adult learners with the basic skills they need to write effective documents in the workplace. In this course, you will learn how to analyze your audience so that you can write prose that is both clear and persuasive. You will practice writing common business documents, such as emails, memos, proposals, and presentations. You will also learn how to effectively edit these documents for maximum impact.

Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:

Define professional writing, and identify the major genres of professional writing.

Conduct basic audience research to determine for whom he or she is writing and why.

Determine the main point of your document, and summarize your main point in one sentence.

Use concrete characters rather than abstract nouns.

Identify and explain how to avoid the most common ethical problems in professional writing.

Reinforce the main point in the most strategic locations throughout the document.

Adapt and revise messaging for different contexts and audiences.

Identify common problems that prevent writing from being easily understood by a variety of audiences.

Use multiple editorial strategies for revising and improving documents.