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Penguin, £6.99
This book, published in June 2005, is part of Penguin’s new, accessible “Writers’ Guides” series. Click here to order a copy.
I wanted to call it “How To Write At Work”, because no man is a business, but most people who have jobs need to write. Here’s an extract from the introduction:
“This book is for anyone who has to write at work. It is for all of you who write most days, but have never been told how. It is for everyone who knows that writing more effectively could make a big difference to their prospects, their status and their usefulness. It is for everyone who wants to write more effectively.
In one way or another, most people these days are professional writers. If you're a marketing manager, a TV buyer, an executive assistant, an auditor, a banker, a mechanic, a policeman or a temp, you're a writer. You probably don't think of yourself as one, but you are. As Dr Carolyn Matalene, professor of English at the University of Southern California says, ‘The literacy demands made on job-holders in the Information Age are extraordinary; they must improvise their way through complex writing tasks never imagined in their English courses.’
‘Job-holders’ pretty much covers it. If you're self-employed, if you work in an office, if you sell things, if you have to advise others, or if you're in academia, you are a writer. Whoever you are, in the course of your job, you almost certainly write emails, notes, reports, letters, forms, proposals, brochures, promotional material, CVs, and on and on. Many of the things you write go to people who can, directly or indirectly, affect the course of your career – and of your life. The impression you make on them with your writing will have a huge effect on their opinion of you.
Although you are a writer, you are other things too, and those other things take time. You have work to do, deadlines to meet, clients, bosses, colleagues and spouses to appease, and bills to pay. You probably lack the time, inclination and shelf-space required to plough your way through the innumerable style guides, thesauruses (or should that be thesauri?), acknowledged authorities on English usage, concise dictionaries of phrase and fable, and so on.
What you need is a structured way of improving your writing in as short a time as possible – so that you get the benefits without the pain. You also need a single source of answers to the questions you face when planning, writing and editing your work.”
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