Writing at Work: Professional Writing Skills for People on the Job

by Edward L. Smith and Stephen Bernhardt

Book Overview

Writing at Work is for people who do or will write while on the job whether the writing be an interoffice memo, e-mail, a status report, a lab report, marketing materials, or a letter to a customer. The philosophy behind Writing at Work is that such writing needn't be stale and unoriginal but can instead be a sophisticated piece of work that positively reflects the competence of its composer to all who read it. Rather than dwell on picky,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0844259837
• ISBN13: 9780844259833
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Writing at Work works!

In the course of twenty-five chapters, Smith and Bernhardt write in a lively manner about the elementary rules (and "non-rules") of grammar, punctuation, sentence structure up through discussions on jargon, technical language, and then on to the "tones" of writing, parallel structure, and playful and elegant prose. I really enjoyed reading this book because I was able to review those elementary rules (without too much pain) as well as get some validation for stylistic choices I've made in my own writing. So much of how a person writes -- whether it's "good" writing or not -- is rather semi-conscious. "Writing at Work" makes the reader conscious about what they're doing in their writing as well as makes a strong case for putting elegant, persuasive writing back into technical and business communications.And I only had to re-write the last paragraph a few times....