Do you struggle with writing in the workplace or in managing personal business affairs? Does poor writing hold you back with your career? Would you like to improve the way you communicate in emails, reports, proposals, and other documents but are short of time and do not know where to look for help? If so, this part-time online course is for you.

What You Will Learn

By the end of this course, you will understand parts of speech, grammar, style, and usage not as “rules” or conventions that you must follow. Instead, you will gain control over the language and be able to choose your words strategically to deliver your message clearly and persuasively. Writing should no longer be a matter of drudgery and pain. Instead, it should be a challenge that helps you achieve career or personal goals, and brings you satisfaction, perhaps even fun. You will also learn:

• How to write in simple, vivid language to engage readers instead of putting them off with abstractions and generalities
• How to translate jargon and technical terminology into plain language your audience can understand
• Processes to break complicated projects into manageable chunks, prevent “writer’s block,” work efficiently, stay focussed
• How to find a logical structure so ideas flow smoothly
• How to write in clear, concise, convincing, and engaging language that your associates, clients, and customers can understand and act upon

Business professionals who have taken this course say they now look upon writing in a more savvy way. You will get plenty of practice doing challenging exercises with model answers.

The course covers the key ingredients of good writing of all genres, as relevant to tweets, emails, listicles, social media, and other modern formats as they have been to the classics of fiction and non-fiction and today’s best-selling books.

Premium versus Basic Course?

The premium course content is identical to “Master the Key Business Writing Skills in Six Weeks.” But the premium course offers individualised feedback from the instructor on each of the written exercises. This feedback I estimate will require a minimum of about eight hours and as many as 12 hours per student for the course. The premium course also offers 60-90 minutes of coaching on any document you want to work on, up to the first 800 words. When you take the £240 difference between the premium and basic course, and divide by the number of hours I will spend with you, you will see that this amounts to less than half the fee I would charge for coaching outside of this course.

Why choose this course over others online or in a classroom? Why not simply buy a book?

• More content than possible in a classroom
• Cost-effective as you pay the course creator directly, with few overhead costs
• Plenty of exercises, with model answers
• Option of coaching at reasonable added price

Benefits of This Course

Is learning to write in plain language worth the effort? Absolutely. The struggle to understand badly written material consumes 22 percent of American work time, costing hundreds of billions of dollars each year, according to one study.

Jargon became so rife at SpaceX and Tesla, that Elon Musk ordered staff to stop using made-up acronyms because people in his companies could no longer understand each other. He threatened “drastic action” against those who did not fall in line with his efforts to dismantle this Tower of Babel.

This crisis in communications provides opportunities for those able to write in concise, plain language that anyone can understand.

“By writing well, you can stand out from the crowd. There is too much poor writing in the business world," says Dr. Andrew Sentance, Senior Economic Adviser Pricewaterhousecoopers LLP.

“The one easy way to become worth 50 percent more than you are now — at least — is to hone your communication skills — both written and verbal,” says Warren Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.