Business and education

Effective Writing

This is our most popular and successful workshop. It gets to the heart of clear writing and includes principles and the skills to put them into practice. More.

Effective Writing includes:

skills to create strong, clear, reader-friendly documents
team teaching from two instructors to keep content engaging and the pace lively
one-and-a-half days of instruction, followed by a half day with a 15-minute coaching session per participant
in-class time to go through the stages of writing a document
a peer review process with guidance on giving feedback
personal written feedback for each attendee on 4-6 pages of their writing
an 80-page reference manual and two desk tools

We customize each workshop to the organization and its types of writing, but typically we cover these skills:

focusing on your audience and purpose
writing concisely
using clear, reader-friendly language
adapting to different audiences
organizing documents efficiently
writing effective emails
writing more quickly, with better results and less stress
creating the right tone
writing persuasively
using verbs effectively, including active voice
formatting for readability
using tables, graphs, and visuals
giving and receiving constructive feedback

We can also offer Effective Writing in a one-day format. The one-day version does not include in-class writing or peer review, and we shorten or cut some modules. Individual feedback for each participant is optional.

Workshops for:

Government and regulators

Law

From participants:

The workshop met my objective of writing clearly to a range of audiences.

I really enjoyed the real-life examples and the length of the workshop.

Instructors were very approachable, helpful, and knowledgeable.

I think my writing will show noticeable improvement as a result of attending this workshop.

This workshop was extremely engaging and valuable. I also appreciate the quality of the materials.

The course addressed the need to write clearly and simply in a way that’s effective for the audience.

Everyone in the organization would benefit from this course.

Very good tips. Good examples to illustrate what clarity looks like.

This will lead to producing better documents when under pressure.

Effective Writing Refresher

This half-day workshop follows up with writers who have been through Effective Writing. It reinforces, deepens, and applies concepts to real documents. More.

This is a working session in which attendees redraft key internal documents to refresh and apply skills learned in our core workshop. We cover the common writing and editing problems writers run across in everyday work. The session will:

reinforce and apply skills you learned in the core workshop
fill in gaps from the first workshop
resolve questions that came up after the core workshop

From participants:

Content was meaningful and the classroom presentation was exceptional.

Time well spent. This session will make a difference.

Enjoyed trying to re-write real examples and applying the tools.

The instructors did a good job of integrating their best practices into our actual practices.

A very helpful, practical session. Liked use of real examples to illustrate unclear writing.

Very well done. The tips were presented clearly and in a way that resonated.

Specialized workshops

We also deliver workshops on report writing, technical writing, briefing notes, tone, and other specialized content. Workshop length varies depending on your needs.

Workshops for:

Government and regulators

Law