Effective business writing skills webinar

Learn the key elements of effective business writing and how to improve your written communication.

This training webinar took place on Thursday 3 March 2011.

Topics covered:

• Before you start to right
  • Is writing the right way?
  • The importance of planning: purpose, reader and persuasion
• During your writing
  • Structure: a look a simple structure – beginning, middle and end
  • Structure: more complex structures involving executive summaries and recommendations
  • Style: house style, readability, short sentences, 'active' words
  • Readability: The Fog Index
  • What can spoil your writing: poor spelling, poor grammar, jargon and numbers
• After you’ve finished writing
  • The importance of proof-reading and checking
  • The importance of what your finished work looks like

Listen again

If you missed the webinar, you can listen to a recording of Effective business writing webinar. The recording contains the entire presentation and the Q&A session at the end.

Questions from the webinar

• Effective business writing skills Q&A (PDF 155KB/3 pages)

Further resources

• Effective business writing skills webinar presentation slides (PDF 346KB/28 pages) 

• BBC Skillswise

  The website gives you help and guidance on English grammar. There are clear explanations, good examples and practical exercises that you can access to help you develop a more effective writing style.

• Economist writing style guide

  This guide which was referred to in the webinar is given to all journalists working at The Economist. It has some really practical hints on how to write well, using short words rather than longer words etc. Many top publications around the world have a house writing style that is similar to this.

If you have any specific questions relating to your ACA training, please contact the student support helpline on +44(0)1908 248 250 or email studentsupport@icaew.com. Alternatively, you can post your question on ICAEW online student community.