Course Content
The Basics
- The writing process
- Defining the message
- Organizing one's thoughts
- Outlining using a creative approach
- Creating the first draft
- Rewriting
- The 24-hour test
- Creating the final draft
- Common errors
- Sentence structure
- The four parts of every sentence
- Active versus passive styles
- Subject/verb agreement
- Eliminating semantic noise
- Appropriate sentence length
- Common errors
- Paragraph structure
- The topic sentence
- Supporting sentences
- Eliminating or moving unnecessary sentences
- Internal consistency
- Sentence-to-sentence continuity
- Common errors
- Merging text and graphics
- The ease of importing graphics
- Graphics types and selection
- Establishing the graphic's message
- Digital image considerations
- Captioning graphics
- Graphics location
- Reviewing and rewriting revisited
- Commonly misspelled words
- Abbreviation practices
- Finding and fixing spelling and grammar errors
- Font selection
- Attention to detail
- The consequences of misspelling and grammar errors
- Motivation
- E-mail etiquette
- Spelling, grammar, capitalization, and punctuation
- Inappropriate e-mail topics
- Maintaining a professional tone
- Distribution
- Unique e-mail hazards
- Common e-mail errors
- Group exercises
Proposals, Progress Reports, SWOT Analyses, and Course Wrap-Up
- Proposals
- Proposal purposes
- Defining RFP/RFQ requirements
- Finding hidden requirements
- Requirements responsiveness
- Compliance cross-indices
- Avoiding requirements regurgitation
- Proposal scoring schemes
- Proposal organization
- Proposal themes
- Identifying and projecting strengths without arrogance
- Proposal scheduling
- Error-free proposals
- The importance of timely submittal
- Proposal reviews
- Proposal pricing considerations
- Executive summaries
- Common proposal mistakes
- Progress reports
- Progress report purposes
- Progress report organization
- The importance of factual reporting
- Time-phased, milestone-based plans
- The spend plan
- Using a single graphic to communicate status
- Financial and schedule variance identification
- Variance recovery approaches
- Identifying cost and schedule risk
- Risk management approaches
- Estimating cost and schedule at completion
- Asking for help
- Maintaining a positive tone
- Executive summaries
- Appropriate progress report length
- Common progress report mistakes
- Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) reports
- Objectively identifying strengths without arrogance
- Internal strength perceptions
- Client strength perceptions
- Identifying weaknesses
- Internal weakness perceptions
- Client weakness perceptions
- Describing weaknesses without offending
- Finding, evaluating, and prioritizing opportunities
- Seeking and hearing external perceptions
- Realistic threat identification
- What-if analysis
- Threat management approaches
- Organizing the SWOT report
- Executive summaries
- Common SWOT analysis errors
- Group exercises
- Concluding activities
- Brevity's advantages
- Professionalism
- Recap, Q/A, and evaluations
