Exam 4: Preparing Written Messages

Which of the following carries the risk of creating a hostile working environment?

Which of the following is a difference between connotative words and denotative words?

Which of the following statements is true of paragraph lengths?

To emphasize an idea in a simple sentence:

In which of the following ways can effective communicators protect goodwill?

To produce a finished product that is free of errors, one must use the spell checker to locate simple keying errors and repeated words in the document.

Malcolm is a professional writer. He has published many bestsellers. One of his friends expressed interest in knowing more about his writing process, so Malcolm showed his friend a few of his first drafts. The friend observed that the drafts were nothing like the final book, and the writing seemed amateurish compared with Malcolm's published work. In this scenario, which of the following is a likely reason for the difference in Malcolm's first drafts and the final books?

"The training session was worthwhile; it was worthwhile because employees learned to do the task correctly" is an example of the emphasis technique of _____.

For an inductively organized message, which of the following can be used to soften the approach and the reader's reception?

Revise the following paragraph from an email message to employees. Focus on the voice, appropriate sentence length, and word selection to make the passage effective. ​ With the approach of the end of this fiscal year, it has been recommended by our accountant that the monies allocated in the budget to capital equipment be used as soon as it is expedient. Therefore, as has been our practice in the past, we are requesting that each of you compile a comprehensive detailed list outlining your requests for new equipment that you may have put on the back burner, so to speak. It would be appreciated if you could provide this information to me by the first of next month so that I can begin to process all orders prior to the expiration of the fiscal year. It is anticipated that a multitude of requests will be simultaneously submitted by department heads; it is highly probable that requests for equipment will be processed in the order received and delayed requests may not be funded. I sincerely appreciate your cooperation in our efforts to upgrade some of our capital equipment.

Overuse of visual enhancements will cause a document to appear cluttered and will defeat the purpose of creating an appealing, easy-to-read document.

While proofreading a document onscreen, what questions should you ask to locate errors in content, organization, and style?

When communicating about people with disabilities, one must:

Using passive voice reduces the number of words required to express an idea and thus saves the reader a little time.

In business writing, one should use third person for presenting pleasant ideas and second person for presenting unpleasant ideas.

In the context of written messages, list the procedures you should follow to produce a finished product that is free of errors.

Revise the following paragraph to add appropriate visual enhancements, such as enumerations, bullet lists, headings, tables or graphs, and so forth. TO: John Henry, Personnel Director FROM: Lena Rose, Vice President DATE: xxx SUBJECT: EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATION You will recall the recent telephone survey we conducted on over 200 employees from the past five years to determine why so many of our workers leave our firm to take jobs elsewhere. The analysis of the data gathered on employee terminations has been completed. Our investigation resulted in two findings that are particularly noteworthy. Most workers who leave our firm to work elsewhere do not leave because they believe they are poorly paid. Their primary complaint is that they did not have satisfactory working relationships with their supervisors while working for us. The need for better communication throughout our work force is clear. Accordingly, the following steps will be taken to meet this important need. All supervisors will interview their subordinates once each quarter rather than once each year, as in the past. Also, seminars in management communication skills will be provided for all supervisors and department heads to help them develop more effective communication techniques. We believe these efforts will open channels of communication among our employees and eliminate most of the frustration revealed by former workers in our recent survey. We have also designated an employee relations officer to personally deal with worker complaints of a particularly serious nature. Also, those who come up with ways to improve communication will be rewarded in the form of incentives. Finally, a company newsletter will be published monthly to provide an opportunity for employees to express their views publicly and to improve the flow of information throughout the firm. Appointments to the newsletter staff will be announced shortly. These changes will go into effect on July 1 and will be officially announced to all employees next week. We believe these initiatives will be effective in our efforts to improve communication among employees, upgrade worker morale, and reduce the firm's costly and disruptive employee turnover problems. We will need your support as well as that of other first-level officers if the desired results are to be obtained in this undertaking. Feel free to make suggestions or recommendations that you believe may be helpful. We are hopeful that these changes will be well received by employees at all levels.

In a document, numerals are typically preferred over bullets unless the sequence of the items in a series is critical.

List and briefly explain five visual enhancements a writer can use to draw attention to important information.

The word "salesman" has a gender bias.