Business Writing for Technical People

Table of contents

1. Front Cover
2. Half-Title Page
3. BCS, THE CHARTERED INSTITUTE FOR IT
4. Title Page
5. Copyright Page
6. Contents
7. About the author
8. Preface
9. 1. WHAT IS BUSINESS WRITING?
   1. Why bad writing is bad news
10. 2. LEARNING TO WRITE WITHOUT FEAR
    1. Take your time
    2. Borrow bright ideas
    3. Key takeaways
11. 3. THINK BEFORE YOU INK
    1. Selling the sizzle: an IT example
    2. Lights, email, action!
    3. Key takeaways
12. 4. CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS
    1. Know your audience
    2. Pick your platform
    3. Hope for the best and plan for the worst
    4. Take a picture
    5. Key takeaways
13. 5. FIGHT THE FLAB
    1. Unnecessary expertise
    2. The passive voice and weak verbs
    3. Too many words
    4. Long sentences and endless paragraphs
    5. Showing off
    6. Clichés
    7. Woolly writing
    8. Take advice from George Orwell
    9. Key takeaways
14. 6. JUNK THE JARGON
    1. What is jargon?
    2. Bad buzz
    3. Why you should banish buzzwords and junk the jargon
    4. Key takeaways
15. 7. MAKE YOUR CASE
    1. How to win friends and influence people
    2. Writing presentations
    3. Three is the magic number
    4. It’s a shame about ROI
    5. How to present your business case for a large project
    6. ROI: plan for the best but try to predict the worst
    7. Key takeaways
16. 8. WRITING FOR ROBOTS: BUSINESS WRITING FOR THE INTERNET
    1. Writing for Google
    2. SEO: how to do it the right way
    3. TL;DR
    4. What to do about long documents
    5. Writing for email newsletters
    6. Someone invented a new way to get readers; you’ll never guess what happens next!
    7. Key takeaways
17. 9. BE YOUR OWN AUDIENCE
    1. Let go of your ego
    2. Simplicity
    3. Brevity
    4. Accuracy
    5. Effectiveness
    6. Key takeaways
18. 10. COMMUNICATING GOODWILL AND DELIVERING BAD NEWS
    1. Goodwill hunting
    2. Now for the bad news
    3. Key takeaways
19. 11. WHAT TO DO WHEN THE WORDS WON’T COME
    1. Have a deadline
    2. Break it into bits
    3. Write an outline
    4. Don’t start at the start
    5. Don’t stop
    6. Forget about perfect
    7. Have a KitKat
    8. Go and do something else
    9. Key takeaways
20. 12. THE BUSINESS WRITING HOUSE OF HORRORS
    1. Aviva accidentally fires its entire workforce
    2. Elop needs some helop
    3. Proof that spell checking matters
    4. Why Damore should have written less
    5. Why Jack got attacked
    6. When hashtags go bad
    7. The worst motivational memo ever
    8. Key takeaways
21. AFTERWORD
22. References
23. Index
24. Back Cover