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Essential Skills for Everyday Writers

Cost: $99.99
Course Type: Online/Facilitated
Length: 40 hours

Course Description
Communication affects every aspect of everyone's job and daily routine. Whether you're a writer or a roofer, the outcome of every interaction you have with another person is driven by communication, primarily through language.

Today, writing is becoming the primary mode of communication, especially in the workplace. From e-mail to reports, writing is everywhere. Well-written communications can make the difference between a successful proposal and one that is thrown in the trash bin by prospective clients.

Essential Skills for Everyday Writers will cover issues of grammar, style, and proofreading that can enhance your written communication skills. You'll learn when to use semi-colons, how wordiness can obscure your message, and why it's critical to make sure every comma is in place. We've organized the lessons to rotate between theoretical issues of style and technical grammar rules, which you may find tedious to learn.

Strunk and White's The Elements of Style will be used as a supplemental textbook and will drive many of the exercises and discussion questions you'll be asked to complete throughout the course. The course itself contains much more detail and explanation than Elements, and you can print out each lesson for your reference after completing that lesson's quiz.

Essential Skills for Everyday Writers is for everyone who communicates in writing. From routine e-mails to million-dollar proposals, from letters to the editor to brochures for your business, Essential Skills for Everyday Writers can help you make your best impression with words.

Topics discussed include:

Writing effective emails
How choosing the right word can improve clarity
Vocabulary building exercises
Avoiding wordiness
Knowing your audience: Tone and style
Back to basics: Parts of speech and building complete sentences
Consistency and agreement: Pronouns and verb tense
Capitalization
Commas
Semi-colons
Avoiding clichés and mixed metaphors
Apostrophes
Quotation marks
Other punctuation
Numbers in writing
The art of persuasion
Gender neutrality: The he/she issue
Frequently misused words
Writing in the electronic age
The perils of spell check
Editing your writing

Format

Essential Skills for Everyday Writers is designed to take approximately 40 hours. You may stop and start, picking up where you left off. You have 90 days from your date of registration to complete the course.

Essential Skills for Everyday Writers consists of fourteen lessons of varying lengths, as well as assigned reading from Strunk and White's Elements of Style, 4th edition, carefully designed discussion questions, and meaningful exercise to develop your writing and revision skills.

As an Editorial Courses student, you'll access your course through our Virtual Classroom, a comprehensive portal to your lessons as well as additional content like editorial job listings, a dedicated chat room, and a library of the best editorial resources on the Internet.

Course lessons are presented on demand via the eLearning interface within our online learning system, accessible from any Internet connected computer that meets our basic technical requirements.

You'll interact with your instructor and classmates via our online discussion board, a casual yet profound forum designed to significantly expand your understanding of the course material.

Each lesson ends with a quiz to assess what you have learned. All students who complete all fourteen lessons will receive a certificate of completion suitable for framing.

Course Materials
Required: The Elements of Style, 4th edition.
Recommended: Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition

Cost: $99.99
Course Type: Online/Facilitated
Length: 40 hours