GRAMMAR & STYLE
REFRESHER

Designed to serve as either an entry point to our suite of writing courses or as a one-time review of language skills, this two-day course provides tips for effective style and grammar.

Through exercises and case studies, participants review the rules of grammar and apply a modern business prose style to their own documents. A companion course to this one, The ESL Writer's Workshop, is available for those who use English as a second language.

Who Should Attend

Those who have already taken any WordTask writing course or who want a convenient starting point before moving into our document-specific courses.

Business writers of reports, letters, and memos who demand current and correct business English.

Administrative or executive assistants who routinely revise correspondence under the signature of superiors.

Managers, supervisors, and editors who review and evaluate their colleagues' rough drafts.

Course Topics

In this two-day workshop, you will learn these tips for effective grammar and style:

• the parts of speech and the mechanics of sentence structure
• avoiding dangling participles and other cliff-hangers
• punctuation: colon, semi-colon, comma
• possessives
• use of pronouns
• avoiding sentence fragments and comma splices
• subject/verb agreement
• models for sound paragraph structure
• passive vs active voice
• straight-ahead prose, free of verbal roadblocks
• clear, meaningful sentence structure
• current vs obsolete phrases