Life is about solving problems. Business is about profiting from the solutions to those problems.
Business writing differs little from all other forms of transactional writing. The goal is to convey a message tailored for an intended audience of real people. Clarity, brevity, and accuracy are the business writer's primary values. While there are some genres native to business environments, the business proposal, for example, whether you are writing in a corporate setting or a not-for-profit organization or an educational or administrative office, writing is writing. And writing is critical to success in business.
The difference between "creative" writing and transactional writing is that while the transactional writer's goal is to craft a message that helps a real person do a specific job, the creative writer's goal is to evoke an alternative reality that enables many different interpretations for a "general" audience, present and future. If a piece of business writing can be interpreted in multiple ways, only the lawyers will profit. If a piece of business writing outlives its exigency, its reason for having been written, then it becomes a historical artifact, not a piece of literature. That is not to say that business writers lack creativity. Creativity and imagination are critical. It's just that with business writing, the people and the problems are present and real.
The problem with learning business writing in a classroom is that you don't have a real audience or real communications problems to solve. You have only the professor and her or his sense of what "right" looks like. Ideally of course this sense is highly trained and practiced, but even at its best a grade is just a grade. Success, the assent of real people who have real work to do, requires a real audience. We will try to overcome this inherent limitation by having you use your networks of friends and followers on social media as a source of information about a potential "real" audience, people who might want to buy or invest in the product you are hoping to bring to market, the subject of the business proposal that you will write as the big project for this class.
This class models user-centered design methodology. You come up with a product or service that you think solves a problem and then you use questionnaires (and perhaps interviews) to deepen your understanding of the problem and test the likely success of your solution. Based on what you learn in this process, you write a business proposal that sells your nascent product or service to potential buyers and investors.
Examples of successful proposals from previous classes:
To do well in this class you need to have an idea for a product or service that you want to research and develop. If you don't have that, then you need think of an existing product that is used by enough of the people in your network that you could get some data on how to improve it. If what you really want is practice writing and editing, I have a lot of advice to offer, but the main focus of this class is not writing and editing per se.
In this class, you will learn how to
I expect you to be in class on time every day. I expect that if you are not in class you have an adult's reason for absenting yourself. I am happy to answer questions via email, but I won't repeat answers first given in class. So if your attendance record is lousy, your grade might be lousy. Much of what you need to do well in this class is on this website, but relying on it exclusively might be a weak strategy, especially as changes are inevitable.
If you think this class is for you, please fill out the survey. There are no right or wrong answers. The survey has NO effect on your grade. It is just a way for me to get a sense of my audience, you in particular and this class in general. At the end of the survey, you are asked to upload a piece of your writing, anything you've written is fine. I won't grade it or comment on it. I just want to look at the writing.
This website is the textbook. It was designed, coded, and written by Professor Pullman.
See the calendar for dates.
Specific criteria will be discussed in class for each assignment prior to the due date.
The letter scale and quality points used for major assignments are below.
A+ 4.3 C+ 2.3
A 4.0 C 2.0
A- 3.7 C- 1.7
B+ 3.3 D 1.0
B 3.0 F 0
B- 2.7
According to the GSU student handbook
Your professor expects you to:
- Be informed about instructors' policies, which are presented in the course syllabus, as well as the policies of the Georgia State University on-campus Student Handbook.
- Attend all classes, except when emergencies arise. If health and weather allow, your instructor will be present and on time for every scheduled class meeting. You should be, too.
- Be an active participant in class, taking notes and asking appropriate questions. Your involvement will benefit you and your classmates.
- Treat the instructor and fellow students with courtesy. Refrain from any behaviors that may distract others. You expect to be treated with tolerance and respect and to enjoy a learning environment free of unnecessary distractions. Your classmates deserve the same.
- Cultivate effective study strategies. Being an effective student is not instinctive. Use your study time wisely, seek help from the instructor when you need it, and avail yourself of resources provided by the university.
- Study course material routinely after each meeting. Stick to a regular study schedule and avoid cramming. Submit finished assignments on time and do not postpone working on them.
- Accept the challenge of collegiate studying, thinking, and learning. Anticipate that the level and quantity of work in some courses will exceed your prior experiences. If you have significant responsibilities besides your studies, such as work and family, set realistic academic goals and schedules for yourself. Select an academic load whose work demands do not exceed your available time and energy.
- Let no temptation cause you to surrender your integrity.
This section is intended as a brief on motivation theory in general rather than as an effort to motivate you to do well in this class. Ultimately motivation comes from within, so if you want to do well, you will need to self-motivate. From a rhetorical perspective, if you need to motivate long-term behavioral change, in yourself or someone else, the information below will prove useful.
If you are going to succeed at learning something that takes time and effort to learn (the guitar, long distance running, Go or Chess, rhetoric or philosophy or a second or third language), where time is measured either in months of intense effort or years of sustained, high-level effort, you need 7 things: Desire, conviction, persistence, opportunity, sacrifice, a coach, and a plan.
1) Desire: you have to want it. Typically desire comes from identity and identification. If you think you were born to run marathons or read Homer in the original, success will be a more natural path because you will be affirming your identity by pursuing your goal. You will practice for hours on your own because doing so makes you feel more yourself than anything else does. In addition to feeling like a butterfly at larval stage, you need to have a vivid image of what kind of butterfly you desire to become. You need to identify with someone who already is: a hero, a mentor, a close family member. If you have no role model, you won't have a clear sense of how to be what it is you want to become, and thus your learning will lack focus down range. So get a role model. If you don't know one personally, imagine you do while you look around for a real one. Your imaginary role model might be a famous person who you want to meet and maybe even compete with some day.
2) Sacrifice: If you have a casual interest in something and you meet with immediate success, you may imagine you are "naturally" good at it and since being good at something is pleasant, you will likely continue, thinking that you have found your way to be. Early success, however, can be misleading. When you don't understand how something is done it looks easier than it is. Novices often confuse luck with skill and mistake a success for talent. The transition from novice to expert takes a long time, even for the gifted. Inevitably joy becomes work. Performance plateaus exist. Once you cease to improve, once you experience your first loss or setback, you have to decide whether to embrace the pain and frustration and the fear of failure or cut your losses and move on. You are more likely to embrace the pain if you can't imagine alternative ways of being. Thus, oddly enough, a lack of imagination, a one-track mind, can be crucial to success. But tunnel vision doesn't guarantee success. For every success there are many couldbes and wannabes toiling forever on the precipice. I think this existential dilemma, should I stay or should I go, is why so many people are content with good enough. To become great so often means giving up too much while risking getting nothing in return.
3) Conviction: you have to want to succeed, but you also have to believe you can succeed. Identity is critical here as well. If your identity is wrapped up in the pursuit of success, and your identity isn't fragile, you will focus intensely and test yourself without fear or hesitation because you fervently believe you will succeed in the end. A role model who seems to have come from circumstances like your own helps. "They did it; so can I." This is (partially) why entering the family business is a time honored form of education. And why poverty is so often inherited.
4) Persistence: for every person who succeeds at something difficult there are many who showed equal promise and desire who failed. You have to overcome performance plateaus, adversity, boredom, and compelling distractions. Don't confuse smart with quick. Learn to embrace tedium, frustration. Learn to question each apparent accomplishment and then raise the bar. Never settle. Never rest. Keep putting yourself out there. Fall, get up, fall again.
5) Opportunity: Among those who don't succeed are also the merely unlucky. Luck plays a far greater role in success than we care to believe. It isn't enough to be good; you need the opportunity to show someone whose attention matters how good you might get given the necessary resources and support. As someone once said, "no one remembers your name just for working hard."
6) A plan: low initial bar, measurable outcomes, near-term incremental goals on an unbounded path. If you wake up one day and your jeans don't fit and you say, I'm going to get fit, chances are you won't because the goal is vague (what's fit really mean?) and you don't have a plan (what do you do to get fit?). Even if you set a specific goal, lose 5 pounds, you still need a plan, a path to the goal. You will succeed if as you suck in your tummy and pull at your jeans you say, "Today I'm going to walk up three flights of stairs." If you do, and the next day you say, "I'm going to make a healthy low-call lunch and eat that instead of going out," and you also walk up three flights of stairs, you are on your way. Fewer calories, a few more flights, day by day. Drop a few pounds; get a bit stronger (5 flights of stairs). Once your jeans fit, set a new measurable goal that will help keep your jeans fitting.
7) A coach: timely, vivid feedback. A good coach won't let you fail but won't let you luxuriate in success either. He or she will always be encouraging and correcting you. Eventually you may internalize a restlessness, a deeply felt need for continual improvement. For high achievers, good is never good enough. Happy high achievers are inspired by that drive. Miserable high achievers are plagued by it. Focus on the process of improvement and let the outcome be what it will be.