This page provides links to resources for workplace writers and people writing during the job search process.
This resource explains the two dominant ideas in professional writing that will help you produce persuasive, usable résumés, letters, memos, reports, white papers, etc. This section outlines the concepts of rhetorical awareness and user-centered design, provides examples of these ideas, and it contains a glossary of terms.
Audience Analysis: Building Information About Your Readers? discusses your communication's complex audience and provides key questions you can ask to determine readers' needs, values, and attitudes. This section also provides useful charts to help you with your audience analysis.
When you are revising your résumé or other business messages, there are priorities of concerns in choosing what to look for and work on. This handout provides tips for reviewing the content and quality of your business documents.
Provides information and examples on parallel structure in business documents.
This handout provides overviews and examples of how to use tone in business writing. This includes considering the audience and purpose for writing.
The HATS presentation introduces students and instructors to the basic elements of document design. The presentation outlines how to use headings, (information) access, typography (fonts), and space in routine professional documents to promote user-centered communication.
This resource covers the parts of the basic business letter and provides three sample business letters.
This handout provides information on accentuating the positives in writing business letters.
This handout will help you solve your memo-writing problems by discussing what a memo is, describing the parts of memos, and providing examples and explanations that will make your memos more effective.
This handout covers four points on how to write a good conclusion for a sales letter.
This resource provides a general introduction to grant writing and provides information on how to ensure clarity in grant proposals.
The resources in this section discuss various aspects of writing donation request letters. This includes a discussion of the rhetorical situation and standard formatting/style issues. Writing strong donation request letters can increase the likelihood that your target audience will be receptive to your request.
This handout discusses how to write good abstracts for reports. It covers informational and descriptive abstracts and gives pointers for success.
A white paper is a certain type of report that is distinctive in terms of purpose, audience, and organization. This resource will explain these issues and provide some other tips to enhance white paper content.
These resources describe two workplace genres, an activity report and a postmortem. It discusses the purpose of an activity report and a postmortem, as well as how to work with these genres effectively.
Provides information on revising business documents for audience and purpose with emphasis on language, tone, organization, and correctness.