Business
This collection contains materials that inform, instruct, and support those who wish to develop or improve a set of writing skills that will have practical applications in the business environment. Included are annotated examples, online templates and step-by-step guides for writing common business documents such as letters, memos, email, and press releases.

Category: Business Documents
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Writing Guides
Business Letters: When you write business letters in industry or for a class, knowing your purpose and audience will help determine what information to include. Generally, business letters follow a particular format, although your instructor or company may require you to use alternative formats. This guide provides writers with an introduction to writing business letters.

Case Studies: This guide examines case studies, a form of qualitative descriptive research that is used to look at individuals, a small group of participants, or a group as a whole. Researchers collect data about participants using participant and direct observations, interviews, protocols, tests, examinations of records, and collections of writing samples. Starting with a definition of the case study, the guide moves to a brief history of this research method. Using several well documented case studies, the guide then looks at applications and methods including data collection and analysis. A discussion of ways to handle validity, reliability, and generalizability follows, with special attention to case studies as they are applied to composition studies. Finally, this guide examines the strengths and weaknesses of case studies.

Desktop Publishing: Desktop publishing is the process of laying out and designing pages with your desktop computer. With software programs such as PageMaker and Quark Xpress, you can assemble anything from a one-page document to a full-length book. Understanding how the software works, however, is only the beginning, and often the easiest part of the whole process. This guide is designed for the novice page designer who wants to learn the fundamentals of effective page layout. So whether you need to design a brochure, advertisement, or an entire newsletter read on!

Electronic Mail: E-mail is used to communicate in many settings. Effective use of email requires a clear sense of the purpose for writing, as well as a clear statement of the message. To explore how to use email effectively, read this guide.

Executive Summaries: Executive Summaries are much like any other summary in that their main goal is to provide a condensed version of the content of a longer report. Learn more in this guide.

Formatting Business Letters: Learn more about how to correctly format a business letter.

Resume Writing: Writing a resume is more than just listing a set of credentials or special talents in reverse chronological order. It is very much like planning to write a persuasive essay. These documents begin with a rhetorical context. Every resume has a target audience (the employer(s) who will use it to evaluate you as a job candidate) and a purpose (to convince an employer that you are worth interviewing for a specific job). Read this guide for a further discussion of these issues.

Writing Business Email: In this guide you will read about writing business emails, helpful tips on formatting business email, the law and business email, and business netiquette (yes folks, Internet etiquette). Each section provides useful information and samples to assist you in becoming more proficient at using email to communicate in the business world.

TE: May 12, 2006
TO: Harriet V. Sullivan, President
FROM: Christine Thomas, Systems Administrator CT
SUBJECT: The Advantages of Telecommuting
I believe that HVS Accounting Services and its employees would benefit if we permit our professional staff to telecommute one or more days a week. Telecommuting is becoming increasingly common throughout the United States for several important reasons. I have researched the topic and talked with colleagues here and among our competitors. This memorandum presents the results of my findings and proposes that HVS set up a work-at-home program on a threemonth trial basis beginning September 1. The trial period would occur well before our busy end-of-year and winter tax-preparation period. What Are the Advantages?
The program would offer HVS several important advantages:
• Improved employee productivity
• Enhanced ability to recruit and retain good employees
• Mutually beneficial arrangements for employees with special needs The foremost advantage to HVS is that employee productivity for those in a work-at-home program would very likely increase. I have reviewed a dozen trade-journal articles in our field and several Web sites that show average productivity gains of from 15 to 30 percent.
In conversations with other financial-services companies at monthly
Accounting Society meetings, they mention gains in the 20 to 30 percent range. This is an area where I believe we need to pull even with the competition.