Additional Course Catalog
Organizing Your Ideas
Length: 60 min
Price: $49
Do you have difficulty "getting your arms around" the chore of writing an important document? Would you like a repeatable process to reduce your writing time and increase your effectiveness? In this course, you'll master the five "thinking steps" of any writing task so that you can select the appropriate information, details, and data to include in your documents—email, letters, reports, or proposals.
Managing Performance
Length: 75 min
Price: $49
Getting the performance you want from people depends on being able to communicate that performance clearly to them. There are many common mistakes managers make that muddle their message and lead to disappointing results.
Writing Special-Format Documents-Part 1
Length: 50 min
Price: $49
How persuasive is your writing? Do your documents gain buy-in or produce a pout? Identify what to include in these special documents and learn how to structure the information appropriately: persuasive documents, directives, transmittals, activity/status reports, and requests for voluntary action.
Writing Special-Format Documents-Part 2
Length: 30 min
Price: $49
Do you ever have to give disappointing news? Ask other people to correct a problem? Apologize when you've fouled up? In this course, you'll identify what to include in these four special documents, and learn how to structure the information appropriately: "bad news" messages, complaints, apologies, and congratulatory/commendation documents.
Editing for Content and Layout
Length: 45 min
Price: $49
You'll discover and practice six principles for editing documents to help your readers grasp key ideas quickly and to ensure the proper focus of your message.
Editing for Clarity
Length: 80 min
Price: $49
Your documents are always clear to you or you wouldn't write them as you do. But often the less-knowledgeable reader sees gaps in logic, missing information, unclear sentences, and meaningless or imprecise words. As a result, your reader misses the point or fails to take the intended action. This course provides eight principles to ensure clarity.
Editing for Conciseness
Length: 35 min
Price: $49
Your documents may contain correct and necessary information, but if you write in a verbose style, your readers may miss key points. Clear messages are the result of crisp, concise documents. You'll practice four principles for cutting the clutter.
Editing for Style
Length: 30 min
Price: $49
Writing styles generally fall into one of three categories: informal, formal, or pompous. You'll learn five principles to help you select the appropriate style for your various situations, relationships, and purposes. As a result, you'll be able to achieve the tone and style that you intend with your writing.
Writing and Editing Exercises
Length: 40 min
Price: $49
Practice the skills learned in the prerequisite courses by editing sample documents. You'll identify and correct errors and weaknesses in document structure, content selection, sentence structure, word choice, and style.
How Words Work
Length: 60 min
Price: $49
Different types of words perform different functions in sentences. In this course, you will identify the different parts of speech and learn how to use them as modifiers, complements, and in other structures.
Length: 55 min
Price: $49
One of the more difficult tasks is making nouns agree with their verbs. To do so, you need to be able to identify the types of subjects and predicates.
Verbs
Length: 50 min
Price: $49
Verbs can be described by several characteristics: type, voice, mood, and tense. You'll learn how to discriminate among all these characteristics so that you can write clear sentences. Correct verb choices help you accurately reflect time, write clear procedures or instructions, and control the tone of your messages.
Pronoun Agreement
Length: 55 min
Price: $49
Is it "Debbie and I" or "Debbie and me"? Should you write "Call either Juan, Cary, or myself later this week" or "Call Juan, Cary, or me later this week"? "The manager said to tell whomever calls the good news" or "The manager said to tell whoever calls the good news"—which is correct? Incorrect pronouns are one of the most common grammatical errors. This course will clear up that confusion.
Usage, Spelling, and Capitalization
Length: 60 min
Price: $49
Many words have similar spelling and sound alike, but they have very different meanings. Other words have unique ways of creating their plural form. Inappropriate capitalization also confuses readers—particularly, when writing about forms, documents, groups, and locations. This course will focus on the most common problems in selecting the proper word, spelling plurals correctly, and applying the rules of capitalization consistently.
Phrases
Length: 50 min
Price: $49
You'll master three types of phrases: verb phrases, prepositional phrases, and verbal phrases. As a result, you'll be able to improve clarity by identifying and correcting these common problems in your documents: misplaced and dangling modifiers and unparallel structure in sentences and in bulleted lists.
Clauses and Sentences
Length: 55 min
Price: $49
Learning to vary your sentence patterns, write complete sentences, and join clauses with appropriate linking words (equal, separate, subordinate, time, cause-and-effect links) will improve the clarity of your writing.
Punctuation 1
Length: 55 min
Price: $49
Punctuation is to readers what traffic signs are to drivers. Learning to punctuate correctly enables readers to follow your train of thought. Misplaced or misused punctuation, on the other hand, can alter the meaning of your sentences. You'll learn to use commas, semicolons, colons, periods, and question marks correctly.
Punctuation 2
Length: 60 min
Price: $49
Punctuation is such a large topic that it covers two courses. In this course, you'll learn to use quotation marks, ellipses, dashes, parentheses, brackets, apostrophes, and hyphens correctly.
Perplexing Problems
Length: 45 min
Price: $49
You'll identify common "taboos" in writing—the myths, the mistakes, and the misunderstood. You'll identify sticky grammatical issues and usage and learn guidelines for handling each of these questionable issues such as split infinitives, prepositional endings, and the that versus which dilemma.
On Incoming Calls
Length: 60 min
Price: $40
Most people think they know how to answer a phone, but this course describes common errors people make when they answer a call to a business. The course will also provide "prescriptions" from the Telephone Doctor® on how to fix those errors.
Determining Caller Needs
Length: 50 min
Price: $40
Once you answer a phone, you need to focus on finding out what the caller wants. This course teaches you how to listen (which is more than just "hearing") and how to ask good questions.
How to Handle the Irate Caller
Length: 60 min
Price: $40
When you get a call from an angry or abusive customer, you have to remember that they are not angry at YOU. This course shows you how to handle calls from difficult customers, and turn problems into solutions.
The Hall of Shame
Length: 25 min
Price: $30
Nancy Friedman, the "Telephone Doctor®", has collected the worst examples of customer service. In this course, Nancy shows off the exhibits in her "Hall of Shame," and explains how you can avoid being added as an exhibit!
The Five Forbidden Phrases
Length: 25 min
Price: $30
It's easy to say the wrong thing when you're talking to a customer. In this course, Nancy Friedman, the "Telephone Doctor®" presents five things you should never say, and explains what you can say instead.
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