Blog
Giving Thanks May Be Persuasive
Thanksgiving is just the start of the season of giving. Although it is traditional to give thanks as we gather at the dinner table this year, we also need to remember to give thanks where we work and in our corporate writing. As a leader, corporate communicator, or...
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Public Relations Tips: What Makes a Great News Story?
People sometimes ramble on aimlessly about this or that, leaving the audience wondering, where is she going with this? Keynote speakers, executives, trainers, and PR pros are encouraged to tell stories to engage the audience, but many seem unclear about what makes a...
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Should You Ditch Laptop Note-Taking?
A psychologist says that we remember more when we handwrite because the brain has time to absorb the meaning. Business professionals and students are increasingly using laptops to take notes in meetings and classes, because it's faster and because everyone is...
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Persuasion Tip: How to Motivate Employees
How can you persuade employees to improve their job performance? It can be as easy as showing them how their jobs benefit others. Psychologists have often said that a manager can improve job performance by changing a person's perception of how the job benefits others....
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Persuasive Writing Tip: Express Displeasure Politely
Learning to express displeasure politely invites a civilized discussion and increases the likelihood that the other person will accept your point of view. This was a lesson that a Harvard Business School professor apparently did not consider before sending a series of...
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PR Writing Tip: Your Sentences May Be TOO Long
A person usually has good intentions when he or she suggests the right way or wrong way to do something in writing, but if you ask the person why that is the accepted way, you often hear, it just sounds better or that’s the way I was taught, or the more candid I don't...
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Public Relations Writing Tip: Use Flattery to Persuade
If you want someone to comply with your request, try using flattery to persuade. Flattery, compliments and exaggerated tributes, are among numerous ingratiation tactics that people use to induce someone to perform a particular behavior. Flattery brightens a...
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Business Writing Tip: Focus on Paragraph Unity and Length
If you want to hold an audience's attention, paragraph unity and length are important to readability. Many writers write until the text appears to be getting long, then put in a period and hit enter. But a paragraph is not a randomly created chunk of black print. It's...
read moreBy Ken O’Quinn
As a contributing author in this book on leadership, Ken offers insights and tips for managing difficult conversations, providing effective feedback, and being authentic. Order here.
Perfect Phrases for Business Letters (McGraw-Hill)
Provides the right words and phrases for any situation - quickly. The book was reprinted in Japanese because of high-volume sales there.
TD at Work — Business Writing for Managers
The Association for Talent Development invited Ken to write this 22-page booklet for the TD at Work series.
Current Blog Post
Passive Voice is Not Always Wrong
The passive voice remains an easy target of business writing critics, but sometimes it is preferable to an active sentence. …