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Prioritizing Your Concerns for Effective Business Writing
Summary: When you are revising your resume or other business messages, there are priorities of concern in choosing what to look for and work on. This handout provides tips for reviewing the content and quality of your business documents to ensure rhetorical effectiveness and user-centered design.
Higher Order and Lower Order Concerns in Business Writing
When you are revising your resume and business messages, there are priorities of concerns in choosing what to look for and work on. Begin with the Higher Order Concerns, the HOCs, which are aspects of the writing most responsible for the quality of the document. Save the Later Order Concerns, the LOCs, for the last draft, when you are ready to look closely at specific points of grammar and mechanics.
Some Higher Order Concerns (HOCs):
Focus and Purpose:- What is your document intended to do or accomplish?
- Will the purpose be clear to the reader?
- Can you offer a one-sentence summary of the document's purpose?
- Is your main point stated early in the document?
- Do you have a specific and appropriate audience in mind? Can you describe them?
- What is their position? What is your relationship with them?
- How much do they already know about this topic?
- Can you determine what their feelings toward your document will be?
- Have you used language that they will be able to understand?
- Is your tone appropriate for your audience?
- Does your document proceed in a logical and organized way?
- Is each paragraph organized around one main idea?
- Can you identify the most important information in the message quickly?
- Is like information kept together?
- For resumes, have you placed your most important or relevant qualifications where they stand out, or have you highlighted them in some way?
- Ask others to read your document and tell you what they think are your most important ideas.
- Is the order of presentation of the points effective?
- Did you include enough details and examples to support your main point?
- Is it clear by the end of the message what you want the reader to do or know?
- Do you provide enough context for the message or is more background information required?
- Do any paragraphs seem shorter and in need of more material than others?
- Is all the information included necessary?
- Ask someone to read the document and comment if something is unclear and needs more description, explanation, or support.
Some Later Order Concerns (LOCs):
Formatting:- Are all of the parts of the message included and in the correct position?
- What will be the reader's first impression when looking at the document (before reading)?
- Does the document look attractive on the page?
- Does your document conform to standard business writing convention? Have you placed information in your message where your reader will expect to see it?
- Have you addressed and signed your document appropriately?
- Are there problems that frequently occur in your writing? Keep a list of problems that recur and check for those specifically.
- Read the document aloud to see and hear if there are any missing or wrong words or other errors that you can spot.
- For possible spelling errors, proofread backwards, from the end of a line to the beginning.