Revising Business Prose

Front Cover
Allyn and Bacon, 2000 - Business report writing - 117 pages

As its title implies, this book deals with revising, not with original composition. In business writing, where a first draft often emerges quickly under the pressures of facts, figures, and deadlines, revision is typically the major part of a writing task, and collaborative revision often produces the final document. Revising Business Prose provides detailed revision guidance and a collaborative approach to writing easily applied to writing in business, industry, government, and academics. Based on the premise that bad writing in organizations imitates the bureaucratic style The Official Style, as it's called here this book shows readers how to transform stilted, dense prose into plain English. For anyone interested in the revision process in every business writing context.

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Contents

Chapter
1
Chapter 2
29
Chapter 3
61
Copyright

3 other sections not shown

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About the author (2000)

Born on April 26, 1936, Richard Lanham was educated at Yale, receiving a B.A. in 1956, an M.A. in 1960, and a Ph.D. in 1963. After serving in the U.S. Army for two years, Lanham worked briefly for the Smithsonian Institution and then took a position teaching English at Dartmouth College. In 1965, he moved to the University of California at Los Angeles, eventually becoming the executive director of writing programs. He was a National Endowment for the Humanities senior fellow in 1973-74. Lanham is the author of numerous books on writing, including Style: An Anti-textbook, The Motives of Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance, Revising Prose, Revising Business Prose, Analyzing Prose, and Literacy and the Survival of Humanism. He has also contributed articles to English Literary Renaissance, Modern Language Quarterly, English Studies, and other journals. Richard Lanham married Carol Dana in 1957.

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