Premduniya - The Art of Persuasive Business Writing

All good writing involves persuasion-getting the reader over to your side. You may be writing to persuade a colleague to take on a new project, writing a blog post trying to persuade people to accept a new idea, or writing persuasive advertising copy for a new product. In each situation, your goal is to persuade your readers that you have something to say and that it is in their best interest to take the action you have requested. Here are five elements to keep in mind when writing persuasive messages.

1. "You" attitude. Too much business writing has an "I" or "we" viewpoint, which causes the writer to sound selfish and not interested in the reader. If you want to get your point of view across, convey information, or persuade the reader, you have to talk in terms of the reader's interests, hopes, wishes, and preferences. Good writing psychology requires that you present your message in light of the reader's viewpoint rather than your own. "I" or "We" To help us process this order, we must ask for another copy of the requisition. We trust you will extend your service contract. "You" So that your order can be filled promptly, please send another copy of the requisition. By extending your service contract, you can continue to enjoy topnotch performance from your equipment.

2. Warmth. You can make all sorts of mistakes in your messages yet still leave your readers with a good feeling if you can convey the magic intangible of personal warmth. Warmth is more difficult in writing than it is in oral communications. Essentially, warmth is an aspect-possibly even the measure-of the "you" viewpoint. You should not only demonstrate concern for the audience's problems but interest in their attitudes and an appreciation of the ways in which handling the situation is going to be helpful to them.

3. Parallel experience. One way of touching the right spots with your reader is to draw on a parallel situation in your own experience. Build your writing around this experience, or use what you learned as a basis for your writing. By creating a sympathetic bond between you and your reader, you enhance the person-to-person connection and help your reader to become more open to what you are saying.

4. Good manners. If you want to persuade your reader, you must show impeccable manners. In other words, be nice. If you are rude or overly aggressive, your reader will shut down to your argument and turn elsewhere. When in doubt, put yourself on the other end of the writing and ask, "How would I feel if this was directed at me? Would I be offended, or would I be open to listening to more?"

5. Tone. The tone of your writing goes beyond the content of your words and offers the reader an overall feeling or indication of your meaning. The overall tone of your message will depend on the subject, but a general guideline is to stay positive. Suggest to your reader that you are interested in his or her problems and in solving them. A good tone is ruined by using harsh words or phrases. Some examples:

Poor
the alleged loss you claim that you neglected to send in which you assert if we were at fault we request that you send us
Improved
the loss you refer to we understand that you did not send you tell us please accept our apologies please send us

Persuasion is an art, not a science-but that does not mean there is no winning formula. By incorporating these five elements into your business communication, you will have a greater chance of getting your reader to stop, listen, and take the action you want.

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Premduniya - Six Types of Words That You Should Axe in Business Writing

In business, we often compose messages in a hurry-e-mails, notes, urgent reports, or last-minute projects. Editing is, therefore, especially necessary to rid your writing of confusing, boring, and obsolete elements. This article helps you decide which words to cut and which words to put in their place.


1. Unfamiliar/Technical Words. You will communicate best if you use words that are familiar to your reader. (Clichés are an exception to this rule-words and phrases that people have heard too often tend to turn off their minds a little and propel their eyes on to the next thing.) To create effective business communications, assume your reader is a layperson with limited technical knowledge of the subject-do not write over your reader's head by using technical words or jargon.
Unfamiliar ascertain consummate peruse Familiar find out, learn close, bring about read, study

2. Long Words. A paragraph full of long words can be yawn inducing. Make an effort to use short words; they tend to be more easily digestible.
Long During the preceding year, the company was able to accelerate productive operations. The action was predicted on the assumption that the company was operating at a financial deficit.
Short Last year the company was able to speed up operations. The action was based on the belief that the company was losing money.

3. Abstract Words. The line between abstract and concrete words is hard to define, since all words have something of the abstract in them. In general, abstract words have a greater number of meanings, most of them somewhat vague, so your reader has to try to interpret which meanings apply. Concrete words are those that give your reader a specific mental picture.

Abstract sizable loss near future work saving machine Concrete 34 percent loss on Wednesday performs the work of five operators

4. Passive Words. Verbs are the strongest words, and they are at their strongest when they are active rather than passive. Active-voice verbs show their subjects in action; passive-voice verbs act on their subjects. While the passive is needed for variety and has definite uses (such as to avoid placing blame), the active voice strengthens and shortens sentences.
Passive A sales increase of 32 percent occurred last month. The new procedure is thought to be superior by the president. The office will be cleaned by the janitor.
Active Sales increased 32 percent last month. The president thinks the new procedure is superior. The janitor will clean the office.

5. Camouflaged Words. Watch for these endings in the words you use (check the polysyllable words): -ion, -tion, -ing, -ment, -ant, -ence, -ence, -ancy, -ency. Most of these endings are used to change verbs into nouns and adjectives. In effect, they are camouflaged verbs. Get rid of them and strengthen your writing.

Poor The manager affected implementation of the new rules. Adaptation to the new office environment was made easily by the personnel. We make verifications of the shipments weekly.

Improved The manager implemented the new rules. The personnel adapted easily to the new office environment. We verify shipments weekly.

6. Unnecessary Words. Most business writing could do with a pruning job. To reduce unnecessary words, start with a clear idea of what you want to say. After composing, go through your message and cut every word that is not essential to your meaning.

So be your own editor, cut the poor and unnecessary words, and polish your writing to make your communication in business more effective than ever.

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Premduniya - Andrew Jalbert’s novel, West Across the Board

Andrew Jalbert’s novel, West Across the Board, chronicles one man’s journey back to the Florida Keys to see his dying friend. For both men, it is a journey of lifetime reflection and liberation. In 1934, at a saloon in the Florida Keys, Lazaro, a passionate and brilliant fisherman, meets Dominic, a civil engineer graduate. The two young men instantly bond over a game of chess. The game would become more than recreation. It would become the cement that binds the two through a lifetime of love, loss, forgiveness, and redemption. With such themes as the beauty and danger of nature entwining itself with the strength and frailties of human nature, a story of growth and survival unfolds. Drawing on Physicists research into the Chaos Theory, Dominic, a pragmatist, tries to find order from tragic events that affected the choices both he and Lazaro made. Lazaro, a man forever changed from the loss of his father during a storm at sea, reflects on his life in a more traditional sense. Dominic tries to find a logical pattern of events, while Lazaro buries his need to resolve issues that led to his choice to leave the Florida Keys for a life in Wisconsin. It is only when the two men come together that Lazaro is able to confront his past.

As historical fiction, the author delivers a carefully crafted and detailed account of life on the Florida Keys. The story is rich in the sights, sounds, and description of life in the 1930’s. Drawing on real events from the past, the fictional story is well implemented within its historical context. The historical and nautical details illustrated within the story are well researched and accurately presented.
West Across the Board delivers a well crafted tale of two men’s journey back together to find redemption and peace. The history and backdrop of the Florida Keys makes readers feel they are accompanying Lazaro on his journey. I highly recommend the book to readers who enjoy well written historical fiction that delves into the human condition.

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Prem duniya - Ten Ways to Write Great Blog Posts That Get Attention

Millions of blogs fight for readership online (over 75 million by some counts), with thousands more being created every day. Making yours stand above the rest may seem like a daunting task, but here are ten suggestions for making your blog posts stand out from the crowd.

1. Write each post title so it grabs the reader's attention. It is the first thing someone reads, and it should get your reader's attention right away. Your title should both pique the reader's interest and be informative. Do not write "Business Writing Advice"; instead, say "The Best-Kept Secret to Reducing Your Business Writing Worries." Longer titles have the advantage of describing in detail what your post is about; 8-12 words are a good range.

2. Keep sentences short and clear. A little goes a long way. Readers are busy people and they will not spend hours detangling complex syntax or sifting through blocks of text. Also, use strong language. Start a new paragraph every few sentences, and limit each post to 250 words, if possible. If you cannot write it in under 250 words, split it into two entries.

3. Break up the text. Use numbered lists, bullet points, and subheadings to make your posts easy to scan. Lots of white space on the page is a good thing-it allows your reader to take mental breaks and let the knowledge soak in. In addition, with the inevitable clutter of banner ads and side text, this technique puts some distance between your writing and all those distractions.

4. Keep current. No one wants to read old news. Your job is to stay up-to-date so your readers do not have to themselves. Read newspapers. Scour the web for references. For example, if you write a blog about business communication, subscribe to Google News Alerts using keywords related to the field, such as blogs, podcasting, instant messaging, business letters, memos, and business reports, so you will always be well informed. Posting items from last month or last year will lose your reader's interest faster than you can say "Enron."

5. Be bold. Timidity is an easy path to anonymity. Do not be afraid to create and state your opinions. Of course, there are some situations in which objectivity rules-but you have to give people a reason to read this blog by you and not by the person next door.

6. Be accurate. If you make a statement, be prepared to back it up. Know what your sources are and quote them accurately. Misinformation spreads like wildfire online; do not be the spark that sets it off or the wind that fans it.

7. Contribute to the conversation. Links are great-but then what? Do not just post links to the same tired sites, offer your reader something new. Contribute to the conversation. Your goal is to be the site to which everyone else is linking-so you had better have something worth writing about.

8. Stay focused. Once you have defined the theme of your blog, stick to it. A blog about piggy banks has no business posting about the latest innovation in alternative energy. Such a deviance will only confuse your reader and chip away at your virtual authority.

9. Use key words liberally. Keywords are, well, key. Harness your blog's search engine potential by dousing your title and post with effective keywords that will help interested parties find your page in the vast, muddled blogosphere. This is one of the most important elements of getting your blog read-go at it with gusto.

10. Be consistent. Keep a schedule and stick to it. Post frequently-at least several times per week if you want to increase your potential of attracting new readers. Let your blog languish for weeks without updates and your audience will move on to fresher ground.

Maintaining an informative blog that people want to read takes hard work and good writing skills. Find what makes your writing unique-and flaunt it for all it is worth.

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Prem duniya - What Writers Must Know about Internet Commerce

Let's assume you're a writer and you want to make money by writing. In the olden days (last year, maybe) you would think up an article idea, hammer a few paragraphs out, and then check with some editors if they were interested in buying a finished product.
If you were lucky, you sold it. If you were not exactly unlucky, the editor rejected your idea but paid you to go out and write something else. And the most common response was a great big bunch of nothing. No response. No answer. No sale.
You have probably heard that a writer can make money on the Internet, but you're probably thinking, "How on earth is that possible?" After all, just about every job offer that comes to writers for Internet type stuff pays less than even a skinflint magazine editor would have paid ten years ago for the same material. The big difference is that the Internet publishers seeking writing support want their content virtually overnight and the old-fashioned editors did not mind giving you a few weeks.

There are two ways to make money on the Internet and they mirror the ways people make money in the brick-and-mortar business world. First, you can sell something. Whether it's ceiling fans or candles or airline tickets, you can make money if you have a product that you can trade to people for cash.

The other way you can make money online is by selling advertising. The best models for this include TV programs, magazines, and newspapers. Take a TV program; it's content that is offered for free to people who want to see it. A newspaper isn't exactly free, but it contains a lot of high-value content from around the world and it's offered at a very nominal fee (less than it costs to print it, I bet) to just about anyone who wants it. They'll even bring it to your house every morning! Who else will deliver for a product that does not even cost a dollar-for no extra shipping and handling fee?

Then there are magazines. They cost more but they're still a great buy considering the content you get, the articles, the pictures, and the sheer volume of printed pages. So how do these enterprises make money? They do it by offering content that people want and then selling advertisement. TV shows make money because they sell some of their viewing time to advertisers who offer commercials. Newspapers and magazines do take in some subscription money, but the thing that keeps them in business is ad revenue. And how do advertisers manage to survive? Smart businesses know the best opportunities for their particular type of advertisements. There's a whole science to that. If a well-placed smart commercial on a certain TV show increases sales, then everybody wins. The company earns money because the ad draws customers; the TV show earns money because it sells time (and eyeballs) to the advertiser.

You can build a website that features lots of top-quality content and then sell advertising on that site. Now you can't just throw up any old site (and the operative word here is "throw up") and figure that advertising will work. You need a quality product. You also have to offer something of value.
That's where the good news comes in: you're a writer.

You can create your own online magazine of sorts. The goal is to attract people interested in the same subject to look at your site. There's a whole science to that, too. But if you do it right, people on your site may be interested in ads on related subjects. The Internet is all about niches. Let's say you want to write about dogs. Bad idea. It's too broad for the Internet. With the Internet you have to think narrow. You could write about dog training. Or adopting poodles from the pound. Or photographing dogs. The idea is that your highly targeted information will resonate with a particular subset of readers. With billions of Internet search a year, you don't need to have broad appeal to get a big audience. Then you sell advertising. Now in the traditional business model, that meant pounding the pavement, talking to potential advertisers, and often working with them to get an ad finalized. Then you had to hound them for payment. On the Internet, you can sign up with search providers to put ads on your site. These ads (offered by the big search engines) use electronic algorithms to automatically match ads by content to your site so that your dog training site won't offer ads for gastric bypass surgery. You don't sell a single ad: you merely clear some room for Google or Yahoo to put ads on your site. They match the ads to your content. In the print world of our ancient ancestors, an advertiser paid if his ad ran, regardless of whether anyone responded. Internat ads work on a different model; they run for free and the advertiser pays only when somebody clicks on them. This is what is meant when they say advertisers pay for clicks. The good news is that you can find qualified advertisers and start generating ad revenues from a website pretty quickly without ever having direct contact with your advertisers. You can also get advertisers the old-fashioned way by selling space on your site to individual vendors. Those arrangements are worked out individually. Savvy Internet entrepreneurs can make money either selling products (including electronic products like e-books or online courses and now even online audios) or selling advertising or a bit of both. There are strategies for what to use and how, but those are the basics. So what exactly does this mean for us writers? Writers need to start thinking about what they write not just in terms of how to tell the story, but how to best position the content in the marketplace.

If you can set up a wholesale arrangement with local or even international vendors, you can sell products using a "shopping cart" type website, lots of photos, and some cool product descriptions.
If you have the expertise (or can get it) and can write about how to beat a speeding ticket, land a job working on a cruise ship, or sell your home without a real estate agent, you can write electronic content (e-book, e-course, other materials that are delivered online including audios and videos) and sell that.

First, of course, you have to understand how these kinds of enterprises actually function. Even some off-the-wall business angles are good to study, because the same principles always apply. You target a specific niche market, develop content to attract visitors, and then sell either advertising, products, or both.

Prem duniya-The Garden of Eden and Other Criminal Delights

"The Garden of Eden and Other Criminal Delights," by Faye Kellerman, is a collection of mostly crime fiction short stories, each having a brief introduction by the author. Published by Warner Books, ISBN: 978-0-446-53039-2, the book is likely to appeal to readers who enjoy mystery and suspense fiction.

Known for her crime fiction novels featuring L. A. homicide detective Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus, Decker's Orthodox Jewish wife, Kellerman includes two previously unpublished Decker/Lazarus short stories within her collection. The sleuthing pair is as interesting and complex in "The Garden of Eden" and "Open House" as they are in the novels. Kudos to Faye Kellerman for maintaining Decker and Lazarus's characterizations in the short stories. The story "Bull's-Eye" is another short story that features the Decker clan, only this time readers are also introduced to Cindy Decker as she and her father work to solve a case. Again, Kellerman succeeds in keeping Peter Decker true to his fictional self and to readers by maintaining his character of being a concerned, supportive father in "Bull's-Eye." My other favorites among the stories that comprise the collection are "The Stalker," "Mummy and Jack," "Bonding," "Mr. Barton's Head Case," and "Holy Water." While I actually enjoyed all of the crime fiction, these stories stood out for several reasons. The twist at the end of "The Stalker" is one of the best that I have recently read. I enjoyed "Mummy and Jack," a collaboration between Faye Kellerman and her son, Jesse, for its tone, voice, style, and dark humor. "Bonding" is one of my favorites because of its ending and its hard-boiled edge. "Mr. Barton's Head Case" entertained me with its cross genre appeal and its well done blend of crime fiction and speculative fiction. "Holy Water" is a favorite because I found it unique and imaginative.

My least favorites of the collection are "Free Parking," "The Luck of the Draw," "Small Miracles," and "The Summer of My Womanhood." The reason I liked them less was because they were not crime fiction stories. They were all well-written, but they appeared out of place to me in this particular collection. However, the book's blurb did mention that the collection contained other writing that offered "readers glimpses into Kellerman's private life." Still, I would have enjoyed the collection even more if the book had only contained crime fiction short stories.

Overall, I do not regret having bought the book. I like supporting good fiction, especially good short fiction as the short story can sometimes seem like it is becoming a vanishing literary art form. Despite my slight disappointment that the book did not contain a few more crime fiction stories, I think the collection was worth reading, and recommend that readers, particularly those who enjoy short crime fiction, read "The Garden of Eden and Other Criminal Delights."

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Prem duniya Book Review: Innocent in Death

"Innocent in Death", by Nora Roberts writing as J. D. Robb, is the latest novel of the suspense series that takes place in a futuristic New York City. Amid a frigid, winter setting, Lieutenant Eve Dallas works to solve the murder of Craig Foster, a school teacher who appears to have been an all-around good guy. Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, ISBN: 978-0-399-15401-0, the book appeals to readers who enjoy mystery, police procedural, and romantic subplots. Roberts/Robb does a wonderful job at creating three dimensional characters in "Innocent in Death." Lieutenant Eve Dallas is a no-nonsense, smart cop who takes no prisoners once she believes she knows the culprit that is responsible for Craig Foster's murder. Beneath Dallas' cool posterior lies a slightly less chilly interior. Beyond the walls that Dallas has probably built as a defense mechanism is a witty, sarcastic woman who is fiercely in love with her husband, Roarke. While I enjoyed the entire book, I especially enjoyed how Roberts/Robb shows the intense passion that Dallas and Roarke share by weaving words in such a way that the novel's romantic subplot drew me deeper into the story. When someone from Roarke's past slinks into town, Roberts/Robb uses her word-weaving skills to show Dallas' more vulnerable side. "Innocent in Death" touches on several themes, in my opinion. The author shows that appearances can be deceiving, that past mistakes in life does not define one's present or future, and that love does conquer all, sometimes.

Although Nora Roberts has written twenty-three previous suspense novels as J. D. Robb, "Innocent in Death" was the first book I had read of the series. Despite "Innocent in Death" having been the first I had read of Eve Dallas, the book was written in such a way that I understood the parts that touched on Dallas' past without needing to have read any of the previous books. Over all, I enjoyed "Innocent in Death" from its first page to its last. The novel has good pacing, well done suspense and characterizations, and a chilling culprit. I look forward to reading the next novel in the series and as many of the past novels as possible, and recommend that other mystery/suspense lovers read "Innocent in Death" also.

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