Better Writing Skills

Course overview

We frequently write documents that are intended to be read online (that is, from a screen) rather than from paper. Producing good online writing isn't just a matter of taking something you wrote for paper and putting it online, though. Whether it's for the web, an intranet, an e-newsletter or email, online writing requires a specific set of skills that are different from those needed for writing print materials.

This content-rich course will provide you with the skills to produce highly effective online writing. This course is based around a series of writing exercises, so you'll be practising the material as you learn it.

Course duration

Half a day.

Table of contents

Here is a table of contents and a detailed list of outcomes for the course (PDF, 493 KB).

Course rationale

The course meets the following business needs:

• If an initial, quick scan doesn't reveal useful information, many readers will stop reading online content after only a few seconds. It's thus very important that we design our online documents so that readers can discover the 'good bits' quickly.
• Online reading is slower than reading from printed sources. Online readers are thus more annoyed by long-winded writing than are other readers. Brevity is thus essential.
• Web and intranet sites usually fail to build an on-going relationship with customers and staff that could yield additional benefits.

Course outcomes

After mastering the course's contents, you'll be able to:

• How can better online writing improve our key performance indicators?
• How can we make our online writing brief, scannable and credible?
• How can we transform print information into highly effective online material?
• How can we use multimedia and PDF files appropriately?
• How can we write great FAQs that save us time and money?
• How is online writing different from writing for print?
• What are the best-practice online writing techniques?
• What common design errors can thwart all our efforts?
• What essential service can e-newsletters provide that our web and intranet sites can't?
• What makes email more (or less) effective?
• Why are some email newsletters highly anticipated, yet others are regarded as spam?

Target audience

This course is aimed at anyone who writes for intranets, web sites, e-newsletters or email.

Contact Tim North, Scribe's manager, to schedule a training course or to learn more.

Alternatively, you can download the Online Writing training manual as a PDF file for just AU$12.95.

Scribe has received the following comments as anonymous feedback:

• "Thanks. It helped me a lot."
• "The best workshop I've attended in a long, long time."
• "The course and presenter were excellent."
• "The course content has had immediate impact on the way I am pitching my formal and informal proposals."
• "The course was clear and easy to understand."
• "The course was well conducted and entertaining."
• "The whole course was excellent."
• "The whole day was helpful. I will now have the confidence to write reports without questioning if I'm wrong or right."
• "This has been a great update for me."
• "This has been one of the best workshops I've been to. Well presented and informative."
• "Tim makes a dry subject very interesting."
• "Tim's knowledge is excellent"
• "Very good course. Highly recommended."