Chapter 5.

Writing (cont.)
Chapter outlines
1. Organization
2. Writing Style
3. Making an Argument
4. Paraphrase and Summary versus Plagiarism
Learning Objectives
1. Demonstrate your ability to prepare and present information using a writing style that will
increase understanding, retention, and motivation to act.
2. Demonstrate how to form a clear argument with appropriate support to persuade your
audience.
3. Recognize and understand inherent weaknesses in fallacies.
4. Understand the difference between paraphrasing or summarizing and plagiarism.
5. Demonstrate how to give proper credit to sources that are quoted verbatim, and sources
whose ideas are paraphrased or summarized.
6. Demonstrate your ability to paraphrase in one or more written assignments.
2. Writing Style
Formal: require more detail, adhere to rules of etiquette, and avoid shortcuts like contractions and folksy
expressions.
Informal: reflect everyday speech patterns and may include contractions and colloquial expressions.
Direct: The direct pattern states the main purpose directly, at the beginning, and leaves little room for
misinterpretation.
Indirect: The indirect pattern, where you introduce your main idea after the opening paragraph, can be
useful if you need a strong opening to get the attention of what you perceive may be an uninterested
audience.
Adding Emphasis: bold, italics, underline, highlights, your choice of colors, and a host of interesting fonts
Active Voice: a sentence structure in which the subject carries out the action.
Passive Voice: a sentence structure in which the subject receives the action.
Making Errors at the Speed of Light
Do remember the following:
1. Everything you access via an employer’s system is subject to inspection.
2. Everything you write or record reflects you and your business or organization, even if it is
stored in a Google or Yahoo! account.
3. Respect personal space by not forwarding every e-mail you think is funny.
4. Use a concise but relevant and informative phrase for the subject line.
5. E-mail the receiver before sending large attachments, as they may exceed the limit of the
receiver’s inbox.
6. Attach your intended attachments.
3. Making an Argument
When you make an argument in your writing, you will want to present your position with
logical points, supporting each point with appropriate sources.
You will want to give your audience every reason to perceive you as ethical and trustworthy.
Contribute to your credibility by building sound arguments and using strategic arguments with
skill and planning.
Classical Rhetorical Strategy
Toulmin’s Three-Part Rhetorical Strategy
Effective Argumentation Strategies:
GASCAP/T
1. Argument by Generalization
2. Argument by Analogy
3. Argument by Sign
4. Argument by Consequence
5. Argument by Authority
6. Argument by Principle
7. Argument by Testimony
Evidence
Make sure your evidence has the following traits:
1. Supportive. Examples are clearly representative, statistics are accurate, testimony is
authoritative, and information is reliable.
2. Relevant. Examples clearly relate to the claim or topic, and you are not comparing “apples to
oranges.”
3. Effective. Examples are clearly the best available to support the claim, quality is preferred to
quantity, there are only a few well-chosen statistics, facts, or data.
Appealing to Emotions
Emotions are a psychological and physical reaction, such as fear or anger, to stimuli that we
experience as a feeling.
Our feelings or emotions directly impact our own point of view and readiness to communicate,
but also influence how, why, and when we say things.
Emotions influence not only how you say or what you say, but also how you hear or what you
hear.
Emotions can be challenging to control.
Emotions will move your audience, and possibly even move you, to change or act in certain
ways.
Recognizing Fallacies
“Fallacy” is another way of saying false logic.
Fallacies or rhetorical tricks deceive your audience with their style, drama, or pattern, but add
little to your document in terms of substance.

They are best avoided because they can actually detract from your effectiveness.
Ethical Considerations in Persuasion
Do not:
use false, fabricated, misrepresented, distorted, or irrelevant evidence to support arguments or
claims;
intentionally use unsupported, misleading, or illogical reasoning;
represent yourself as informed or an “expert” on a subject when you are not;
use irrelevant appeals to divert attention from the issue at hand;
ask your audience to link your idea or proposal to emotion-laden values, motives, or goals to
which it is actually not related;
Ethical Considerations in Persuasion
(cont.)
Do not:
deceive your audience by concealing your real purpose, your self-interest, the group you
represent, or your position as an advocate of a viewpoint;
distort, hide, or misrepresent the number, scope, intensity, or undesirable features of
consequences or effects;
use emotional appeals that lack a supporting basis of evidence or reasoning;
oversimplify complex, gradation-laden situations into simplistic, two-valued, either-or, polar
views or choices;
pretend certainty where tentativeness and degrees of probability would be more accurate;
 advocate something that you yourself do not believe in.
4. Paraphrase and Summary versus
Plagiarism
Paraphrase: Another common strategy in business writing is to paraphrase, or rewrite the
information in your own words. You will relate the main point, but need to take care not to copy
the original.
Summary: To summarize is to reduce a concept, idea, or data set to its most basic point or
element. You may have a literature survey to summarize related information in the field under
consideration, or a section on background to serve a similar purpose.
Plagiarism is representing another’s work as your own.
Patch writing, or the verbatim cut-and-paste insertion of fragments, snippets, or small sections of
other publications into your own writing without crediting the sources, is plagiarism.
Some steps that can help you paraphrase a
passage while respecting its original author:
1. Read the passage out loud, paying attention to the complete thought rather than the individual
words.
2. Explain the concept in your own words to a friend or colleague, out loud, face-to-face.
3. Write the concept in your own words, and add one or more illustrative examples of the concept
that are meaningful to you.
4. Reread the original passage and see how your version compares with it in terms of grammar,
word choice, example, and conveyance of meaning.
5. If your writing parrots the original passage or merely substitutes synonyms for words in the
original, return to step one and start over, remembering that your goal is to express the central
concepts, not to “translate” one word into another.
6. When you are satisfied that your expression of the concept can stand on its own merit, include it
in your document and cite the original author as the source of the idea.
Key Takeaway
1. An appropriate business writing style can be formal or informal, depending on the context,
but it should always reflect favorably on the writer and the organization.
2. The art of argument in writing involves presenting supportive, relevant, effective evidence
for each point and doing it in a respectful and ethical manner.
3. There is nothing wrong with quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing with credit to your
original source, but presenting someone else’s work as if it were your own is plagiarism.
 Exercises
1. What are some qualities of a good business writing style? What makes certain styles more
appropriate for business than others? Discuss your thoughts with a classmate.
2. Find an example of formal writing and write an informal version. Please share with your classmates.
3. Select a piece of persuasive writing such as a newspaper op-ed essay, a magazine article, or a blog
post. Examine the argument, the main points, and how the writer supports them. Which strategies
from the foregoing section does the writer use? Does the writer use any fallacies or violate any
ethical principles? Discuss your results with your classmates.
4. Find one slogan or logo that you perceive as persuasive and share it with your classmates.
5. Find an example of an advertisement you perceive as particularly ineffective and write a one-
sentence summary. Share the advertisement and your one sentence review with the class.
6. Find a case where plagiarism or misrepresentation had consequences in the business world. Share
your findings and discuss with classmates.