The world is overloaded with information, making it essential to communicate clearly and concisely and to convey messages effectively. Readers need to understand quickly the key points and structure of any piece of writing, from short emails to the most formal reports.
This course focuses on strategies for making English writing and editing more direct, cohesive, and engaging. It is intended for people with a solid grounding in English but whose work requires that they strengthen their skills.
The focus of the workshop is on producing more effective and strategic written communications. It pinpoints ways to strengthening the connection between sections and to ensure more consistency, including when integrating inputs from other contributors to a document. It helps participants strike the right balance between specific details and broader messages and themes.
You can read more about communications in the interview with the lecturer.
What you will learn
The following topics will be covered during this 3-day course:
- Establishing clarity
- Outlining and organizing the text
- Highlighting key messages
- Guiding the reader through sentences and paragraphs
- Editing yourself and others
- Targeting your audience
- Avoiding bureaucratic language
- Editorial style and consistency
- Formatting for the reader
How you will benefit
The workshop focuses on principles for making writing more clear, concise, and effective, and it assumes that participants are empowered by their organization to apply these principles directly to materials that they write and edit.
Through a combination of brief lectures, small group work, and plenary discussions participants will learn about ways to develop and strengthen the content and processes for their most important documents. All exercises focus on examples drawn from the participants’ own writing and editing.
The practical knowledge gained during the workshop can be applied to everyday work immediately. While the course focuses on written communications in English, many past participants have found its principles applicable also to their local languages.
Who should attend
The seminar is designed for public officials in ministries of finance, line ministries, central banks, or other government agencies, who are involved in preparing and/or editing the annual budget, macro-fiscal documents, economic reports, other strategic documents, or key external communications for their organization. Officials who work on inputs for such documents (e.g., program managers, planning and financing experts, heads of departments, and communications experts) are kindly invited to attend the workshop.
Sufficient knowledge of English writing and editing is required to attend the course.
Your contributions
Participants will be asked to provide samples of their written work prior to the workshop.
