Formal email writing advice and examples

This blog does not get much attention, as you may note from the dates of the posts.  These days, though, I am seeing more visitors in the stats, and, more importantly, more commenters on the posts.  The commenters are always asking for more examples, but I really don't have them. 

This blog was intended for use with medical students in my writing classes at SNU.  The focus was more on academic writing than business writing. That's not to say that this blog couldn't be used for business writing (as it certainly can), but it was not the original intent, nor is it the current focus.  I have never conducted courses on business writing (though I may in the coming year), so I don't have any of those materials on hand.  I do, though, intend to add some of those materials both here and on a more general purpose writing blog, Email Writing, and a yet-to-be-created blog to be used for my new university (I no longer work with Seoul National University).

Until then, here are a few links to resources that provide more information on writing formal letters/email, which is what most people writing for business purposes are really looking for.

• Brief example here http://esl.about.com/od/businessenglishwriting/a/bizdocs_3.htm
• Some suggestions here: http://www.blurtit.com/q340643.html
• Nice PDF/learning activity here: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/email%20worksheet%201.pdf
• Some good advice and samples here: http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/letters/l/bl_block_p.htm

7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School | Copyblogger

7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School | Copyblogger

Some good suggestions for writing instruction/learning.

As teachers of the written form, we have to make a decision. The decision is on the level of structure our class takes as well as the level of structure we teach. Do you have a class that has very precise, explicit grammar instruction, prompts, rubrics, and so forth? Or do you have a class that is more fluid, creative, and subjective?

I'm not saying that we have to choose one, the art is really in the mix.

Google Books - Exporting Citations

Google Books is becoming one of the most useful tools for researchers out there. Pair this with Google Scholar and, if you are lucky, network authentication from a university that has deals with the publishing companies and article databases and many of us can avoid the physical library entirely (especially if you include document delivery service and interlibrary loan). This is fantastic news for scholars living away from their university, namely distance education students and master's/doctoral students finishing up their theses/dissertations (me, for instance).

Anyway, with more and more searches leading to Google Books I was going nuts trying to figure out how to export citations. I knew it had to be there. I don't know why this was so difficult to figure out or why Google doesn't directly have it on their page (not really geared toward scholars). Here is what I finally found (thanks New Mexico State University Library for the tip)

Once you find a book in Google Books this is what you do.

1. On the left side, under the "Get this book" category, click on the second to last link, "Find in a library"
   
2. Clicking on "Find a library" opens the book's information page on World Cat.
   
3. On the upper right, click on "Cite/Export"
4. In the window that opens, you can choose to copy a citation (cool function) or export.
5. Click on the export option that best works for you, "RefWorks" or "EndNote"

Of course, this doesn't make the process grabbing citations for edited chapters, but I guess they can't do all the work for us, can they?

Outlines and Outlining

The above link (click title) is a Google doc on creating an outline for a persuasive essay (good for general essays) and an example outline.