4) Composing Your Message: Choosing

Powerful Words
 Good writers and speakers take care to use the
most effective words and phrases.
 The following are some techniques to select words
that are both correct and effective:
 1) Understanding Denotation and Connotation
 2) Balancing Abstract and Concrete Words
 3) Finding Word that Communicate Well
4) Composing Your Message: Choosing
Powerful Words
 1) Understanding Denotation and
Connotation: A word may have both a denotative
and a connotative meaning.
 The denotative meaning is the literal, or dictionary
meaning.
 The connotative meaning includes all the
association and feeling evoked by the word.
4) Composing Your Message: Choosing
Powerful Words
 Example: The denotative meaning of desk is “a
piece of furniture with a flat work surface and
drawers for storage.
 The connotative meaning of desk may include
thoughts connected with work or study.
4) Composing Your Message: Choosing
Powerful Words
 2) Balancing Abstract and Concrete Words:
An abstract word conveys a concept, quality, or
characteristic.
 Abstractions are often broad, including category of
ideas, and they are usually intellectual, academic,
or philosophical.
 Example: Love, honor, progress, tradition, and
beauty are abstractions.
 Important business concepts such as productivity,
profits, quality, and motivation are abstractions.
4) Composing Your Message: Choosing
Powerful Words
 A concrete word stands for something you can
touch, see, visualize.
 Most concrete terms are connected with the tangible
material world.
 Example: Chair, table, horse, rose, kick, red, green,
are concrete words.
 These words are direct, clear, and exact.
 4) Composing Your Message: Choosing
Powerful Words
 Abstractions usually create more problems for
writers and readers than concrete words.
 Abstractions can be “fuzzy” and can be understood
differently, depending on the audience and
situation.
 The best way minimize this fuzziness is to mix
abstract terms with concrete terms, the general with
the specific.
 State the concept and then use details to express it
in more concrete terms.
 4) Composing Your Message: Choosing
Powerful Words
 3) Finding Words that Communicate Well:
 The following are some tips on how to find the
most powerful word for each situation and avoid
obscure words, clichés, and buzzwords:
 1) Choose strong, precise, words: Choose word
that convey your thoughts clearly, specifically, and
dynamically.
Selected Examples of Finding Powerful
Words
 Weak Words or  Stronger Alternative
Phrases
 1) Increase (verb)  1) Accelerate,
 2) Good amplify, augment,
 3) We are committed escalate, expand
to providing…..  2) Admirable,
beneficial, desirable,
superior
 3) We provide
 4) Composing Your Message: Choosing
Powerful Words
 2) Choose familiar words: You will communicate best
with words that are familiar to you and your audience.
 3) Avoid clichés and be careful with buzzwords:
Avoid clichés which are terms and phrases are that are
so overused that they have lost their power to
communicate.
 Buzzwords which are newly developed term usually
connected with technology, business, or cultural changes
and more difficult to handle than clichés.
 Buzzword should only be used sparingly and in the
right situation.
 Selected Examples of Finding Powerful
Words
 Unfamiliar Words  Familiar Words
 1) Ascertain  1) Find out, learn
 2) Peruse  2) Read, study
 3) Circumvent  3) Avoid
 4) Unequivocal  4) Certain
 Selected Examples of Finding Powerful Words

 Clichés and Buzzwords  Plain Language

 1) An uphill battle  1) A challenge
 2) Writing on the wall  2) Prediction
 3) Costs an arm and a  3) Expensive
leg  4) Vital
 4) Mission-critical  5) Get rid of
 5) Disintermeidate  6) Approve
 6) Green light (as a
verb)
 4) Composing Your Message: Choosing
Powerful Words
 4) Use jargon carefully: Jargon, the specialized
language of a specific profession or industry, has a
bad reputation even though is not always bad.
 Using jargon is often an efficient way to
communicate within the specific groups that
understand these words or terms.
5) Composing Your Message: Creating
Effective Sentences
 Arranging your carefully chosen words in effective
sentences is next step in creating powerful
messages.
 The following are guidelines for selecting
effective sentences:
 1) Choose from the Four Types of Sentences
 2) Use Sentence Style to Emphasize Key Thoughts
5) Composing Your Message: Creating
Effective Sentences
 1) Choose from the Four Types of Sentences:
There are four basic sentences:
 A) Simple sentence: has one main clause ( a single
subject and single predicate).
 The simple sentence can be expanded by nouns and
pronouns that serve as objects of the action and by
changing phrases.
 Example: The following is a simple sentence with the
subject noun highlighted in bold and the predicate verb
underlined.
 Profits increased in the past year.
5) Composing Your Message: Creating
Effective Sentences
 2) Compound sentence: has two main clauses that
express two or more independent but related
thought of equal importance often joined by and,
but, or or.
 A compound sentence is a merger of two or more
simple sentences(independent clauses) that are
related.
 Example: Wages rates have declined by 5 percent,
and employee turnover has been high.
5) Composing Your Message: Creating
Effective Sentences
 3) Complex sentence: conveys one main thought (the
independent clause) and one or more subordinate,
related thoughts (dependent clauses that can not stand
alone as valid sentences).
 Independent and dependent clauses are often
separated by a coma.
 Example: Although you may question Ahmad’s
conclusions, you must admit that his research is
thorough.
 In this sentence, “Although you may question Ahmad’s”
conclusion’s” is a subordinate thought expressed in a
dependent clause.
 5) Composing Your Message: Creating
Effective Sentences
 4) Compound-complex sentence: has two main
clauses, at least one of which has a subordinate
clause.
 Example: Profits increased 35 percent in the past
year, so although the company faces long-term
challenges, I agree that its short term prospects look
very good.
 5) Composing Your Message: Creating
Effective Sentences
 When developing sentences, choose the type that
matches the relationship of the idea you want to
express.
 If you have two ideas of equal importance, convey
them as two simple sentences or as one compound
sentence.
 If one of the ideas is less important than the other,
place it in a dependent clause to create a complex
sentence.
 5) Composing Your Message: Creating
Effective Sentences
 2) Use Sentence Style to Emphasize Key
Thoughts: In every message of any length, some
ideas are more important that other ideas.
 You can stress these main ideas through your
sentence style.
 If you want to call attention to a thought, use extra
words to describe it.
 5) Composing Your Message: Creating
Effective Sentences
 Example: Wrong approach: The chairperson called
for a vote of the shareholders.
 Right approach: Having considerable experience in
corporate takeover battles, the chairperson called
for a vote of the shareholders.
 You can increase the focus even more by adding a
separate, short sentence to enhance the first.
 5) Composing Your Message: Creating
Effective Sentences
 Example: The chairperson called for a vote of the
shareholders. She has considerable experience in
corporate takeover battles.
 You can call attention to a thought by making it the
subject of the sentence.
 Example: Wrong approach: I can write much more
quickly by using voice dictation.
 Right approach: Using voice dictation allows me to
write letters much more quickly.
 5) Composing Your Message: Creating
Effective Sentences
 Another way to call attention to an idea ( the idea
of stimulating demand) is to place it either at the
beginning or at the end of the sentence.
 Example: Wrong approach: We are cutting price to
stimulate demand.
 Right approach: To stimulate demand, we are
cutting the price.
6) Composing Your Message: Crafting
Unified, Coherent Paragraphs
 Paragraphs organize sentences that are related to
the general topic.
 Readers expect every paragraph to be unified
which means focusing on a single topic and
coherent which means presenting ideas in a
logically connected manner.
6) Composing Your Message: Crafting
Unified, Coherent Paragraphs
 The following are techniques to develop unified
and coherent paragraphs.
 1) Creating the Elements of a Paragraph
 2) Choosing the Best Way to Develop Each
Paragraph
6) Composing Your Message: Crafting
Unified, Coherent Paragraphs
 1) Creating the Elements of a Paragraph: The
paragraph has three basic element. They are:
 1) Topic sentence: is the sentence that introduces
the topic. Effective paragraphs deal with one topic.
 Example: The medical products division has been
troubled for many years by public relations
problems.
 The topic is public relation problems.
6) Composing Your Message: Crafting
Unified, Coherent Paragraphs
 2) Support sentences: explain, justify, or extend with
one or more support sentences.
 Example: The medical products division has been
troubled for many years by public relations problems.
Since 2014, the local newspaper has published 15
articles that depict the division in a negative manner.
We have been accused of everything from mistreating
laboratory animals to polluting the local groundwater.
Our facilities has been described as a health hazard.
Our scientists are called “Frankensteins”, and our profits
are considered obscene.
6) Composing Your Message: Crafting
Unified, Coherent Paragraphs
 3) Transitions: connect ideas by displaying how one
thought is connected to another.
 Transitions can range from a single word to a
complete paragraph or more.
 The following are ways to establish transitions:
 1) Use connecting words: Use conjunctions such as
and, but, or nevertheless, however, in addition, and
so on.
 6) Composing Your Message: Crafting
Unified, Coherent Paragraphs
 2) Echo a word or phrase from a previous
paragraph or sentence: Example: “A system should
be developed for monitoring inventory level. This
system will provide…”
 3) Use a pronoun that refers to a noun used
previously: Example: “Ms. Smith is the leading
candidate for the president’s position. She has
excellent qualifications.
 6) Composing Your Message: Crafting
Unified, Coherent Paragraphs
 4) Use words that are frequently paired: Example:
“ The machine has a minimum output of…… Its
maximum output is….”
 2) Choosing the Best Way to Develop Each
Paragraph: You have several options to develop
paragraphs such as:
 1) Illustration: Give examples to demonstrate the
general idea.
 6) Composing Your Message: Crafting
Unified, Coherent Paragraphs
 2) Comparison or contrast: Use similarities or
differences to develop the topic.
 3) Cause and effect: Focus on the reasons for
something.
 4) Classifications: Show how a general idea is
broken into specific categories.
 5) Problem and solution: Present a problem and
then discuss the solution.
Five Techniques for Developing
Paragraphs
 Reference
 Bovee, S.L., & Thill, J.V. (2018). Business
Communication Today, 14th edition, Pearson
Education Limited.