Week 8 Managerial Communication

Managerial Communications MBA501

Writing Techniques – Unit Eight:  Sentence Variety

Learning Objective:  Examine strategies for developing effective communication

One of the qualities of a great writer is to constantly strive for sentence variety.  Often this means following a straightforward but hard to accomplish writing technique:  Start each sentence with a different word (SESWADW) – this is purely a Professor Stoltz device!

The SESWADW writing rule applies to each page of a lengthy document or to a one-page memo or report.  Needless to say, it cannot be applied to a multi-page manuscript; however, staying as close to the rule as possible will improve your writing significantly.

In another way of expression, SESWADW, is like having something different for dinner each night of the week.  Having potato casserole each night for a month would be quite monotonous.  Remember too that writing is actually a form of entertainment – you want your readers to stay interested in the concepts you are attempting to communicate.

Throughout the term, we have learned several techniques to help us achieve SESWADW.  We have learned how to use subordinating conjunctions, conjunctive adverbs, parallel structure, and sentence combining.  Here is this final lesson for the quarter, I have created a list of verbals (a verb form) known as participles.  Directions:  use each of the following words to begin a sentence of your own creation.  What you will actually be doing is forming a participial phrase.

A phrase is a group of words that does not contain a subject or a verb.

Here’s an example:

Watching the game on television, John became quite hungry for a hamburger and fries.

Now you try…here are the words:

1. Walking
2. Eating
3. Drinking
4. Shouting
5. Removing
6. Running
7. Having
8. Climbing
9. Staring
10. Working
11. Sliding
12. Combining
13. Returning
14. Hearing
15. Singing