Written Communication, Business Communication - Paul Sims, Oklahoma State University

Hello! Hello, how are you? Good. What is your name? My name is Paul Sims. Okay and what do you do for the management department? I teach business communication, written communication. Okay so before coming to Spears, where did you go for undergrad and grad school? So. undergrad was years ago at the University of Alabama, my major was in journalism and my minor was in Human Resource Management. In 2011 I began doing graduate work at Auburn University. If you know anything about Alabama, I have degrees from the two rival institutions and I'm an anomaly but that's okay. Several years later, I came here to Oklahoma State and obtained the Masters in English and Teaching English as a Second Language in 2017. I started teaching here in 2018. 

So in the first several weeks of the course we're laying foundations. Things about how to interact with cultures, how do you deal with conflict in the workplace, how to write effectively and then latter part, we focus on reports. But one component we also emphasize is visual literacy to. help people understand how color works, how text works, the differences between the types of fonts. Also that they can be prepared to move into the professional world and if they need to do these things they're ready for it. 

The number one thing is to be prepared to think critically, to problem solve. I would say also the big thing is audience, purpose, and medium. Who is your audience? wow will they perceive the message? Why are you communicating with them? and what medium are you going to choose? and sometimes oral communication/verbal communication is the better choice, depending on the situation. 

So conciseness is really key. The big thing for conciseness is, it's not easy to start small, especially if you know you're going to be writing right in this space, starr small. If you just have to get it all out, that's okay. Trim you look for things fluff like "in order to", other things that don't really enhance the message, cut.

One thing I've developed is especially when I'm really trying to make sure I know what the message says, is I'll read it aloud. Sometimes,  I will catch things because sometimes when I'm writing, in my mind I will see ""the", but then I didn't type it. Yeah, yes! So I can catch that when I'm reading. Just remember that when you're writing in an organizational business context, you're representing not just yourself, you're representing other people, so that's why the ethics matter, that's why all these things about flexibility and decision making matter.