Adopt the Seventeen Tools for Successful Sendings: The Power of Writing Well

By Pete Geissler

"A bad writer has no rights whatever. Any mercy shown to him is wasted and mistaken." (H. L. Mencken, 1880-1956)

I wrote The Power of Writing Well to address everything managers, leaders, engineers, scientists, and others need to be better senders and receivers, not to cover everything they need to know about the language or to be the perfect sender or receiver; nobody is.

The many books on writ

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Expressive Press
• Release date: Jun 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311017703

Pete Geissler

Pete Geissler is an outspoken advocate of good communications and behavior. His eight books, and hundreds of articles, speeches, and classes examine why and how to be articulate, to write well, and to treat people respectfully and ethically. His accomplishments include authorship of a publisher's best seller and a finalist in best books 2014, and writing more than three million words that have been published or spoken in formal settings. Pete is founder and CEO of The Expressive Press, a publisher of books in several genre. He also teaches and coaches engineers, scientists, and business persons how to write and to use writing to boost their productivity, value, and careers. He serves on the Board of Directors, Opera Theater Pittsburgh, and chairs its planned giving committee.

Book preview

FUNDAMEMNTALS

FOREWORD, CAVEATS, AND TIPS FOR CREATING YOUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

A bad writer has no rights whatever. Any mercy shown to him is wasted and mistaken. H.L. Mencken, 1880-1956.

I wrote THE POWER OF WRITING WELL to address everything managers, leaders, engineers, scientists and others need to be better senders and receivers, not to cover everything they need to know about the language or to be the perfect sender or receiver; nobody is.

The many books on writing and communicating that claim to be everything to everybody fail simply because they are overwhelmingly complex, full of jargon and useless labels and distinctions such as participial phrase as opposed to gerund phrase, or transitive verb versus intransitive verb. Most of us outside of academe don’t care, and we shouldn’t since they are not relevant to our needs. 

This short book condenses the habits and techniques—your tools—that work most of the time for most of the people who write at work and want to be happier in all parts of their lives: nothing more, nothing less.  It is also a true and accurate reflection of my forty years of writing for business and of teaching writing at two prestigious universities and many professional societies and companies. You can trust that what I’m telling you will improve your abilities to communicate and think, and make you more productive, promotable, and happy. It will also make your organization more efficient and profitable.

I guarantee it, and my students attest to it.

The book also reflects how I’ve taught and still teach, which I think is unusually effective. Basically, I’ll introduce a useful tool in abstract terms, and then illustrate it with examples, often with before-and-after examples to demonstrate the transformation from bad to good. In that way, I’ll put the tool into the real world: yours, where it belongs.  Then I’ll comment as you read, and then summarize with more before-and-after examples, some of which I hope you’ll resonate with—Aha; I’ve read or written or heard that before — and be amused by.

The before examples—correctable or improvable— are always italicized; the after—corrected or improved—in regular type.

You can create your personal competitive advantage by understanding your incentives and adhering to all the tools, connecting them in your mind to create  a cohesive whole,  applying them in the more complex before-and-after examples in Chapters VIII and X, then applying them immediately to your everyday