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Grammar and Usage: A One-Day Seminar

How to eliminate embarrassing mistakes, gain confidence, and produce clear, credible business communications.

	If you want to eliminate costly and embarrassing mistakes,
	If you want to be updated on the latest grammar techniques,
	If you want to produce clear, credible business communications,

... this one-day information-packed seminar will give you the confidence needed to communicate clearly and correctly.

Communication skills are essential to the framework of any business. The sender of the message is 100% responsible for the receiver's perception. Hence, a misplaced or ambiguous modifier can pre-determine an unexpected response. A missing comma can change the meaning. A misspelled word can be costly to a business relationship.

To ensure that your staff is operating with the latest and most up-to-date grammar tools, this sensational seminar is a must. No company, organization, firm, or agency can afford to lose business because of spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, or usage errors. It, therefore, becomes the responsibility of management to eliminate that possibility by providing quality training to those who represent their organization's business. Everyone needs to be open to revisit the basics and to become aware of the changes in using this foremost powerful communication tool.

Who will benefit ...

Everyone on staff, including:

	Receptionists
	Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
	Marketing and Sales Staff
	Customer Service Representatives
	Managers and Supervisors

How we present this material ...

Your certified trainer will tailor this one-day fun-packed seminar to meet your company's specific needs and objectives. An overhead projector with slides aids in transmitting an abundance of information.

A workbook with exercises and group activities enhances the learning experience and provides a valuable resource for participants to add to their professional library. Questions are encouraged to enable participants to increase knowledge and build confidence.

Key learning points ...

	Deliver a crisp, clear, and error-free message
	Avoid common errors in subject-verb agreement
	Overcome "spelling block"
	Employ correct use of punctuation, including the use of the comma in a series
	Know the proper spacing between the period and the next sentence
	Identify when to spell-out a number or use the numerical value
	Understand the capitalization rules
	Apply the "company consistency" rule
	Know the difference between active and passive voice
	Construct sentences with power verbs
	Be the ultimate professional with error-free grammar in the spoken and written word

As a result of this training ...

	Writing projects will move faster
	Telephone skills will improve
	Staff will produce shorter, clearer, powerful documents
	Writing will excel
	Re-writing will be reduced

Program Agenda

Pre-Program Assessment
Engage in pre-program exercise to identify current knowledge of grammar and usage

The Building Blocks of Language

	How to use the 3 types of sentences
	How to identify a smothered verb
	How to distinguish passive voice from active voice
	How to energize a sentence
	How to punctuate complex and compound sentences
	How to use the parts of speech effectively
	How to identify a phrase and a clause
	How to avoid sentences that are too long
	How to meet the reader's need

The Punctuation Challenge

	How to employ the traffic signal approach to punctuation
	How to identify the appropriate and flexible uses of the period, comma, and semi-colon
	How to know the number of spaces between the period and the next sentence
	How to apply the 3-step process for using the apostrophe in possessive case
	How to use quotation marks with other pieces of punctuation in the same sentence
	How to identify punctuation trends

Spelling

	How to apply 6 spelling tips to aid in reducing spelling block
	How to "make" the list of the 100 most misspelled words
	How to avoid spell-check reliance

Capitalization

	How to apply the 12 basic rules for capitalization
	How to use the company consistency rule
	How to apply the capitalization rule to titles

Common Mistakes and Language Taboos

	How to avoid noun-pronoun mistakes
	How to use parallelism to reduce confusion
	How to ensure subject-verb agreement
	How to identify 3 modifier problems and how to correct them
	How to distinguish grammar myths from grammar truths
	How to choose the correct pronoun every time, including who and whom
	How to reduce wordiness in any communication
	How to avoid he/she construction
	How to avoid false subjects
	How to use numbers in sentence structure
	How to distinguish different time formats
	How to eliminate the "choppy" sentence

Tricky Twins — 4 units of word pairs that can be troublesome, including:

	affect/effect
	anxious/eager
	fewer/less
	that/which

Post-Program Assessment

Engage in a post-program grammar exercise to measure the results and see the success of the day.

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