(Workshop) Proofreading for Letter Writing

Writing is not easy. It takes lots of focus, determination, and practice to get something to come out sounding right. And usually, even if something you wrote makes sense, a little proofreading and re-writing is necessary to produce something you can be proud of.

Today we will focus on writing business letters, spotting errors in our writing, and making suggestions for revision. While the rewriting process can seem difficult if we try to do everything all at once, there are basically three things we look at when we revise something. These are listed below:

1. The way you present your writing on paper (Style)
   
   Style describes how your writing looks to someone reading it. For example, if you’re writing a letter, you might ask the following questions about your style: Is the date in the right spot? Are the paragraphs indented? Is the return address in the traditional spot?
   
   Style is probably the easiest thing to check and correct. There are many resources in the First Work office that you can use to check your style, and you may also check your style using word processing programs like Microsoft Word.
   
   
   
   
   
2. The way you put words and sentences together (Mechanics)
   
   Mechanics deals with all the writing rules you learned in school like spelling and grammar. Many of these things you can check using computer programs like Microsoft Word.
   
   
   
   
   
3. The way you express your ideas (Rhetoric)
   
   Rhetoric is how you put down your ideas into words. For example, think about having to ask a friend to borrow $50. There are some ways that you can say this that would be successful and other ways that would get you a dirty look at best. Rhetoric is how you choose your words carefully to best get across your point with the desired effect. This is the hardest thing to revise because there's no set rules for how to word things.