Document for Analysis: Poorly Written E-Mail Message The following message suffers from a number of weaknesses discussed in this chapter.

Your Task.

Study the message and analyze its weaknesses. In teams or in a class discussion, list at least five specific weaknesses. Then, revise to avoid long lead-ins, fillers, redundancies, wordy compound prepositions, verbs converted to nouns, trite expressions, and general wordiness. Look for four points that could function as bullet points with category headings. Revise at a computer or on paper using standard proofreading marks.

TO: Jodi Jameson

FROM: Fausto Amato

DATE: March 20, 2009

SUBJECT: Avoiding a PowerPoint Slumber Party Jodi,

I am writing this message because, pursuant to your request, I attended a seminar about the use of PowerPoint in business talks. You suggested that there might be PowerPoint tips that I would learn that we could share with other staff members, many of whom create PowerPoint presentations. The speaker, Melissa Frieden, made some very good points on the subject of PowerPoint. There were several points of an important nature that are useful in avoiding a PowerPoint slumber party. Our staff members should give consideration to the following: Create first the message, not the slide. Only after preparing the entire script should you think about how to make an illustration of it. You should prepare slides with short lines. Your slides should have only four to six words per line. Short lines act as an encouragement to people to listen to you and not read the slide.

Don’t put each and every thing on the slide. If you put too much on the slide, your audience will be reading Item C while you are still talking about Item A. As a last and final point, she suggested that presenters think in terms of headlines. What is the main point? What does it mean to the audience? Please let me know whether you want me to elaborate and expand on these points subsequent to the next staff meeting. Fausto