"GPO Refresher—Review of Grammar and Style Reference Works" - Do I need a comma in this sentence?  Should this letter be capitalized?  What is the difference between that and which?  These questions can plague anyone revising a document.  No one has all the rules down pat.  But every serious writer should have a series of good reference works handy.  This webinar provides a brief tour of a variety of grammar handbooks and style manuals, invaluable resources for anyone who wants to improve their writing or editing skills.  You will learn the difference between the hard and fast rules known as grammar and the variety of writing choices called style.  You will be given an overview of several grammar handbooks, including typical organizations and answers to common writing questions.  You will also see how to use the government’s style manual:  The United States Government Printing Office Style Manual; or, more simply, the GPO.  Finally, you will learn how to use Word’s formatting and grammar features more effectively.

Objectives:

• Distinguish between grammar rules and style choices.
• Use a grammar handbook effectively to answer common writing questions.
• Use the GPO to format documents correctly.
• Use Word’s grammar features effectively.

Objectives:

• Identify sentences and paragraphs that could benefit from revision.
• Answer the question, “who is doing what to whom?”
• Put the answer into subject, verb, object positions to create coherent sentences.

"Pre-writing: Effective Use of Brainstroming & Mindmaps" - Even though we are taught in the CW/CT class how important it is to engage in pre-writing before launching into a complex piece of writing we still don’t take the time to do it.  But investing in a few simple prewriting strategies can save you during editing and revision process later.  Review some brainstorming techniques that you can work on by yourself or in collaboration with others.  I’ve heard that some of you are interested in learning more about “Mind Maps” so I show you how to work with these.  Mind Maps can help you with the overall structure of your topic and recognize the relative importance of individual parts of it. They help you to associate ideas and make connections that you might not otherwise make.

Objectives:

• Recognize the benefits of preparing to write by spending time generating ideas and organizing information.
• Identify a few ways to consolidate information, think through complex problems and play with the overall structure of your document by using pre-writing techniques.
• Construct a simple mind map and transfer it to a document draft.

"Go With the Flow—Adding Transitions" - If you’ve ever had a draft returned with the words “choppy,” “doesn’t flow”, or “irrelevant” blotting the margins, this webinar is for you.  Such comments are frequently found in writing that lacks transitions.  By learning to identify and use transitional words and expressions, you can improve the flow of your ideas and demonstrate their significance to the topic under discussion.  As part of our continuing webinar series for graduates of NCTC’s ECS 3167 Critical Writing, Critical Thinking course, this session will identify the common problems caused by missing transitions.  We’ll review different types of transitions from the blatant to the subtle, practice using them smoothly and logically, and discuss the critical thought advantages to considering connections.

Objectives:

• Identify problems caused by a lack of transitions.
• Understand and employ a range of transitional words, expressions, and alternate methods of connecting ideas.
• Avoid common transition problems, including errors in logic or misplaced emphasis.Learn the benefit of transitions to the critical thought process.

"Reduce the Reader’s Workload by Coordinating and Subordinating the Right Ideas" - If reading a document has ever left you absolutely drained, chances are it contained no subordinating structures.  If you’ve ever failed to see the relevance, the writer probably failed to coordinate the ideas.  These two simple structures allow our readers to identify a hierarchy of ideas in our documents and thus process information with ease.  Without them, it becomes nearly impossible to make connections or come to an agreement on key issues.  If you want your documents to read smoothly, if you want your readers to see your point clearly, if you want your arguments to communicate effectively, please join us in our ongoing webinar series.  We’ll discuss how to identify sentence groups that require a high degree of attention and how to reduce the reader’s workload by subordinating ideas appropriately.  We’ll also talk about the benefits of coordination and see how both together can improve our flow, our reader’s retention, and our document’s effectiveness.

Objectives:

• Identify sentence groups that require a high attention span.
• Select the right ideas to subordinate and the logical transitions to do so.
• Use coordinating structures to improve relevance and flow.
• Balance subordinating and coordinating structures logically and smoothly.

"Preparing manuals, procedures and documentation" - Description TBD

Contact:

Karene Motivans
Phone: 304/876 7458
Email: karene_motivans@fws.gov