Ten Tips for Improving Your Professional Writing

Practical Writing Advice from a Former CIA Analytic Manager

Who Is This Course For?

If you’re expected to provide insightful written products to your executives or external customers, then you’ve come to the right place. This course is for any professional whose writing could use improvement, which, if we’re being honest, is almost everyone. Whether you’re evaluating policies, assessing risk, or analyzing foreign countries, this course will help you create clear and concise written products. Its 10 tips target common writing problems and will quickly raise your writing game.

The tips come from the instructor’s nearly 30 years of experience creating, reviewing, and teaching others how to write effective analytic products for demanding customers in the public and private sectors. If you consistently follow these tips, you’ll avoid the majority of pitfalls that lead to extensive edits and products that go unread or misunderstood.

Students

Most undergrad and grad students rarely receive training in how to write like a professional instead of an academic. As a result, they face a steep learning curve when starting their careers. This course offers a head start in honing professional writing skills before the first day on the job. It will also help students create stronger papers that will stand out to professors tired of reading sloppy prose.

Professionals

Any professional who writes for a living—and most analysts fall into that category—can stand to improve their writing. New professionals mounting that just-mentioned learning curve can accelerate their development with this course, and experienced ones can always use a quick refresher.

Managers

To effectively review professional writing, you must focus on the big picture as well as the details, and this course will help you do both. A critical part of being a reviewer is teaching through your edits, and the 10 tips provide a simple framework for developing your employees’ basic writing skills.

Win Over Your Skeptical Customer

Your customers have a host of reasons not to listen to you. For you to succeed as a professional, you must overcome these reasons, and the 10 tips will help you.

They must read

Your customers are very busy and looking for any excuse not to read yet another paper or memo. If they don’t take the time to read your work, you have failed to help them and wasted your time. This puts a premium on your being concise.

They must understand

If your customers decide to read your product, but they are confused by your prose and arguments, you have failed to provide value. Your writing therefore must be clear.

They must believe

Even if customers read and understand your writing, if they doubt your arguments, evidence, or attention to detail, they will not believe you, and you will have wasted their time. You and your writing must be credible.

What You’ll Get

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Nearly Two Hours of Video Content

Self-paced, take the course wherever, whenever, and as often as you like.

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Course Transcript

Every lesson has a complete transcript so you can quickly and easily find key information when you need it.

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Downloadable Worksheets

You’ll have a chance to practice many of the skills and tips the course covers through a series of downloadable worksheets and answer keys.

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Downloadable Summary Tips Handout

A quick reference to remind yourself of the courses key suggestions for improving your professional writing.

What You’ll Learn

In this course, you’ll learn:

The proper mindset a professional needs when approaching any writing assignment
The challenges of a skeptical customer and how to overcome them
The fundamental elements of all good professional writing
How to avoid the most common mistakes in professional writing
The picky elements of writing that can destroy your credibility with your customer if you get them wrong

Course Content

Introduction

Tip 1 – Adopt the Proper Mindset

Tip 2 – Embrace the Inverted Pyramid

Tip 3 – Use Evidence Effectively

Tip 4 – Prune Your Prose

Tip 5 – Use Passive Language Carefully

Tip 6 – Avoid Squishy Words

Tip 7 – Choose the Right Word

Tip 8 – Punctuate Properly

Tip 9 – Beware Pronoun Confusion

Tip 10 – Minimize Unit Modifier Mayhem

Bonus Tip – Self-Edit Like a Boss

Conclusion

Your Instructor: Dr. Chris Savos

Dr. Chris Savos is dedicated to helping analysts everywhere build great careers. In addition to developing courses for Proficiency1, he designs and delivers unique in-person leadership, analytic, and professional skills training programs to a range of clients in the Intelligence Community and the private sector.

Chris knows what makes analytic products work, what causes them to fail, and how to teach analysts to improve their writing. He has reviewed thousands of products as a leader of analytic units at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and many more as an analytic writing instructor since leaving the Agency.

Chris has extensive experience as an executive manager, leader, and analyst with the CIA, where he worked for 22 years and earned the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal, the Agency’s highest award for career service. Chris successfully led analytical units that covered sensitive issues in the Middle East and in South and East Asia. He was also the CIA’s first Lead Talent Officer for the Directorate of Analysis and oversaw talent management and development programs for the Agency’s analytic workforce.

Chris earned a BA in government from Dartmouth College and a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You can learn more about him at www.chrissavos.com

Start improving your professional writing today!

$199

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30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

We want this decision to be 100% risk-free so you can focus on learning. If you decide the course didn’t deliver on its promise for any reason, just let us know and we’ll refund your full payment, no questions asked.