Business Communication Today - Hardcover

Bovee, Courtland L.; Thill, John V.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0131478451 ISBN 13: 9780131478459

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 2004

Synopsis

A book that addresses the need for skills-building in today’s competitive business environment, Business Communication Today has been completely revised and reworked to provide the most cutting-edge information available on the market. Combining a solid foundation of communication fundamentals with practical advice and insights, readers will be effectively prepared for the challenges they’ll face when entering the job market. Thorough coverage and thoughtful integration of business communication technology sets this book apart from the competition. Every essential technology is covered, successfully demonstrating the importance of  business etiquette, teamwork, proper short communication (memos, email, instant messaging, etc.), and effective business reports and proposals. An especially useful tool for those entering the job market, this book is also a must-read for corporate trainers, office managers, and others that need to utilize effective communications on a day-to-day basis.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Learn to Write Business Messages Quickly and Easily with the Three-Step Process

You will learn to write business messages quickly, easily, and effectively with the exclusive Bovee/Thill/Schatzman three-step process: planning, writing, and completing business messages.

When you use a process, you move toward a particular result, and this text's three-step process helps you get better results than you would get with any other business communication textbook.

Students and instructors alike will appreciate how this practical, three-step strategy provides a solid foundation for solving communication problems and creating well-crafted business messages.

The three-step process is fully integrated throughout the book. It is introduced and explained in detail in chapters 4-6, just before the specific types of business messages are discussed. Then the three-step process is applied to short messages (letters, memos, and e-mail) in chapters 7-9, to reports and proposals in chapters 12-14, to speeches and oral presentations in chapters 15-16, and to employment messages in chapters 17-18.

1. Planning
• Analyze
  Study your purpose, lay out your writing schedule, and then profile your audience.
• Analyze
  Study your purpose, lay out your writing schedule, and then profile your audience.
• Analyze
  Study your purpose, lay out your writing schedule, and then profile your audience.
2. Writing
• Organize
  Define your main ideas, limit the scope, group your points, and choose the direct or indirect approach.
• Compose
  Control your style through level of formality and conversational tone. Choose your words carefully so that you can create effective sentences and paragraphs.
3. Completing
• Revise
  Evaluate content and review readability, editing, and rewriting for clarity and conciseness.
• Produce
  Use effective design elements and suitable delivery methods.
• Proofread
  Review for errors in layout, spelling, and mechanics.

This text provides dozens of superb examples of the finished product, including documents from such well-known companies as Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Ace Hardware, Target, Office Depot, Petsmart, and Carnival Cruise Lines, to name just a few. Many documents are accompanied by a graphic describing how the three-step process is applied, and all include annotations in the margins that discuss precisely how to apply the principles presented in the text.

Helping students master both process and product—that's just one of the reasons that Business Communication Today is the most successful business communication textbook published in the past 50 years.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Learn How tie Leading Text Blends with Technology to Create a Total Teaching and Learning Solution

Technology now plays a central role in business communication, and technology plays a central role in Business Communication Today, too—as both content and pedagogy. The eighth edition builds on 20 years of success with an extensive revision that integrates every vital form of technology that students will be expected to use on the job.

Technology is part of this book's mission to provide students with a solid background in communication fundamentals, a realistic look at the challenges of working in today's demanding business environment, and the skills they need to compete and succeed. From the opening chapter on communication concepts to the closing discussion of employment interviewing, Business Communication Today helps students use technology wisely, work quickly under time and budget constraints, and communicate with close attention to ethics and etiquette.

Moreover, only Business Communication Today helps instructors and students take full advantage of new advances in technology that can have a highly positive effect on learning. The blending of this textbook with technology, such as its "Document Makeovers" that are presented in an engaging multimedia environment, OneKey learning modules, and interactive website, make the text the most effective teaching and learning tool you'll find for a business communication course.

Because of its vivid insights into real-world communication situations and lively, conversational writing style, this text holds the interest of students and teachers alike. In the two decades since the first edition was published, millions of students have learned about business communication from Business Communication Today. The text has been awarded the prestigious Award of Excellence by the Text and Academic Authors Association and is the leading text in the field.

This textbook offers an extraordinary number of devices to simplify teaching, promote active learning, stimulate critical thinking, and develop career skills. As you'll see on the pages that follow, this edition of the text with its high-tech supplements make classes livelier, more relevant, and more enjoyable.

NEW CONTENT IN THIS EDITION

Integrated Approach to Technology

Technology is woven into the fabric of this book in every chapter to illustrate the changing ways people are communicating with each other. Students are introduced to the pervasive role of communication technology in a special four-page photo essay in Chapter 1, "Powerful Tools for Communicating Effectively." These cutting-edge topics throughout the book include the following:

• computer animation
• corporate blogs
• digital rights
• electronic documents
• electronic forms
• electronic presentations
• electronic resume production
• e-mail
• e-portfolios
• extranets
• graphic design software
• groupware and shared online workspaces
• idea-generation and document-planning software
• image processing tools
• instant messaging
• interactive media
• Internet telephony (VoIP)
• Intranets
• linked and embedded documents
• multimedia documents
• multimedia presentations
• online chat systems for sales and customer support
• online research techniques
• online survey tools
• proposal-writing software
• resume scanning systems
• RSS newsfeeds
• search and metasearch engines
• security and privacy concerns in electronic media (including e-mail hygiene)
• social networking applications
• streaming media templates and stylesheets
• translation software
• videoconferencing and telepresence
• virtual agents and bots
• virtual private networks (VPNs)
• web directories
• web publishing systems
• web-based virtual meetings
• webcasts
• website accessibility

OneKey Document Makeovers

In each chapter of the book, an assignment overview directs students to the OneKey website, where interactive exercises help them apply chapter concepts to an actual business document. "Document Makeovers" offer students an appealing opportunity to refine and reinforce their writing skills in a dynamic multimedia environment.

Peak Performance Grammar and Mechanics

In each chapter, students are directed to the OneKey website to improve their skills with mechanics and specific parts of speech by using the "Peak Performance Grammar and Mechanics" module. Students can take the pretest to determine whether they have any weak areas; then they can review those areas in the module's refresher course. Students can also take a follow-up test. For an extra challenge or advanced practice, students can take the advanced test.

Communication Close-Up

These Communication Close-Ups offer a chapter-framing communication situation. This situation dramatizes the connection between the chapter's contents and life on the job. Reviewers were unanimous in their praise of the rich, engaging real-company examples used to illustrate the book to make communication concepts come alive. To give students the most current picture of business communication possible, all 18 Communication CloseUps are new in this edition and highlight such intriguing organizations as Mark Burnett Productions (creators of Survivor and The Apprentice), Toyota Scion, Google, Rolling Stone magazine, and the Complete Idiot's Guides series.

Communication Solutions

Each chapter also contains one or more of these special margin notes that are adjacent to the principles in the text to which the solution relates and points to how the person featured in the vignette solved the problem described in the vignette.

Communication Challenges

These projects conclude each chapter and are related to the situation described in the Communication Close-Up. Each chapter has one individual challenge and one team challenge.

Special Feature Sidebars

Strategically placed within each chapter, special-feature sidebars extend the chapter material and center on four well-integrated themes: Ethics Detective, Communication Miscues, Communication Across Cultures, and Connecting with Technology. The sidebars are seamlessly integrated in the text and are an integral part of the learning experience. The Ethics Detective and Communication Miscues themes are both new, and a total of 29 sidebars in this edition are new.

Increased Coverage of Listening and Teams

To help students strengthen their communication skills, material on listening and working effectively in teams has been expanded and updated to include the latest information. Improved coverage provides students with skills they'll need to gain a competitive edge in today's workplace, including overcoming the tendency to prejudge, listening across cultural and language barriers, and using short-term memorization techniques that boost retention and reduce misinterpretation.

Increased Coverage of Business Etiquette

To obtain employment and succeed on the job, students need to understand and practice workplace etiquette in areas such as personal appearance, teamwork, face-to-face interactions, written correspondence (including maintaining etiquette in both negative and persuasive messages), research (such as respecting the privacy of interview subjects), instant messaging and e-mail, telephone interactions (receiving calls, making calls, reducing cell phone disruptions, and using voice mail), and job search and interviewing.

Business Communication Videos with Exercises

Entirely new, professionally produced videos cover topics such as ethics, technology, globalization, and intercultural communication. The videos feature real-world examples and are designed to effect a deeper understanding of the concepts and issues covered in the text. Each video is introduced with a synopsis, and exercises ask students to react to the videos by responding to questions, making decisions, and taking the initiative to solve real business communication problems. The following video case teaching guides for instructors are located at www.prenhall.com/bovee and in the instructor's manual:

• Ethical Communication, 2003, 11:40 minutes
• Second City: Communication, Innovation, and Creativity, 2005, 11:13 minutes
• Communicating in the Global Workplace, 2003, 11:12 minutes
• Impact of Culture on Business, 2004, 18:26 minutes
• Technology and the Tools of Communication, 2003, 5:13 minutes

TRADEMARK FEATURES All UPDATED FOR THIS EDITION

Emphasis on Process and Product

To help students write business messages quickly, easily, and effectively, chapters are organized into a series of three easy-to-follow steps (planning, writing, and completing business messages). In this eighth edition, the process has been further improved to present steps in a more logical order. A "Three-Step Writing Process" graphic not only illustrates the general process but is also applied to specific examples throughout the book.

Checklists

Useful during the course and even years after completion, checklists help students organize their thinking when they begin a project, make decisions as they write, and check their own work. Serving as reminders rather than "recipes," these checklists provide useful guidelines without limiting creativity. In the eighth edition, we've improved the checklists by making them more concise, action oriented, and tightly correlated with the wording of the text.

Sample Documents with Annotated Comments

Students can examine numerous sample documents, many collecte...

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0131478451
• ISBN 13: 9780131478459
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 585