The Writer's Handbook: 12 Workshops for Effective Writing: For Social Workers

THE SECOND EDITION OF THIS TEXT IS NOW AVAILABLE. As a companion to The Writer's Handbook: A Guide for Social Workers, 12 Workshops for Effective Writing offers a step-by-step process to develop the writing skills of undergraduate and graduate students. The 12 workshops are sequenced so that one topic leads to another. Because many writers are held back by editor's block, the first step is learning to write freely. The next step is building solid editing skills so that writers make decisions based on principles rather than guesses. Each chapter focuses on a different topic, assisting learners in filling knowledge gaps that now hold them back from achieving their best. This approach uses punctuation as the cornerstone for building editing skills and achieves a multitude of outcomes, giving writers control over structure and thus the quality of their writing. Most chapters contain a pre- and posttest to measure skill gain along with an inventory to gauge current knowledge on each topic. Writers learn to adapt their voice to various audiences, focusing on the differing qualities of professional, academic, and personal (or reflective) writing. Writers also learn that formatting is an element of voice—readers can see the quality of their document at a glance. The design and sequencing of these workshops is modeled after The Business Writing Workshop, which has received excellent results at major U.S. corporations since 1990.

Dona J. Young, MA, teaches professional writing at Indiana University, Northwest campus, and Loyola University’s Quinlan School of Business Executive MBA programs. Young also designs and facilitates corporate writing programs. She earned an MA in education from The University of Chicago, a certificate from the Teacher Education Program (TEP) at The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and a BA in sociology from Northern Illinois University. She is the author of Business Communication and Writing (Writer’s Toolkit Publishing, 2012), Business English: Writing for the Global Workplace (McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2008), and Foundations of Business Communication (McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2006), among others. Young believes that writing is a powerful learning tool and that learning shapes our lives.