Writing to Win: How to Write Right
A frequent speaker, instructor, advisor, and writer on credit risk and commercial banking topics and issues, Dev is the principal of Devon Risk Advisory Group and engages in consulting, speaking and training on a wide range of risk, credit, and lending topics. As former SVP and senior credit policy officer at SunTrust Bank, Atlanta, he was responsible for developing, implementing, and administering credit policies for SunTrust's wholesale lines of business--commercial, commercial real estate, corporate investment banking, capital markets, business banking, and private wealth management. He also spent three years as managing director and credit approver in SunTrust's Florida commercial lending and corporate investment banking areas, respectively. Prior to SunTrust, Dev was chief credit officer for Barnett Bank's Palm Beach market. Besides stints at other banks in Florida, Kansas City, and Ohio, Dev's experiences outside of banking include CFO of a Honolulu construction company, combat engineer officer in the U.S. Army, and college economics instructor in Hawaii, Missouri, and Florida. A graduate of Ohio State University and the ABA Stonier Graduate School of Banking, he earned his M.B.A. from the University of Hawaii.
Dev serves as an instructor in RMA's Florida Commercial Lending School, the Stonier Graduate School of Banking, the Southwestern Graduate School of Banking, the Pacific Coast Banking School, and the American Bankers Association's (ABA) Commercial Lending. His school, conference, and workshop audiences have included participants drawn from the ABA, RMA, OCC, Federal Reserve, FDIC, FFIEC, SBA, the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) and the AICPA.
Dev has written about credit risk management, financial analysis, and related subjects for the ABA's Commercial Insights, the Risk Management Association's RMA Journal, and other business professional journals. He is the author of Analyzing Construction Contractors and its related RMA workshop. A past national chair of RMA and former Florida Chapter president, Dev serves as a member of the RMA Journal's advisory board, and an ex-officio board member of the Florida and Atlanta RMA chapters. He also serves on the advisory board of the Atlanta Chapter of the Professional Risk Managers' International Association (PRMIA), and he has consulted on credit risk issues with banks in Morocco, Egypt, and Angola through the US State Department's Financial Service Volunteer Corps (FSVC).
Business writing is best when it is spare and clear, precise, and concise. This session is designed to give practical and useful advice and tips on how to tighten up the language and organize the content into a logical, convincing read. Attendees don’t have to be English majors or literature students. The aim is to improve the readability of your written words.
Participants will learn how to:
- Eliminate puffy and ambiguous words and phrases and replace them with sharper, clearer alternatives
- Understand how to use punctuation to tighten writing into a more readable and understandable documentation
- Build stronger, easy-to-understand explanations and recommendations with more focus on sequential, logical constructions—less is usually more
- Support these objectives with appropriate before-and-after examples
Areas Covered
- Techniques for writing clearly and concisely
- Clear writing
- Specific words vs. generalities
- Active vs. passive voice
- Unnecessary words & phrases
- Doublets & redundancies
- Wordy habit phrases
- Wordy dependent clauses
- Unneeded connecting words
- Wordy “due to” explanations
- Techniques for writing well-organized, logical arguments
- Introductions & summaries to the integrated argument - Avoiding elevator analysis
- Bringing order to facts, interpretations & evaluations
- Making words count right
Some extra readability writing tips—rounding numbers, acronyms, “of” and parenthesis eradication. Good writing takes practice, and many schools have reduced the time spent on formal writing, especially practical grammar, proficient spelling, appropriate punctuation, logical development, etc. This course can’t fill that kind of educational vacuum, but it can help participants improve on the skills they do have. So this is a webinar useful to many areas of your organization—not just lenders and credit approvers, not just credit analysts and loan reviewers, but also auditors, loan administrators, marketing, retail, operations—anyone who has to explain or convince others that what they are saying makes sense.
Course Level - Basic/Fundamental
Who Should Attend
Anyone in an organization who communicates with external clients and/or within an organization with teammates.
Why Should You Attend
Good leaders walk the talk, but they also “write right”. They know how to say in a few words what needs to be said in crisp, clear language. The road to bad communication is paved with good intentions but poor construction. Readers know when subjects and verbs don’t agree when punctuation misses the point when words don’t fit, and content is confusing. In this session, learn how a few basic rules on grammar, punctuation, and usage can improve business written communications with clearer, more succinct content.
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$200.00
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