Bad Writing Exercise

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Bad Writing Exercise

• Dr. Scott W. Kunkel
• University of San Diego

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• The following is a real business letter, sent
  from a sales manager to a customer, Cindy Jones.
• The next 3 slides are the letter
• The whole letter so you can see it is genuine.
• The top half of the letter enlarged so you can
  read it more easily.
• The bottom half enlarged.
• This letter contains over 40 grammatical,
  spacing, capitalization, punctuation and style
  errors.
• See if you can find at least 25 errors in the
  next 5 minutes. (Ill give you the first 5.)

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Here is the whole letter so you can see that it
is genuine.
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Ill give you the first 5 errors 1. No date. 2.
The street should be Clairemont Dr. 3. There
should be a unit number, 317. 4. The zip code
should be 92117. 5. Too much space between
address and Dear.
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Heres the rest of the letter. Now, see if you
can find at least 25 more errors. Find all you
can dont stop at 25. Remember, there are over
40 errors to find.
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Now that youve edited Wes letter

• What do you think of Wes?
• What adjectives would you use to describe him?
• Would you buy a car from him?
• Would you hire him to work for you?
• Does his poor writing cause you to question his
  competence in other areas?

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When customers see coffee stains on our
pull-down trays, they assume we dont do our
engine maintenance right (Herb Kelleher, CEO of
Southwest Airlines).
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What Conclusions Can You Draw?

• Did Wes letter make you lose respect for him?
• How do YOU want to be perceived by others? The
  way you perceived Wes?
• What did Wes do wrong?
• What should he have done? What is the solution?

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What is the value of this exercise?What did you
get from it?