Writing skills - An interesting article (Source: www.mindtools.com)
Many people are intimidated by writing. Even so, there are times when writing is the best way to communicate, and often the only way to get your message across.
Write With Necessary Caution: When writing, remember that once something is in written form, it cannot be taken back. Communicating this way is concrete than verbal communications, with less room for error and even less room for mistakes. This presents written communicators with additional challenges, including spelling, grammar, punctuation, even writing style and actual wording.
Thankfully, today’s technology makes memo, letter and proposal writing much easier by providing reliable tools that check and even correct misspelled words and incorrect grammar use. Unfortunately, these tools are not foolproof and will require your support, making your knowledge in this area important.
The Importance of "Style": Some of the most basic tips to remember when writing include:-
Avoid slang words
Try not to use abbreviations (unless appropriately defined)
Steer away from the symbols (such as ampersands [&])
Clichés should be avoided, or at the very least, used with caution
Brackets are used to play down words or phrases
Dashes are generally used for emphasis
Great care should ALWAYS be taken to spell the names of people and companies correctly
Numbers should be expressed as words when the number is less than 10 or is used to start a sentence (example: Ten years ago, my brother and I…). The number 10, or anything greater than 10, should be expressed as a figure (example: My brother has 13 Matchbox cars.)
Quotation marks should be placed around any directly quoted speech or text and around titles of publications
Keep sentences short
While these tips cover the most common mistakes made when writing letters, memos and reports, they in no way cover everything you need to know to ensure your written communications are accurate and understood.
Be an Active Listener (Source: www.mindtools.com)
Something I wanted to share with all of you. We all lack this skill very much as most of us are too impatient to give others a hearing. Hope you like it.
It is obvious to say that if you have poor interpersonal communications skills (which include active listening), your productivity will suffer simply because you do not have the tools needed to influence, persuade and negotiate – all necessary for workplace success. Lines of communications must be open between people who rely on one another to get work done.
Considering this, you must be able to listen attentively if you are to perform to expectations, avoid conflicts and misunderstandings, and to succeed - in any arena. Following are a few short tips to help you enhance your communications skills and to ensure you are an active listener:
1. Start by Understanding Your Own Communication Style
Good communication skills require a high level of self-awareness. Understanding your personal style of communicating will go a long way toward helping you to create good and lasting impressions on others. By becoming more aware of how others perceive you, you can adapt more readily to their styles of communicating. This does not mean you have to be a chameleon, changing with every personality you meet. Instead, you can make another person more comfortable with you by selecting and emphasizing certain behaviors that fit within your personality and resonate with another. In doing this, you will prepare yourself to become an active listener.
2. Be An Active Listener
People speak at 100 to 175 words per minute (WPM), but they can listen intelligently at up to 300 words per minute. Since only a part of our mind is paying attention, it is easy to go into mind drift - thinking about other things while listening to someone. The cure for this is active listening - which involves listening with a purpose. It may be to gain information, obtain directions, understand others, solve problems, share interest, see how another person feels, show support, etc.
If you're finding it particularly difficult to concentrate on what someone is saying, try repeating their words mentally as they say it - this will reinforce their message and help you control mind drift.
3. Use Nonverbal Communication
Use nonverbal behaviors to raise the channel of interpersonal communication. Nonverbal communication is facial expressions like smiles, gestures, eye contact, and even your posture. This shows the person you are communicating with that you are indeed listening actively and will prompt further communications while keeping costly, time-consuming misunderstandings at a minimum.
4. Give Feedback
Remember that what someone says and what we hear can be amazingly different! Our personal filters, assumptions, judgments, and beliefs can distort what we hear. Repeat back or summarize to ensure that you understand. Restate what you think you heard and ask, "Have I understood you correctly?" If you find yourself responding emotionally to what someone said, say so, and ask for more information: "I may not be understanding you correctly, and I find myself taking what you said personally. What I thought you just said is XXX; is that what you meant?"
Feedback is a verbal communications means used to clearly demonstrate you are actively listening and to confirm the communications between you and others. Obviously, this serves to further ensure the communications are understood and is a great tool to use to verify everything you heard while actively listening.
Coffee is good for memory
Drinking coffee really does have its benefits if you’re a woman, and over the age of 65, for it will help protect your memory.
The finding is based on a study conducted by researchers at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research, in Montpellier, France, who were led by Karen Ritchie, PhD. The study involved 7,000 people whose cognitive abilities and caffeine consumption were evaluated over four years.
The researchers found that women age 65 and older who drank more than three cups of coffee (or the equivalent in tea) per day had less decline over time on tests of memory than women who drank one cup or less of coffee or tea per day.
These results remained the same even after the researchers adjusted for other factors that could affect memory abilities, such as age, education, disability, depression, high blood pressure, medications, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic illnesses.
Moreover, the benefits increased with age – coffee drinkers being 30 percent less likely to have memory decline at age 65 and rising to 70 percent less likely over age 80.
