Amendment Notes

Communication Essentials for Business is the second partial adaptation of Suzan Last’s Technical Writing Essentials completed by Robin L. Potter and Tricia Hylton. The first partial adaptation was completed in 2021 for Seneca’s technical communication subjects. While the original text by Suzan Last was quite complete and stood well as it was, assessing the needs of our college and university level business communication students led me to make some amendments and add chapters that would offer guidance specific for our business communication subjects.

• A chapter on intercultural communication has been added to the section on collaboration skills.
• Chapters on various types of correspondence have been added to Communicating Business Information so as offer guidance on addressing various correspondence situations and purposes.
• An overview on outlining skills has been added to Formatting and Organizing Reports chapter in the Reporting Business Information section.
• A section addressing the job search process and employment communication has also been added by drawing on the text adapted by Tom Bartsiokas, Communicating@Work.
• Content has been generally adapted to suit the context of business communication, including the addition of cases, sample documents, and examples that align with business processes, interactions, and relationship building.

While editing the text, I came across a lovely supplement: University of Victoria’s, Engineering Work Term Report Guide: A Guide to Content, Style and Format Requirements for University of Victoria Engineering Students Writing Co-op Work Term Reports, which had been updated by Last in 2017. Following Suzan’s confirmation that this was an open resource, I adapted this guide for our business communication students; it is now referenced and linked in this text as A Guide to Writing Formal Business Reports: Content, Style, Format.

Robin L. Potter