and readability.

2. Briefly explain the difference between the topic of a message and the main idea.

A: The topic of a message is its broad subject, condensed to one idea. In contrast, the main idea is a specific statement about the topic.

3. Briefly explain how the growth of electronic communication has become both a blessing and a curse for business communicators.
How can your audience’s level of understanding help you determine the appropriate amount of information to include in a business message?

5. What is the scope of a business message?

Why do written communication and most forms of electronic media generally require more tact than oral communication?

7. What is credibility and when is it especially important to establish?

8. List at least three guidelines to follow if you want to achieve a conversational tone in business messages.

9. Explain what it means to choose “words that communicate well,” then list four techniques for selecting the best words when writing business messages.

10. Briefly explain the difference between file merge and mail merge.

PART II

Perform some preliminary research on blogging in business writing. Identify four blogs you find interesting and explain in a two page APA formatted paper about why you selected them. Then, use two additional pages to compare and contrast the writing style in blogs to the

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