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Writing and PR classes
Does your staff write as well as you'd like?
Do you find yourself correcting basic mistakes? Rewriting material?
Have you been embarrassed by basic grammatical errors?
Help is at hand.
An award-winning writer and teacher, Kay Paumier can help your staff improve their writing. Kay’s in-house programs use accelerated learning techniques to increase comprehension and enhance retention. The programs are tailored to each company’s needs and goals.
Kay has been conducting workshops at San Jose State Professional Development Center for more than a dozen years. She has also taught at the Cisco Systems San Jose Entrepreneur Center, and does in-house writing training for PR firms and other companies.
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"Kay's instruction helped our staff write more effectively. She provided useful, relevant tips and techniques. Virtually everyone benefited from the reminder of writing basics, and from the focus on PR writing in particular. And she's an engaging presenter who keeps people involved." Don Scott, Chief Operating Officer, GlobalFluency
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The interactive modules, which can be mixed or matched, include:
Grammar and Punctuation (60-90 minutes)
An overview of common grammatical errors, including:
Subject and predicate agreement, including the challenge of compound subjects, collective nouns, and subjects with prepositional phrases
The proper use of pronouns, including the need to agree in number, gender and person
Misplaced modifiers, including ways to correct the sentence
An overview of proper word use, reflecting Mark Twain’s adage that “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is…the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.”
Topics include the proper use of the following:
Lie and lay
Principle and principal
Good and well
Bad and badly
You’re and your
Affect and effect
Abbreviations (i.e., e.g. and etc.)
Assure, ensure and insure
That and which
Over and more than
Can and may
Their, there and they’re
An overview of common punctuation errors, including:
Apostrophes, especially “it’s” and “its”
Commas, colons and semicolons
Hyphens, including the use in compound modifiers
Quotations, their use and placement with other punctuation marks
The participants will review sentences, correcting them if needed.
Clear Writing (60-90 minutes)
An overview of the basic techniques that apply to all forms of writing, including:
Using active voice to add power and clarity
Writing positive statements to increase comprehension
Writing clearly and concisely to assure readability
Using strong nouns and verbs to give strength and color
Using strong sentence constructions.
The participants will jointly edit some sentences that could use improvement.
Effective News Releases (60-90 minutes)
Tips for writing effective news releases, including:
The structure of the release including the five “W’s” and “H,” the inverted pyramid and the boilerplate
The headline and subhead ("deck"), including the benefit headline
The lead, including different approaches for news, benefit and feature leads
Other tips, including effective quotations and words to avoid
Search engine optimization to maximize the release’s online impact
The participants will review headlines and leads of sample news releases and determine how to improve them.
Pitches (60 minutes)
Tips for effective email pitches for story ideas, product reviews, speaking placements and the like. Tips include:
The elements of an effective pitch
Ways to make the subject line “sing”
Approaches to starting the pitch
The participants will review some pitches and discuss how to improve them.
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