Business Papers and Essays

Business Papers and Essays In business, writing is a tool used to get things done. Because its fundamental goal is to help people do business, good business writing has efficiency as its hallmark. Writers should assume that their readers are busy individuals who have little time to spend extracting information from a document. Thus, an efficient business document makes its point quickly, often telling the reader what he or she needs to know in the opening paragraph. Extensive background information and detailed explanations are typically saved for later sections of the document. If you are studying for Business Administration degree or some other related business degree, most probably you will need lots of business term papers or essays that will require the special use of language and that will assume your audience to business people. As every paper, business term paper should go through the specific writing process that will make your paper to achieve your goal. Whether you are studying business or working in business, you may be asked to write a variety of types of documents. Some of the most common ones are memoranda, letters, employment documents such as job-application letters and resumes, and reports. For you as a student these documents will be assigned for studying purposes and will be in the form of business term papers that you will need to complete during your semester. Although you are only learning how to write your business letters, it doesn’t mean that you should not follow the common rules and tale into attention general principles for writing business papers. The reason is simple – your resume or memo will be graded as usual term paper and this mark will influence the grade for the whole course. In this section we would like to tell about general strategies that the writer should follow while writing his or her business term papers. You need to write more reader-oriented (rather than writer-oriented) prose. As a business writer you should have good instincts, based on your own reading experiences, about how readers read; you should try to write that way your business term papers if you want them to be good and match the business style writing. You need to get a better fix on the rhetorical context of a document before you start writing it. In your business term papers or essays you will need to start your writing processes by addressing the big-picture issues. For example: Who are your readers (both now and later)? What are you trying to accomplish? What are the key issues you, as writer, need to clarify and stress? What are the traps you need to avoid? To what extent does the situation call for heightened attention to visual issues? You need to plan the superstructures of important documents before you start drafting them. You will need to use more planning guides and outlines as drafting guides especially given the constant interruptions/disruptions of the writing process in the workplace. While writing papers you need to remember that arrangement decisions have visual, logical, and rhetorical effects. When you write in response to a particular piece of writing, you need to avoid allowing the arrangement of it to automatically control the arrangement of your response to it. You Need to Place Key Ideas in Up-Front and Highlighted Positions. In your business term papers you will need to write more directly, deductively, and non-narratively. Use more preview statements, and visual cues such as headings, boldings, bulletings, boxings, underlinings, etc. (as long as you use them wisely, sparingly, and consistently). You will need to reduce the number of visual-indexing cues; that is, the number of imaginary vertical lines running down a given page. You Need to Unpack, Deflate, Decompress, and Simplify Sentences. You will need to break the one-sentence-solution habit if you have one. As a revision strategy for your business term papers, you need to learn how to isolate your key idea, look at what is smothering or obscuring it, eliminate unnecessary or repetitive elements, and reconstruct what is left. In business papers or essays you will also need to be shown how references, disclaimers, qualifiers, and so forth can be moved into parentheticals, footnotes, and separate sentences. You Need to Be Vigilant About Both Common and Personal Little-Picture Error Patterns. You will need to learn how to identify and avoid your most chronic personal mechanical goofs and, if you are working in the group on your business paper or project, you need to be on the lookout for semicolon goofs, comma-set goofs, and the confusion of similar words. In the process, you will need to come to a better understanding of the differences between rules, house rules, and tastes.

1984 Themes, Symbols, and Literary Devices

'1984' Themes, Symbols, and Literary Devices Written at a time when dictatorships and totalitarian regimes were establishing a hold over much of the world despite the defeat of Hitler’s Nazis in World War II, in 1984 Orwell described what he saw as the inevitable outcome of any political movement that embraced authoritarianism and the cult of personality. Orwell was extremely frightened of political power being concentrated in a small number of individuals, correctly seeing it as a pathway to the loss of personal freedoms, and foresaw the technology that would make the erasure of those freedoms a simple task. Totalitarianism The most obvious and powerful theme of the novel is, of course, totalitarianism itself. A totalitarian state is one where there is only one political force legally permitted- all opposition to the state’s policies and actions is illegal, usually categorized as treason and met with violent retribution. This naturally stifles freedom of expression and makes change within the system impossible. In democratic societies, opposition groups can form political parties, express their ideas freely, and force the state to address concerns or be replaced. In a totalitarian society, this is impossible. Orwell’s Oceania goes further than even most existing totalitarian states. Where real-world authoritarian leaders seek to restrict information and control their populations in terms of their physical movements and spoken or written communication, Orwell’s government of the future seeks to inhibit thought itself and alter information at the source. Newspeak is a language invented by the state specifically to make independent thought literally impossible, and even Winston’s physical surroundings are designed to inhibit his freedoms, like the way his small apartment is dominated by the enormous two-way television screen, crowding him into a corner he incorrectly believes offers him some degree of privacy. That illusion is crucial to Orwell’s theme, as he strives to demonstrate that in a truly totalitarian society all freedom is in fact an illusion. Winston believes he finds ways to resist and meaningfully fight back against repression, all of which turn out to be gambits controlled by the state. Orwell argues that people who imagine they would heroically resist such a repressive regime are kidding themselves. Control of Information A crucial aspect of Oceania’s control over the citizenry is its manipulation of information. Workers at the Ministry of Truth actively adjust newspapers and books on a daily basis to match the ever-changing version of history that suits the purposes of the state. Without any kind of reliable source of facts, Winston and anyone who, like him, is dissatisfied or concerned about the state of the world, has only their vague feelings on which to base their resistance. More than simply a reference to Joseph Stalin’s practice of literally airbrushing people out of historical records, this is a chilling demonstration of how a lack of information and accurate data renders people powerless. Winston daydreams of a past that never actually existed and sees it as the goal of his rebellion, but since he lacks any real information, his rebellion is meaningless. Consider how he is tricked into overtly betraying the state by O’Brien. All the information Winston has about the Brotherhood and Emmanuel Goldstein is fed to him by the state itself. He has no idea if any of it is true- if the Brotherhood even exists, if there is even a man named Emmanuel Goldstein. Destruction of the Self Winston’s torture at the end of the novel is not simply punishment for his Thoughtcrimes and incompetent attempts to rebel; the purpose of the torture is to eradicate his sense of self. This is the ultimate goal of totalitarian regimes according to Orwell: A complete subservience to the goals, needs, and ideas of the state. The torture Winston undergoes is designed to destroy his individuality. In fact, every aspect of life in Oceania is designed to achieve this goal. Newspeak is designed to prevent negative thoughts or any thought that is not approved or generated by the state. The Two-Minutes Hate and the presence of Big Brother posters promote a sense of homogeneous community, and the presence of Thought Police- especially the children, who have been raised in the poisoned environment of the totalitarian state and who function as credulous and uncritical servants of its philosophy- prevents any sort of trust or true kinship. In fact, the Thought Police do not have to actually exist to achieve this goal. Simply the belief that they do is sufficient to inhibit any individual expression, with the ultimate result that the self is subsumed into Groupthink. Symbols Big Brother. The most powerful and recognizable symbol from the book- recognized even by people who have not read it- is the looming image of Big Brother on posters everywhere. The posters obviously symbolize the power and omniscience of the party, but they are only ominous to those who retain any kind of individual thought. For those fully assimilated into the party line, Big Brother is not an ironic term- he is seen as a protector, a kindly older sibling keeping them from harm, whether it be the threat of outside forces, or the threat of unmutual thoughts. Proles. Winston is obsessed with the lives of the proles, and fetishizes the red-armed prole woman as his main hope for the future, because she represents the potentially overwhelming power of numbers as well as a mother who will bear future generations of free children. It is notable that Winston’s best hope for the future takes the responsibility from his hands- he is not the one counted on to deliver this ill-defined future, it is up to the proles to rise up. And if they do not, the implication is that it is because they are dull and lazy. Telescreens. Another obvious symbol are the wall-sized televisions in every private space. This literal intrusion by the state is not a commentary on modern television, which did not exist in any meaningful way in 1948, but rather a symbol of the destructive and repressive power of technology. Orwell distrusted technology, and saw it as a grave danger to freedom. Literary Devices Limited Point of View. Orwell chooses to restrict our access to information by tying the narrative solely to Winston’s point of view. This is done specifically to keep the reader reliant on the information they are given, just as Winston is. This underscores the betrayal and shock that both feel when, for example, the Brotherhood is revealed to be fictional. Plain Language. 1984 is written in a very plain style, with few flourishes or unnecessary words. While many students take this to mean Orwell was a humorless man, or who simply lacked the ability to write in an exciting way, the fact is the opposite: Orwell had such control over his art he was able to match his writing style precisely to the mood and setting. The novel is written in a sparse, grim style that perfectly matches and evokes the grim, unhappy, and hopeless setting. The reader experiences the same dull, plodding sense of mere existence that Winston does.