• Practise stating the purpose of correspondence as early and as clearly as possible for an intended audience
• Use a variety of techniques for getting started
• Develop paragraphs that are unified and coherent
• Use parallelism and other textual devices to create written messages that are reader-friendly
• Develop sentences that are free from error
• Write in a style that is clear and direct, whenever appropriate
• Write in a tone that is determined by the reader, the purpose and situation
• Revise with the intended reader and purpose in mind.

• Principles of Report Writing is highly recommended for those who write reports for the United Nations, particularly since the course content reflects the ongoing reform in the Organization.
• Participants begin to understand what is required to produce reports that are:  accurate, action-oriented, brief, clear, concise, simple and well-organized.  The course covers both pre-writing and writing processes, as well as style and tone, paragraph and sentence development and word choice.

• Determine reader and purpose
• Use one or more pre-writing techniques to get started
• Produce a flexible outline with the intended readers in mind
• Use appropriate formats
• State the purpose of a report in a brief summary or introduction
• Design a survey or questionnaire
• Recognize and use logical methods of reasoning and avoid logical fallacies
• Develop unified, coherent paragraphs
• Identify and correct sentence-level and word-level errors
• Proofread and revise their drafts.

• The Writing Clinic is a writing development service guided by a tutor and peers to facilitate staff in enhancing their writing skills. The emphasis of most sessions is on the writing process (e.g. development, structure, argumentation, cohesion, clarity, flow, style, paragraph structure).
• Participants are required to bring their own piece of writing (articles, reports, PR, or other papers) and are encouraged to direct the Tutor to the sections of their work that they believe would be most helpful.
• All participants are encouraged to provide input and to peer review the writing that is brought in for discussion. The tutor will then provide suggestions for writing improvement and may provide examples, get the participants to rewrite a portion of the writing, or use other appropriate strategies.

The Writing Clinic IS NOT…

• Not editing where grammatical mistakes are identified and corrected. The tutor will identify grammatical problems and may even refer to an appropriate resource such as a writing handbook, or provide handouts of relevant materials.
• Not proofreading where all errors in a paper are identified and marked by the proofreader. This is of little value to most students as they will not understand the proofing notation and do not improve from only having errors identified. The tutor will identify problems with a paper in order of importance and discuss with the particpants how to improve their writing.
• Not checking where the entire paper is reviewed for quality. The tutor will look at general quality issues (e.g. organization, clarity) and recommend means of improvement.
• Not teaching English. This is beyond the capacity of a writing clinic. The tutor willhelp participants write more succinctly but will not focus on correcting grammatical mistakes (although this aspect is taken into account).