All professional activities require strong and persuasive writing as well as adherence to the formal conventions of a particular audience. Companies and business organizations look for solid, well-written and carefully constructed cover letters and resumes that attend to the rhetorical situation. Grants and business proposals can be highly successful if attention is given to the writing process for each of these important genres.

Below you'll find a range of resources to help you develop your writing for practical and professional applications. This page will continue to develop, so please check back often. If you have any suggestions for links or categories, please feel free to contact Alyssa O'Brien.

Résumés

• Stanford University's Career Development Center is one of the first places you should turn as you begin your job search and develop a resume. The CDC has developed its own set of Resume Guidelines, which includes lists of the sorts of action verbs organized by skill area, and several examples.
• The University of Washington, Tacoma, has posted excellent Resume Guidelines which address issues of audience, action verbs, and accomplishments. There's a superb checklist at the end of the page as well as links to further resources.
• The Damn Good Resume Website has a helpful list of 24 Hot Tips on Resume Writing as well as another list of 25 Tough Resume Problems you might encounter.
• Another outstanding place to look for guidance on writing resumes is the Professional Writing webpage hosted by OWL: The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University. There's a great diagram of a job search resume that highlights each important aspect of the document, and you should consult the page on Resume Sections: an Overview for specific guidelines to help you draft your own document.

Cover Letters

• Stanford's Career Development Center's Cover Letter Guidelines include detailed tips and several examples of a variety of cover letters and networking letters. The Professional Writing webpage hosted by OWL: The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University also offers a range of resources for writing cover letters. Read the material concerning Application Letters: How to Sell Yourself, study elements of the Basic Business cover letter, look at the sample letters, and learn how to tailor your letter to a particular audience. Another crucial site to explore is the page on Higher Order Concerns (HOCs) and Later Order Concerns (LOCs) for Business Writing which leads you through a series of questions with regard to the purpose, audience, organization, development, and format of your writing for business and professional purposes. And don't forget to consult Revision in Business Writing.

Sales Letters

• A step-by-step guide to writing Sales Letters: Four Point Action Closing, with emphasis on a persuasive closing, is available through Purdue's Online Writing Lab as well.

Memos

• What is a Memo? What elements should be included? How long should it be? How do issues of audience, arrangement, and style apply to memos? Find answers to these questions on the most basic of business forms, the memo, at Purdue's Online Writing Lab page, Memo Writing.

Grant Proposals

• Stanford University's office for Undergraduate Research Opportunities has a site with links to opportunities available on campus as well as advice to undergraduates who hope to pursue grants, scholarships, and prizes available here at Stanford.
• Developing And Writing Grant Proposals, a page maintained by the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA), offers detailed instructions on developing a grant proposal, identifying funding, researching the idea, drafting, obtaining the appropriate signatures, and compiling the necessary materials for any grant. Read through Part Two: Writing the Grant Proposal, to study the basic components of the document as well as the rationale for each step in the writing process.
• The University of Wisconsin Madison's Grant Information Center has developed an extensive list of internet resources with links to several helpful sites on writing grant proposals.

Report Abstracts

• For a discussion of different kinds of abstracts (informational and descriptive), as well as guidelines to writing an effective abstract, visit Writing Report Abstracts on Purdue's Online Writing Lab.

Business Writing in General

• Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) hosts a comprehensive Professional Writing webpage. In addition to the resume and cover letter pages described above, visit the page on Higher Order Concerns (HOCs) and Later Order Concerns (LOCs) for Business Writingfor a checklist of questions concerning the purpose, audience, organization, development, and format of your writing. And don't forget to consult Revision in Business Writing. The discussion of Tone in Business Writing, by Victoria Kellough and Angela Laflen, is invaluable to any business professional.