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Writing for Business
and Pleasure

by Stephen Wilbers


Quote of the week
“Like an omelet, fiction depends on fresh ingredients.”
– Stephen Minot, Three Genres: The Writing of Poetry, Fiction, and Drama

 


Two 30-second writing exercises (updated weekly)
Weekly error: What's wrong with the following sentence?

“I was in a hurry, so I took only a few minutes to peruse your report.”


Weekly tip: Revise the sentence below for stylistic effect.
“Prior to my beginning to teach writing, I was unaware that I was using so many wordy expressions.”

 

Tuesdays with Wilbers
 Now available remotely through Skype
Please join me for a Tuesday afternoon workshop on
October 12.

Communication in a Technical Environment
Please join me on October 26 in Rochester, Minnesota, for a one-day version of the course
I teach for the University of Minnesota's Technological Leadership Institute.
Or register for the high-powered four-day series!

Weekly columns
Get a free e-book edition of my collected columns with your six-month subscription.

Free stuff
From annoying phrases to punctuation, salutations, wordiness, and writer’s block,
click Contents
for hundreds of FREE writing resources, columns, and topics,
as well as dozens of FREE exercises.

Take the Grammar, Proofreading, Punctuation, and Word Choice Challenges.


To my Minneapolis Star Tribune readers:
Look for me on the first, third, and fifth Mondays of each month.

Receive my columns every week by email.

Good business writers understand the importance of a creative approach
when
email marketing.


 

 Keys to Great Writing
 Techniques for
 writing with style
 (
reviews)

  Writing for Business
  Collected columns,
  winner of a Minnesota
  Book Award

 Writing by Wilbers
 Collected columns, vol. 2,
 now available as an e-book
 

 

    Now available

Books in progress

A Boundary Waters History:
Canoeing Across Time

(The History Press, spring 2011)

A Grammatical Affair:
A Romance with Language

(a novel)

52 Tips for Writing with Style
(writing instruction)

Email instruction

“Better Writing in Six Weeks”

Free monthly tips

Weekly columns

“Writing with Style

Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: Reflections           Poem for Dale Schatzlein


Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness: A History
for students, teachers, and writers interested in nature and the environment

Nature's Gallery
Photos by poet John Caddy,
downloadable for use as wallpaper

I’d like to hear from you. Send me a message.

 
In memory of four beloved Minnesota authors


  Paul Gruchow
(1947-2004)
 

Carol Bly
(1930-2007)

Jon Hassler
(1933-2008)

Bill Holm
(1943-2009)

Please to The Loft Literary Center. Thank you!
 

About the author
 

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Stephen Wilbers is a writing consultant, author, and syndicated columnist. He has offered training seminars in effective writing to more than 10,000 business, technical, legal, and academic writers.

Dr. Wilbers offers on-site writing seminars to a wide variety of clients, from Mayo Clinic to the Pennsylvania Bar Institute and the Minnesota Department of Health. He is a Senior Fellow in the Master's of Technology program in the Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota. In addition, he has taught in the Carlson School of Management’s M.B.A. Program, the Program in American Studies, and the Program in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Minnesota. In 1995 he won an Outstanding Faculty Award for his teaching in Hamline University’s Graduate Public Administration Program.

 


He has written more than 800 syndicated columns on effective business writing appearing in
the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Orange County Register, and other publications.

He has published two collections of his columns, Writing for Business (winner of a 1994 Minnesota Book Award) and Writing by Wilbers. Now used as a textbook in college writing classes, Keys to Great Writing (a book offering advice on how to write with clarity, emphasis, and style), has been described as "brilliant and illuminating," providing principles that "can be applied to any type of writing, including fiction."

This Northern Nonsense: Ernest Oberholtzer and Mallard Island, his chapbook of poems about the gentle giant who helped save the Boundary Waters Canoe Area from development, was recently published by Red Dragonfly Press. He is currently writing a comic novel, A Grammatical Affair: A Romance with Language, which offers a review of common writing errors and stylistic technique in the form of a sexy, wildly romantic, heartbreaking, sappy love story.

Dr. Wilbers earned his B.A. at Vanderbilt University and his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Iowa, where he wrote a history of the Iowa Writers' Workshop for his dissertation, which was published by the University of Iowa Press. He was a Visiting Fulbright Fellow at the University of Essex in Colchester, England. At the University of Minnesota he directed one of the largest student academic support services operations in the country before serving as Associate Director of the Program in Creative and Professional writing. He and his wife Debbie have two grown children and live in Minneapolis, where he has been a proud member of The Loft Literary Center since 1981, serving on the Loft's board of directors from 2003 to 2009 and as the Loft board chair from 2007 to 2009.

For additional information, see his résumé or send him a message.

 

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