Achieve a positive ethos through tone and style.

Ethos is an appeal based on the perceived character of the sender of the message.
The words we select and how we decide to combine them in sentences create our style; our audience perceives that style as our tone,
and through that tone, they make assumptions about our ethos and our objectives.
1. How Style Can Impact Audiences
We want to be clear and crisp in our language yet not sound too harsh or brusque
2. Determining Our Own Style
Every person has an individual style. It is your voice; it is the “you” that your reader perceives and your “natural” style and tone
How best to use our words to reach out and connect with our audiences with sincerity. They display a commitment to their beliefs and
causes. In short, they create a positive ethos. Leaders want their audiences to perceive a positive ethos in their tone, to see them as
confident, and to trust and believe them.
Guidelines for Creating a Positive Ethos in Writing and Speaking:
1. Pay attention to good models of leadership communication, but be careful in trying to imitate someone else’s style. Develop and
maintain your own voice.
2. Read what you have written aloud to hear how you sound, and if something is particularly sensitive, ask the opinion of another
person before you send it.
3. Never send something out when you are angry or upset. This guideline is especially true with instant communication channels,
such as e-mails, texts, and tweets.
4. Be careful in your use of complex language or “thesaurusitis,” finding a word in a thesaurus and using it because it is a “big”
word when a simple one would be better.
5. At the same time, be careful of your use of shortened words and phrases. “LOL” may be generally understood these days, but
it’s not appropriate to use in professional texts or e-mails. Remember, abbreviations can carry different meanings to different
people in different cultures or contexts.
6. Use strong verbs and avoid passive voice unless you have a specific reason to use it (see discussion below).
7. Select a positive over a negative construction when possible.
8. Avoid using too many modifiers or empty words, such as “sort of,” “kind of,” “possibly,” “thing,” or too many “ly” words in
particular.
9. Be careful in the use of qualifiers, such as “in my opinion,” “I think,” “I believe,” “probably,” and “I feel.”
10. Eliminate fillers, such as “like,” “you know,” “uh,” and “um” from your speech.
11. Avoid “up speak,” making statements sound like questions.
12. Be careful with the use of jargon (see discussion below). Use it only when it is the best way to say what you want to say and
when you know for sure the audience will understand it.

Influence others through concise, direct, and memorable prose.

Communicating has four primary purposes in mind:
(1) to inform,
(2) to influence or persuade,
(3) to instruct, or
(4) to engage
Our style influences and persuades others, and our tone, the way our audience interprets our style, affects their perception of us.
A. Communicate clearly and concisely.
Abbreviated spelling is not considered a best practice in the business and professional world. Unless you are certain that your
target audience finds informal or slang abbreviations acceptable, stick to standard spelling.
B. Communicating Directly and Forcefully
1. Use active voice instead of passive unless you have a reason for using passive.
2. Avoid overusing expletives, such as “there is” or “it is”—watch for the “it is . . . that” construction, in particular; however, let
your meaning and emphasis guide your use.
3. Avoid the use of prepositional idioms.
4. Avoid the overuse of relative pronouns—“who,” “which,” and “that.”
5. Avoid the needless repetition of words and ideas.
6. Avoid weasel words—ambiguous, noncommittal words, such as the following.
7. Be aware of jargon (language used in particular disciplines) and other kinds of gobbledygook.
8. Use active verbs and avoid nominalizations (turning verbs into nouns by adding –tion).
9. Use the simple word over the complex in most cases.
C. Making Communication Memorable and Persuasive
1. Tell a story
2. Use strategic repetition of key words, phrases or clauses, sentences
3. Use parallel structure
Class.. Allow me to continue the presentation… 2. Try to put some time between when you write something and when you proof it. Make sure you complete your assignment in
plenty of time before the deadline, this will give you valuable time to proofread and improve your work before submit it.
As the additional consideration of language of leaders topic, I would like to present about writing for Social Media. 3. Know what errors you tend to make or overlook, and watch for them in particular.
4. Watch for common trouble spots, such as transposed letters, confused words, pronoun/antecedent disagreement, dangling
Social Media such as Blogs, social networks, collaborative workspaces, and Short message service, like texts, chat, whatsapp and modifiers, and misused apostrophes. Also check for lack of consistency in presentations, in particular.
tweets dominate much of our professional communication today and thus deserve a few final special guidelines related to style and 5. Recognize the limitations of spell-checkers, but always run them to catch careless errors; just do not expect the spell-checker to
tone, because your words are all you have, they are a projection of you in your physical absence. find all mistakes. Also, be wary of style/grammar checkers.
1. Be honest and enter the space humbly >> win followers by proving our expertise first. 6. Proof using a hard-copy instead of on the screen whenever your communication is important or complex. We tend to miss
2. Say something meaningful.>> saying something that adds to the conversation already going on in the network mistakes on the screen. If writing a comment, text, or tweet, consider using a text editor to compose; then review before copying
3. Don’t be too concise or overuse or misuse text or chating abbreviations. and sending.
Lucky for us, tomorrow presenter of chapter 4 would explain the social media topic much more detail, we’re looking forward for that. 7. Proofread the document and each slide backwards to catch typos and spelling errors. By reading backwards, our eyes are
Next… forced to focus on each word.
8. Take a break! If your eyes are glazing over. Chill out and recharge. A fresh pair of eyes will spot errors more effectively.
Follow the language rules that matter. 9. Read out loud!! Reading out loud forces you to read every word instead of skipping ahead. It also helps you to check if your
A concise and confident style and an appropriate tone contribute to a positive ethos, as well as the correct use of language. This is writing makes sense as well as spotting errors.
important to mitigate the risk being perceived as hasty, careless, indifferent, uninformed, ignorant, stupid, poorly educated, or someone 10. Ask someone else to double check your work for you
who is not a detail person—to the detriment of the ethos of the individual and the organization. And for that issues, we have to know 11. As you read, ask yourself…
what is the most distracting errors. They tend to be of four types, and due to time limitation, I will not explain the details of each error a. Am I expressing myself clearly?
example, you are welcome to read it later…. b. Could I say anything better?
1. Sentence construction, such as the following: c. Are any of my sentences too long?
a. Sentence fragments >> because people don’t believe in birth control >< people don’t believe in birth control d. Have I repeated any information?
b. Run-on sentences, 2 or more complete sentences that are properly joined or separated >> I was hungry I ate lunch >< I Ok… that’s the guidance for effective editing and proofreading.
was hungry, so I ate lunch. Next…
c. Faulty parallel structure >> The show is both enjoyable and it is educational >< the show is both enjoyable and
educational In conclusion
d. Dangling modifiers, is a word or phrase (often a participle or participial phrase) that doesn't actually modify the word it's We know that leaders lead and inspire others to action through their use of language, the words they speak and write.
intended to modify >> Having finished the assignment, the TV was turned on >< Having finished the assignment, Jill Their ability to influence their audience positively, overcoming barriers to effective communication, is the essence of leadership
turned on the TV communication.
e. Subject/verb agreement, if the subject is singular then the verb must also be singular, if the subject is plural then the verb If we are unsure and lack confidence in our writing or speaking abilities, our choice of words, our style, and our tone will reveal it. If, on
must also be plural >> singular (the dog chases the cat), plural (the dogs chase the cat) the other hand, we are confident in our ability to use the language of leaders, that confidence will resonate in our words and enhance
2. Punctuation, such as our influence with all our targeted audiences.
a. Misuse of apostrophes. >> it’s (it is), who’s (who is) >< specials, mondays…
b. Missing commas or commas where not needed. >> ”When I sip coffee, I think of my mother, she made the best coffee.” So, as a leader…
This can be fixed by “When I sip coffee, I think of my mother. She made the best coffee!” 1. We need to communicate confidently and reflect an appropriate tone in all that we write and say.
c. Overuse or misuse of dashes or ellipses.>> Dennis took his car (a tiny, two-door Honda) on a weekend road trip. >< 2. We need to be concise and ensure that our language is clear, crisp, and meaningful.
Dennis stuffed his four best friends into his car—a tiny, two-door Honda—for a weekend road trip. 3. We need to recognize the power of language to influence others.
3. Misuse of pronouns, such as 4. We want our ethos to be positive and our words memorable for all of the right reasons.
a. Disagreement of pronoun and antecedent. >> during early rehearsals, an actor may forget their lines >< during early 5. We need to avoid careless grammatical and usage errors and take the time to edit and proofread our communication to ensure it
rehearsals, actors may forget their lines. is clear and correct.
b. Incorrect pronouns, subject in place of object or object in place of subject.>> when my mom was in school, you had to use
a typewriter >< when my mom was in school, she had to use a typewriter. Hopefully, our presentation of chapter 3 “Language of Leader”, has provided enough instruction in convincing others and creating a
4. Spelling or wrong words, such as it’s (contraction for it is) for its (possessive) or “there” for “their.” positive ethos through the use of the language of leadership - the use of the right words in the right way and we could add through the
The clear message for a leader is the correct use of the language. Our credibility as a leader, our ability to represent ourselves and our right medium.
organization, and our ethos all depend on using language carefully and correctly, particularly in today’s world where we are more
dependent on writing than we ever have been. And as the final statement we took from this chapter is that…
“The more control we have over the use of language, the greater our influence and our ability to lead”
Next, I’m going to talk about…
Edit and proofread your own work more effectively. Ok class, I think that’s about all...
You have finished writing your letter/assignment/email, now you need to proofread!! Thanks for the attention,
What is Editing and proofreading? And… any question?
Editing involves reviewing presentations, documents, and all other written communication to see if they are clear, concise, and correct.
Proofreading occurs after editing, it is basically checking your work for errors, by reading the communication closely to identify errors in
usage, grammar, spelling, or formatting.
So what? does it important for leader to do editing and proofread effectively? The importance of doing editing and proofreading is that
if we submitting work containing mistakes may:
- Lose our marks
- Imply that we don’t care about our work
- Make our work difficult to read or understand
”Accuracy comes from taking the time to editing and proofread, and to check our facts”. Accuracy in language and communication is
one of leader’s needed.
Then, what can be our Guidelines on editing and proofreading?
1. Do not proofread as you compose. Proofread after you think you are finished.