This list of resources was originally compiled for my students at Wharton. It's full of good books and links I recommend for improving business writing, speaking, and the professional presentation of PowerPoint slides and graphs.

These books and links include all of my favorites, but I'm also indebted to a number of people in the Wharton Communications Department and the University of Pennsylvania Writing Center for their suggestions.

Speaking Resources

Say it with Presentations: How to Design and Deliver Successful Business Presentations. Gene Zelazny; McGraw-Hill Companies, 1999. (Highly recommended)

The Articulate Executive:  Learn to Look, Act, and Sound like a Leader. Granville N. Toogood; McGraw-Hill Companies, 1997. (Highly recommended)

Impact: A Guide to Business Communication. Ann Fischer and Margot Northey; Simon & Schuster, 1993.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Robert B. Cialdini; Morrow, William and Co., 1998.

Thinking on Your Feet: How to Communicate Under Pressure. Marian K. Woodall; Professional Business Communications, 1996.

Graphics Presentations

How to design and present an effective PowerPoint slide show:

Say It With Charts: The Executive's Guide to Visual Communication. Gene Zelazny;  Irwin Professional Publishers, 1996. (Highly recommended)

The Presentation Design Book. Margaret Y. Rabb; Ventana Press, 1993.

The Presentations Kit: 10 Steps for Selling Your Ideas. Claudyne Wilder; John Wiley & Sons, 1994.

It's the Story, Stupid by Doc Searles. I agree with everything Doc says in this Fast Company article.

The concepts behind the visuals:

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Edward R. Tufte; Graphics Press, 1992. (I highly recommend all of Tufte's books for the underlying principles of good visual communication.)

Envisioning Information. Edward R. Tufte; Graphics Press, 1980. (Highly recommended)

Visual Explanations. Edward R. Tufte; Graphics Press, 1997. (Highly recommended)

Edward Tufte's website, full info on books:
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference. Robert L. Harris; Oxford University Press, 1999.

How to Lie with Statistics. Darrell Huff and Irving Geis; W. W. Norton & Co., 1993.

Writing Resources

On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction. William Zinsser; HarperCollins Publishers, 1998. (Highly recommended--my all-time favorite guide to good writing)

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed. Karen Elizabeth Gordon.  (The best, and funniest, book on grammar I know.)

Writing With Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process, Peter Elbow.

The Business of Writing and Speaking, 2nd edition. Larry M. Robbins; McGraw-Hill, 1996. (Highly recommended)

The Business Writer's Handbook, 4th edition. Charles T Brusaw, Gerald Alred, and Walter E. Olin; St. Martins Press, 1993.

Competitive Communication. Barry Eckhouse; Oxford University Press, 1998.

The Elements of Business Writing. Gary Blake and Robert Bly; Macmillan, 1992.

Guide to Managerial Communication. Mary Munter; Prentice Hall, 1999.

The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking. Barbara Minto; Pitman Publishing, 1995.

The Classic Guide to Better Writing, Rudolf Flesch, PhD, and A.H. Lass.  

A Plain English Handbook: How to Create Clear
SEC Disclosure Documents     Available online in .pdf format.   Commissioned by the SEC to encourage clear writing in business and government documents.  Very well done.  Warren Buffet wrote the preface.

Websites on Writing

Common Errors in English I have this one bookmarked to consult for those little grammar confusions that are hard to remember.

owl.english.purdue.edu   Purdue University's On-line Writing Lab. Links to many, many useful and very specific "handouts." My friend Janice Fisher calls this, "The mother of all grammar sites."

webster.commnet.edu/HP/pages/darling/original.htm   The Guide to Grammar and Writing.  This is a very good site.  It breaks down advice to "sentence level" (grammar) and "paragraph level" composition.  Good links too.

andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing    "A miscellany of grammatical rules and explanations, comments on style, and suggestions on usage I put together for my classes. Anyone who can resist turning my own preferences into dogma is welcome to use this HTML edition." --Jack Lynch (who had been in the English dept. at Penn and now is at Rutgers)

http://www.inkspot.com/genres/biz.html   Resources for business writers (from Inkspot, a good general source too).

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html   Common errors in English--confused word pairs, misused phrases, etc.

www.rpi.edu/dept/llc/writecenter/web/text/esl.html    An overview of English article usage for speakers of English as a Second Language (ESL).

http://www.eslcafe.com/  Dave's ESL Cafe, for speakers and writers of English as a Second Language.

The Writing Center at University of Pennsylvania.  This center is available to any student in any school of the University of Pennsylvania.

The Penn Writing Center recommends:

The Practice of Writing, Nancy R. Comly. Good exercises.

Rethinking Writing, Peche C. Kuriloff

Successful Writing, (3rd), Maxine Hairston. Based on research, and is very good at relating writing to audience.

The Aims of Argument: A Brief Rhetoric, Timothy Crusius.

Writing Without Teachers. Elbow, Peter. London: Oxford University Press, 1973 (or any later edition).

Williams, Joseph M. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

The Elements of Business Writing. Blake, Gary and Robert W. Bly. New York: Macmillan, 1981.