For more information contact:
Reichert Communications, LLC
Craig Kaufman, 415.296.5134
craig@reichertcom.com

BackDRAFT Delivers First Online Writing Course Personalized for Any Skill Level

BackDRAFT Express Helps Writers, Business Professionals and Educators Improve Communication Effectiveness by Eliminating the Top 40 Writing Errors

OTTAWA-Oct. 3, 2005-BackDRAFT, a leading provider of Business Writing Training Solutions, today announced the release of BackDRAFT Express, the first online writing training certification course that improves writing performance by helping users identify and fix the 40 most common writing errors. Becoming BackDRAFT-certified provides individuals with the skills and confidence needed to improve the effectiveness of written materials such as contracts, proposals, sales and marketing collateral, and email messages.

"Based on a two-year study, we have determined that only 40 types of errors cause over 95% of all grammar, clarity, and logic problems," said Brian Hanington, president and CEO of BackDRAFT. "Through our 8-hour course, users at all skill levels-whether they be educators, business professionals, or even seasoned writers-can dramatically improve the effectiveness of their writing by learning to identify and avoid these common fumbles."

According to the National Commission on Writing's surveys of 120 American corporations and 50 state government institutions (2004-2005), "writing ability is now a core competence requirement for advancement", and "workers who cannot write and communicate clearly will not be hired and are unlikely to last long enough to be considered for promotion." The surveys reveal that while two-thirds of all workers are expected to write their own emails, letters, proposals and presentations, only one-third are unable to write clear, logical prose. The surveys also discovered that email has become the predominant writing activity for most business professionals, accounting for more than two work hours per day per person, or 400 hours per year.

"As email has replaced the telephone as the primary method of business communication, the sales profession-like most other fields-has become increasingly dependent on clear and concise writing ability," said Joseph Carbonetto, Sales Specialist at Allstream IT Services. "BackDRAFT has given me a clear edge over my competition, streamlined my sales cycles and boosted my productivity. My writing no longer gets in the way-it gets me ahead."

BackDRAFT Express is an 8-hour, personalized online curriculum that teaches users how to produce documents with flawless grammar, diction, syntax, logic and rhetoric. BackDRAFT Express utilizes the same principles as BackDRAFT QMS, the company's established enterprise system aimed at producing precise, engaging and coherent writing standards across groups. The course is based on familiarizing users with the 40 most common writing fumbles, including sentence fragments (FRAG), misplaced modifiers (MOD), passive verb use (PASS), and faults in logic (LOG). BackDRAFT Express includes the following features:

• Personalized Guided Curriculum-A self-paced training curriculum that monitors the writer's performance and adjusts the focus and difficulty of the curriculum.
• Interactive Response-A customer-experience management tool that responds immediately to changes in a writer's performance and progress during the online training program.
• Visual Editing-A Flash(tm)-based learning environment in which words, phrases, sentences and whole paragraphs move around on the screen as they do in a seasoned writer's mind, providing a visual correction process that the writer can easily understand and replicate in work situations.
• BackDRAFT Certification-Successful completion of the course is recognized with formal documentation and logo reproduction rights.
• Technical Support-Users are supported by BackDRAFT's technical support staff.

BackDRAFT Express includes a fully automated registration and payment process. The registration fee for a single user is $350.

About BackDRAFT
BackDRAFT is a leading provider of Business Writing Training Solutions that help organizations build stronger brands and better serve customers and partners through the written word. The BackDRAFT Quality Management System (QMS) is the industry's only business writing system that results in a sustainable, uniform writing style across a group or organization. Benefiting a variety of companies in diverse industries worldwide, BackDRAFT QMS enables organizations to harness writing intelligence potential to improve corporate productivity, enhance branding efforts and boost revenue through better overall business practices. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, BackDRAFT was founded in 2003 by the leadership team of Stiff Sentences, Inc., the world's first company of writers to achieve ISO 9000 registration. For more information about BackDRAFT, visit www.backdraft.org

OTTAWA-July 18, 2005

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