Write It Well

Dustin Wax has a lovely piece on Lifehack about writing. Writing deserves practice, he says. “The skills that make us better writers make us better explainers, better persuaders, and better thinkers,” he writes. In a world dominated by information, those who write well have a huge advantage over those who don’t. Wax lists four steps to becoming a better writer:

• Read. By reading broadly, you train your mind to recognize good writing.
• Write. Practice as much as you can, in contexts as informal as Twitter, or as controlled as a business report.
• Read again. Wax thinks most poor writers fail because they don’t take the time to re-read their own writing and see how it works, or doesn’t work.
• Repeat. Persistence and practice pay off.

The New York Times has a sweet little editing quiz on “After Deadline” this week. See if you can spot the errors in their articles. Their answers won’t appear till tomorrow.

Here’s one:

Purchased by investors at the height of the real estate boom in 2006, the management’s conversion plan appears unrealistic about meeting its sales and revenue goals, one lender is quoted as saying in court documents in the lawsuit between the owners.

Was the management “purchased by investors”? Or did investors buy the management’s plan? The phrase “purchased by investors…” no doubt refers to a company — but the company isn’t mentioned. You can avoid such “dangling participles” by writing tight, active sentences in the first place.

Write It Well delivered a pair of e-mail writing workshops at Leadership Public High School in Richmond on Tuesday, December 2, 2008. In this era of high speed electronic communication and high-profile e-mail misfires, e-mail messages are in the spotlight. The workshops were designed to help high school seniors improve the quality of their e-mail messages and learn what’s appropriate as they prepare for college applications, summer jobs and internships, and the demands of the business world.

More people are entering the workforce without the ability to express themselves clearly in writing. According to The National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges, schools and colleges today neglect writing and, as a result, many college graduates enter the workforce with poor writing skills. Yet, writing – and e-mail writing – is a fundamental business skill. In fact, a recent survey by the Commission found that half of all companies assess writing skills during the hiring process and when making promotion decisions.

Poorly written e-mail can sabotage job prospects while effective e-mail opens doors. “People often enter the workforce without an understanding of what it means to communicate professionally. College applicants can really set themselves apart with a basic knowledge of what’s appropriate and effective in e-mail communication,” says Preston Lewis, Director of Talent, Bonfire Communications.

Leadership Public High School serves grades 9 through 12 in Richmond, CA . The school offers college preparatory curriculum in a small and safe learning environment. “This is not something I’d know how to teach so it’s really nice to have someone come in and teach it to our students,” says Andy Hatcher, 12th Grade English Teacher, Leadership Public High School.

To conduct the training, Write It Well donated copies of its bestselling book, E-Mail – A Write It Well Guide: How to Write and Manage E-Mail in the Workplace. “This book should be required reading,” comments David Krane, Director of Corporate Communications for Google, Inc.

The ability to write an effective e-mail is also essential for landing a job. “Excellent communication skills are universally appreciated in business, and in many cases it’s a core requirement for candidates. Well-constructed, thoughtful and professionally written emails make a powerful first impression, and will often set a candidate apart from the rest of the pack.” Sharon Kittredje, Managing Partner, HIRE Talent Management Solutions, Inc.

“Quality counts,” says Kevin Hoover, Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Duke University. “E-mail has greatly expanded the range of student-faculty interactions and of collaborations among students. When students write clear, crisp, organized, and polite messages, e-mail enriches learning. Sadly, too often poorly written e-mail inhibits useful communications and undermines learning.”

E-mail has become the primary method of business communication, surpassing the telephone as our preferred communication tool in the workplace (Datamonitor report, September 2007). While most people already sense that this is the case, most of us don’t stop to consider the implications for our careers. “While most of us understand that poorly written e-mail can waste time, we forget that poorly written e-mail can also create costly misunderstandings, catapult deadlines, delay deliverables, impact people’s opinion of you, and sabotage your career,” says Natasha Terk, president of Write It Well.    

According to Xobni, a San Francisco-based start-up that has developed an Outlook add-on to help manage e-mail, by 2009, workers are expected to spend 40 percent of their time writing and managing e-mail. It’s an important skill to hone since poorly written can be embarrassing. In fact, in a recent Write It Well survey, a whopping eighty-eight percent of respondents said that poorly written e-mail messages leave a poor impression of not only the writer, but the writer’s organization as well.

Hyphens are the glue of words. Some people make sculptures out of glue — and some people make sculptures out of hyphens. Here are some simple guidelines on keeping your hyphens in line:

For compound words, check the dictionary for the preferred form. As Jane Straus notes on grammarbook.com, you write “eye-opener” with a hyphen, but “eyewitness” as one word and “eye shadow” as two separate words. Only the dictionary will tell you if a compound has enough widespread use to take a hyphen or become one solid word.

We also use hyphens to fuse two-word adjectives:

• In the doorway stood a six-foot man.
• She put a half-empty glass on the table.
• The old woman dredged her memory for a once-forgotton tale.

Note that “half-empty glass” has a completely different meaning than “half empty glass,” which refers to half of an empty glass.

If you were to rearrange these phrases, though, and the adjectives no longer described a noun directly, you’d have to take the hyphen away. For example:

• The man stood six feet tall.
• Always the pessimist, she thought the glass was half empty.
• The tale was once forgotten, but my research unearthed it.

We thought we were speaking bona fide English, but a local government council in Bournemouth, U.K., decided terms like “bona fide” and “status quo” weren’t status quo at all. The council banned employees from using nineteen Latin borrowings, calling them “elitist”. Other phrases they chucked: ad lib, et cetera, vice-versa, and via. For good measure, they even tossed “vis-a-vis”, which was borrowed from French, not Latin.

Many linguists and others think the measure perfectly ridiculous. Supporters say that complicated language confuses people. Naturally, bad writing confuses lots of people — but chucking a few Latin scapegoats won’t make people better at communicating. We’re much better off practicing our writing skills, editing patiently, and keeping our audience in mind as we compose. For tips on how to sharpen your writing, check out Write It Well’s Professional Writing Skills book.

The new software engineer on your team doesn’t need to be a poet, but she does need to have the writing skills to communicate her work clearly and simply. Some tips on evaluating a candidate’s writing skills:

• Is his resume concise? If someone rambles on a document as tightly-formatted as a resume, it’s likely he can’t recognize and communicate the meat of other matters, as well.
• Is there a central idea in each paragraph in her cover letter? Knowing how to group and rank information is a powerful skill in any arena — from organizing a to-do list to writing an annual report.
• Do pay attention to the details of punctuation, spelling, and grammar. Clients and business partners will notice unprofessional mistakes, even if you don’t.

A brilliant idea is worthless if you can’t explain it to other people effectively. Richard Bell, who runs a venture capital firm in east Africa, said that 90% of the business plans on his desk were too poorly written for him to bother reading. The problem, of course, is that great ideas don’t speak for themselves. Garbled, unclear messages communicate incompetence — and little else. Thank goodness we can all learn new writing skills throughout our lives. To discover simple, relevant ways you can improve your business writing skills, check out Write It Well’s books on business writing.

From poets to public relations writers, we all get stuck in front of a blank screen from time to time. As Gail Godwin writes in her essay, “The Watcher at the Gate,” most of us have inner critics who throttle our ideas. She calls her critic the “Watcher.” “It is amazing the lengths a Watcher will go to keep you from pursuing the flow of your imagination,” she writes. “Watchers are notorious pencil sharpeners, ribbon changers, plant waterers, home repairers and abhorrers of messy rooms or messy pages.”

She’s got it right: when we name our inner critics, they’re much easier to ignore.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report called “Writing, Teens, and Technology.” In brief, the report finds that”teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them.”

More and moreprofessionals are entering the workforce without the ability to express themselves clearly in writing. According to The National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges, schools and colleges today neglect writing and, as a result, college graduates enter the workforce with poor writing skills.

We agree with Pew’s survey participants;writing is a fundamental business skill. In fact, a recent survey by the Commission found that half of all companies assess writing skills during the hiring process and when making promotion decisions. That’s reason enough to improve your business writing skills today.