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How to Write Well. Tips and Guides to Writing Better Business English in South Africa, by James Hurford
THE ability to write well is an essential business skill.
When you read an email or a message with typos and spelling errors, and it comes from a friend on a Sunday morning to arrange a social event, you can overlook it.
Send the same quality message to you manager, colleague or a client and you have sent a strong message – at best you are sloppy, and at worst ignorant.
There is a “brand me” element to writing. What is the impression you wish to give to the reader? We take care to ensure that our grooming, deportment and clothing communicate the desired impression. We need to take similar care with our written communication.
Writing well means little more than getting the message across clearly, and getting it across in a way that makes it easy for the reader to grasp your meaning. Writing well also ensures that the message sent is the message you intended.
There is a significant difference between “Let’s eat Grandpa,” and “Let’s eat, Grandpa.”
In the same way that people, consciously or unconsciously, evaluate the quality of an executive’s presentation, they evaluate the quality of an executive’s writing.
This brief book by author and writing teacher James Hurford opens with a chapter entitled: The secrets of good writing. This is a collection of ten insights from various well-known writers. I have chosen the three below only because their insights are central to Hurford’s approach.
William Zinsser, writer, editor, and literary critic, said: “The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components – every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word…”
Today, more than ever before, we need to “strip every sentence to its cleanest components”. The vast majority of every businessperson’s writing is emails and various forms of instant messages. The best messages are succinct and clear.
There is a compelling reason for using email and instant messages - we are all time-starved. There is ample evidence that most long letters and notes go unread, but that short ones do not. What you write must be clear the first time it is read. If not, there is a fair chance that your note will be deleted, not re-read.
It is rare for any writer to produce a perfect piece of writing the first time, whether it is a short message or a full report. Ideally, the writing should follow three steps: writing, rewriting and polishing.
The first step is simply to write, get it all down without concern for syntax punctuation or typos. This approach will ensure your ideas flow unimpeded.
At the second step, “Rewriting”, you criticise your work. You organise the idea flow, evaluate the quality of the content, and the persuasiveness of your argument.
You change word order, eliminate unnecessary words or phrases, and ensure that what you wrote is understood immediately. This not only necessary for formal documents, it is necessary for an sms and an email as well.
The last step is “polishing” the writing, ensuring it gives the best account of your ideas and the best impression of you.
The poet, Robert Frost, believed that “the ear is the only true writer and the only true reader”.
“Read it out loud,” Hurford suggests. “If it doesn’t sound right, it usually isn’t right.”
When your writing does not sound right, the general rule is not to add, but to cut. Writing simply makes what you have written more powerful, and easier to read. It is more important that the reader understands your point effortlessly than that she marvels at your erudition and prodigious vocabulary. (That is an example!)
Great writers do not produce flawless text the first time that does not need revision. Quite the opposite; “The best writing is rewriting,” notes E B White, the American writer of children’s classics.
Editing your work ruthlessly, whether it is a message, an email or a document is the only way you can be sure of giving the best impression.
Warren Buffett, the world’s most successful investor, explains that he writes with a specific person in mind. He writes his Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report pretending he is talking (not writing) to his sisters. “They will understand plain English, but jargon may puzzle them…”
Thinking of how easily your reader will understand your writing is a good test of its quality.
If any more weight needs to be added to the argument for writing so there can be no confusion, it is a legal requirement in terms of the Consumer Protection Act of 2011.
Every sloppy, confused, or poorly written message, email or document leaves the reader with a negative impression. Either you do not value me enough to bother to write well, or you are not able to write well.
This brief book, available free from the author’s site, will be of significant benefit to everyone in business. Download it.
Readability: Light -+--- Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practical: High -+--- Low
- Fin24
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works. Views expressed are his own.
THE ability to write well is an essential business skill.
When you read an email or a message with typos and spelling errors, and it comes from a friend on a Sunday morning to arrange a social event, you can overlook it.
Send the same quality message to you manager, colleague or a client and you have sent a strong message – at best you are sloppy, and at worst ignorant.
There is a “brand me” element to writing. What is the impression you wish to give to the reader? We take care to ensure that our grooming, deportment and clothing communicate the desired impression. We need to take similar care with our written communication.
Writing well means little more than getting the message across clearly, and getting it across in a way that makes it easy for the reader to grasp your meaning. Writing well also ensures that the message sent is the message you intended.
There is a significant difference between “Let’s eat Grandpa,” and “Let’s eat, Grandpa.”
In the same way that people, consciously or unconsciously, evaluate the quality of an executive’s presentation, they evaluate the quality of an executive’s writing.
This brief book by author and writing teacher James Hurford opens with a chapter entitled: The secrets of good writing. This is a collection of ten insights from various well-known writers. I have chosen the three below only because their insights are central to Hurford’s approach.
William Zinsser, writer, editor, and literary critic, said: “The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components – every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word…”
Today, more than ever before, we need to “strip every sentence to its cleanest components”. The vast majority of every businessperson’s writing is emails and various forms of instant messages. The best messages are succinct and clear.
There is a compelling reason for using email and instant messages - we are all time-starved. There is ample evidence that most long letters and notes go unread, but that short ones do not. What you write must be clear the first time it is read. If not, there is a fair chance that your note will be deleted, not re-read.
It is rare for any writer to produce a perfect piece of writing the first time, whether it is a short message or a full report. Ideally, the writing should follow three steps: writing, rewriting and polishing.
The first step is simply to write, get it all down without concern for syntax punctuation or typos. This approach will ensure your ideas flow unimpeded.
At the second step, “Rewriting”, you criticise your work. You organise the idea flow, evaluate the quality of the content, and the persuasiveness of your argument.
You change word order, eliminate unnecessary words or phrases, and ensure that what you wrote is understood immediately. This not only necessary for formal documents, it is necessary for an sms and an email as well.
The last step is “polishing” the writing, ensuring it gives the best account of your ideas and the best impression of you.
The poet, Robert Frost, believed that “the ear is the only true writer and the only true reader”.
“Read it out loud,” Hurford suggests. “If it doesn’t sound right, it usually isn’t right.”
When your writing does not sound right, the general rule is not to add, but to cut. Writing simply makes what you have written more powerful, and easier to read. It is more important that the reader understands your point effortlessly than that she marvels at your erudition and prodigious vocabulary. (That is an example!)
Great writers do not produce flawless text the first time that does not need revision. Quite the opposite; “The best writing is rewriting,” notes E B White, the American writer of children’s classics.
Editing your work ruthlessly, whether it is a message, an email or a document is the only way you can be sure of giving the best impression.
Warren Buffett, the world’s most successful investor, explains that he writes with a specific person in mind. He writes his Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report pretending he is talking (not writing) to his sisters. “They will understand plain English, but jargon may puzzle them…”
Thinking of how easily your reader will understand your writing is a good test of its quality.
If any more weight needs to be added to the argument for writing so there can be no confusion, it is a legal requirement in terms of the Consumer Protection Act of 2011.
Every sloppy, confused, or poorly written message, email or document leaves the reader with a negative impression. Either you do not value me enough to bother to write well, or you are not able to write well.
This brief book, available free from the author’s site, will be of significant benefit to everyone in business. Download it.
Readability: Light -+--- Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practical: High -+--- Low
- Fin24
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works. Views expressed are his own.
