My grad student, Jessica, struggled to write in college. Then she went to work. She tried to apply what she was taught in college about writing to her workplace writing. But she felt anxious and confused. Where to start? How to get over writer’s block? How to impress the Boss? How to impress her customers? After her Boss gave her a low rating on written communication on her annual performance appraisal, she decided to fix her problem. She went back to school, entering the grad program in professional writing at Towson University, where I met her in my business writing class.
When we talked several weeks into the semester, she shared her story with me. She said she felt so relieved to learn what I was teaching her about writing, lessons she found herself applying immediately on the job. I told her that, in my opinion, there’s a dirty little secret about college writing courses. They don’t do much to teach us how to develop useful content for our workplace readers and how to present that information well. The focus is eloquence and make-believe, not everyday practical writing for real people who are busy but need useful information to do their jobs better.
We know a great way to make workplace writing easier and better. Maybe it can help you….
We met Becky at a writing training we did for a top global professional services company…we’ll call it POSH. Becky spent two years after graduating from a prestigious college earning a Master’s Degree in Public Policy (MPP); she told us at a coffee break that she did extremely well, loved it. Mixed her interests in economics, statistics, policy research, and environmental issues. Crossed disciplines, switching gears at a moment’s notice, always learning something new. Worked in groups, an activity she loved as much as the best artisanal gelato. She said she’d spent a semester in Florence—the bridges, red roofs, the cantuccini with Vin Santo. Visited the Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, and the Uffizi. Discovered Tuscany and loved its cuisine, especially the gelato (white chocolate with pistachio sauce).
A Decalogue for workplace writing? Really?
I don't at all mean to depreciate the original עשרת הדברים. But having spent the metaphorical 40 days and 40 nights out in the wild of the workplace, dealing with sentences like this—
Therefore, this improvement is assumed to redistribute the source of the existing passenger generated flows being conveyed by the two existing system branches because of the redistribution of part of the population from the existing Terminal Complex onto the new Concourse. (41 words in the original)
—I feel a revelation coming on. So here are my 10 Commandments for Workplace Writing, with a few annotations.
Performance audit reports, which are always issue-driven (think risk), are declarations built through a series of logical steps, which include identifying appropriate criteria as standards for making judgements, describing condition (what has actually happened), comparing criteria to that condition, and, where there is a gap, stating the effects (consequences) of the gaps, ascertaining the causes of the gaps and, from these causes, presenting recommendations that will resolve the issue.
If you don't know him, he's written some great books, which are generally classified as "business books," but they're much more than that...each is different.
My youngest son, who is beginning his second year in law school, was, over the summer, a “summer associate” in a big NYC law firm. It wasn’t his first brush with the business/corporate world, but he made an observation to me about writing on the job recently that I thought was interesting and worth passing along.
I’ve taught business/technical writing to grad and undergrad students for 35 years. Since 1984, I’ve also regularly consulted with writers in the workplace at NASA, KPMG, Catholic Charities, Whiting Turner Contracting, the State Department, the Justice Department, and many, many other places. I’m disenthralled with the giant textbooks used in most college business-writing classes—they’re WAY too expensive and don’t focus well on the simple, common-sense, matter-of-fact critical-thinking and workplace-writing skills students need for the rest of their working lives
The reader is everything. That is the simplest truth about business writing. Writers must serve the needs of their readers. Business writers should work hard so their readers don’t have to. Documents must be, above all, useful to the reader and highly readable.
