When you're using writing skills to communicate with others, you're using the hardest medium to get your message across. You never know how your words will impact someone else's thoughts, because you often have no idea where their minds are when they're reading what you wrote. Below are 10 quick points to consider when you're writing something for others to read:
1. Use proper English.
Not all of us are perfect at grammar; I'm certainly not. However, I also don't use phrases like [these ones] and [don't got] when I write. Every once in awhile we all miss inserting a word here or there because we think faster than we write. But if you want to make sure you're communicating in the best possible way you'll find that writing as properly as you can will help to make whatever you write more easily understood.
2. Don't use abbreviations that aren't generic to your business.
In today's chat room environment there are many shortcut abbreviations that people use to get their points across quickly (brb, lol, ty, wb are examples). For most of you, it wouldn't mean anything if I wrote EOB when I was talking about explanation of benefits, which of course is what you receive from your insurance company when they pay a medical bill for you. If you're trying to communicate and they have to keep asking you what something means, you're wasting time.
3. Get to your point as quickly as you can.
If you're not writing a story, or something where you can get away with a little bit of artistic license, it doesn't do you any good to throw in a lot of extraneous information when it doesn't have anything to do with a point you're trying to make.
4. Don't write too little.
Though it may seem to counter what I wrote for #3, it doesn't. If you're writing a new procedure that you want people to follow and they don't have any background history in this task, you'll have failed them. If you have an idea of something you want to implement and don't explain to people why you want to implement it, your plan may fail because they haven't bought in to your idea. Sometimes you should go the extra step; people won't follow you just because you say something.
5. Avoid using language that can take on more than one meaning.
The rise of email is a blessing and a curse. Based on the moment you're writing something and how you write, and based on the mood of the person you're writing to at the time, your words can come across as either praise, instruction, or criticism. As eloquent as I wish I could be, there have been times when someone has misinterpreted something I wrote as being negative. I now make sure to add as many niceties as I can when I write to people who don't know me, to avoid misunderstandings of that nature. Even now, they may not understand my point, but it's rare that anyone thinks I'm demeaning to them in an email anymore.
6. Write for the audience you're talking to.
If you're writing something for your employees to understand make sure you don't use words they may not be familiar with. If you're writing for your peers don't write as though you're talking down to them. When you have the luxury of knowing who your direct audience is, make sure you're targeting that group. If you're trying to look scholarly, every once in awhile you can throw in a sesquipedalian type word (that wasn't nice, was it?).
7. Capitalization and punctuation!
Every time you start a new sentence the first word is supposed to be capitalized. If you have an extremely long sentence, try throwing in a comma every once in awhile. Colons, semi-colons, quotation marks, dashes break up the monotony. I don't know if they still teach this in schools, but I was taught that if you were speaking the sentence you're writing and needed to take a pause, that's a good place for a comma. Names, places, organizations... capitalize.
8. Spelling.
This one is crucial, but it's as bad as #7. It gets worse if your misspelling actually ends up being an actual word. There's a world of difference between dessert and desert, hate and hat. There's also a world of difference between "there", "their", and "they're."
9. Reread what you write.
You may be able to immediately see errors as you're writing it. Sometimes you may have to step away for a few minutes, then go back and look at what you wrote. It's been proven that human minds have the capacity to insert words and images where something is missing because you know what's supposed to go there. However, your audience may not. We all make mistakes, but they can be minimized if you take the time to look at what you wrote one more time.
10. Keep it as simple as possible.
You don't do yourself any favors by using large words if you're writing to a crowd that has no idea what you're saying. Also, if you're not comfortable with some words, you'll avoid putting yourself in a bad light by using words in an incorrect manner. Taking everything else into account from above, your main objective is to get across what you're trying to say. If it takes a lot of words, use a lot of words; if it takes fewer words use fewer words. But use words that are most appropriate to your topic. Oh, one final thing. "Sesquipedalian" means the use of large words; literally, it means "foot and a half long" words.
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T. T. "Mitch" Mitchell is president of T. T. Mitchell Consulting, Inc. If you
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