Writing for the World of Work: “Writing Right – a Clear, Concise,Complete, Correct and Courteous Approach to Good Business Writing”

© Copyright 2012 Brenda Robinson & Harley Robinson.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4669-1312-7 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-1317-2 (e)

Trafford rev. 03/08/2012

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Summary

Introduction

Writing for the World of Work

Writing for the world of work is a communication skill as much as a writing skill. Writing at work today is our way of communicating—we email more than we converse. Our writing now speaks for us. Technology has not decreased the need for effective writing skills at work. Indeed, there may actually be an increased demand for good writers as we embrace the world of emails, electronic reporting, instant messaging and…

We have a new kind of reader today. Readers used to expect to have to read, reread, interpret, sort and select as a part of the process. They expected to have to work hard to get the information.

Today’s reader only wants to read once, understand at the first reading and be able to make a decision. In fact, it is preferable to be able to simply skim and easily find the information that is needed.

Not only has the reader changed, the readers expectations have also changed. I call it being CSI’d. The TV show CSI follows a particular format. They show you the crime right up front and the rest of the story is about understanding the crime. When we’re writing for work we need to keep in mind that people want the important stuff first and then the explanation.

As the pace of work continues to increase, people have less time to compose, create, review and study the written information at work. They want to write quickly, clearly and directly and they want to get results! The reader wants to read once, understand the first reading and take the action required! Everybody wants to complete the process with ease, speed and accuracy. In order to do this, writers need to write for readers. Our training has not always been to write for the reader to understand. In fact, more often than not, a writer wanted to impress the reader.

Do you remember the writing you did in school? Did you try to use bigger words? Did you try hard to sound more impressive by using your thesaurus? Did anybody ever tell you that simple sentences were for simple people? Did you try to use longer, more compound and complex sentences? Did you worry about how your writing flowed? Did you work hard to provide unity and coherence?

All of these ideas were excellent guidelines for writing essays, papers, book reports and academic documents. But, do they work when we