In Business You Need to Write
They lack the ability to write a complete, coherent sentence.
It’s harder and harder to hide upscale borderline illiteracy in the era of on-demand personal communications. Gone are the lazier days of, “Miss Smith, take a letter,” and gone are the letters themselves, that were more style than substance. The real business of selling, buying and horse-trading took place elsewhere in those days. Letters merely confirmed or regretted.
What trips up many of today’s closet anti-writers is both the directness and the informality of business e-mail and faxes, a correspondence caught between two worlds, where professionalism is expected, but so are conciseness, clarity and speed.
For the businessman or woman who failed to grasp writing rudimentaries in school or on the job, there’s no more room for verbosity and double-speak, hiding under a commanding corporate logo or sprawled across thick, expensive letterhead.
It’s estimated that some 35 percent of today’s bosses still don’t answer their own e-mails, but toss that simplest and quickest of tasks to a subordinate who’ll essentially ghost-write the response.
And with downsizing, outsourcing and lean-and-mean in the workplace, that crutch could be removed without even a moment’s notice.
With the fax-scanner-printer combo quickly becoming the business world’s great equalizer, where do you fall on the scale of corporate literati?
Don’t Write … Communicate!
If you’re the kind of guy who thinks he couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag … or the kind of gal who prays nightly in thanks for spell-check … or even an aspiring writer who’s busy papering the wall with rejection slips, take heart from knowing one fundamental truth:
If you can speak so that people will listen, you can write so that people will read.
You don’t have to go back to school, but you do have to practice, practice, practice! It won’t be a chore at all if you remember three little rules:
* Words aren’t just words, they’re the keys to your heart’s desires.
* Reading isn’t a leisure activity, it’s absolutely central to any writer’s survival. And that’s true whether you’re writing a quick courtesy e-mail to a client, or a 21st century translation of War And Peace. Pretend reading is a food group, and take your daily requirement seriously!
* Start writing about things you know. Everyone has special experiences and memories. Practice writing about yours.
Tools of the Trade
If you want to write to communicate, there are really just four tools of the trade: Words, punctuation, grammar and a fourth category loosely defined as “other stuff” that really boils down to, know your target audiences.
Speak (write) to your targets in terms of their own interests, or your communication — no matter how well-formed and grammatically correct — will fall on deaf ears, or blind eyes, as the case may be!
Punctuation and grammar (and their cousin, spelling) are best learned by reading and re-reading any fourth-grade English book. You can find the books in any antique shop for a ridiculously reasonable price. If your eyes start to glaze over, just remind yourself that if shoeless, work-worn youngsters could learn the basics of writing on the American frontier, you can manage it as well.
Or you can always cheat and buy a software program that checks it all for you.
What you can’t find in any computer program or even an old English book is a way to collect words the way you’d collect shells from the seashore or shiny rocks or beloved teddy bears. But if you pursue your words in much the same way, with the same interest and vigilance, you’re more than half-way down the road toward communication competence.
What’s in a Word?
Words are central to any communication, but especially to written communication, because words must be your voice. In letters, reports and e-mails, they have to do the shouting, weeping, laughing, scowling, scolding and praising for you. They have to convey your sense of urgency, disappointment, ecstasy, despair, pride, fear and grief.
In a business letter, words are your business partners. They sell your goods, negotiate payment, hint, suggest and impose your will. They ask for payment of a long-past-due bill when the debtor’s your biggest client. They ask the client for more time (or money) when the project’s been derailed. They thank a valued worker who performed above and beyond. They console a colleague in times of grief and loss.
The best way to broaden your vocabulary, to choose the right word for the moment, to find the words you love, is to read the dictionary and cross-pollinate with a thesaurus. Every day. Start with five minutes, jump to 10 or 15, and treat yourself to a whole evening of dictionary-reading whenever you feel the urge!
Simply open the book to a page, any page, and start scanning. You’ll be amazed what you can learn in just a few minutes.
For instance, on pages 1126-1127 of an ancient Funk & Wagnalls, you’ll find a lot of words, including one familiar to most persons of business: RECOUP … as in, recoup losses from a loss leader or a bad debt … not “recoop” as it’s so often presented in quick-scrawled e-mails.
But also on that page spread you’ll find “recreant,” its pronunciation, and its wonderful definitions: 1. Unfaithful to a cause or pledge; apostate; false 2. Craven; cowardly. –n. (noun) A cowardly or faithless person.
Now it’s a rare human being — especially one with any years in the political, educational or business realm — who hasn’t had an opportunity to know and detest such a fiend as the one described so aptly in Funk and Wagnalls. Craven? Faithless? Make this word your friend!
Also on those pages is the information that the lovely, edible Red Bud tree, which is the actual corporate logo of the closest little town to my community, is a.k.a. the notorious Judas Tree. And there, too, is the oft-misused re-count (a second counting of votes) that differs from recount, which is to give a detailed narrative.
A quick short-cut to wordsmith heaven is the path known as onomatopoeia. Try this at home, with your friends, your teens and even little ones! It’s therapeutic.
Onomatopoeia is the use of words that mimic the actual sounds the words represent, made famous by the cartooning industry. Crash, splatter, hiss, boom, bop, thwack, jangle, ooze, clang, swoosh, snap, crackle and pop … you get the idea.
And while you’re looking up the likes of shivver and chatter and kerplunk, check out such lovelies as oolite and purpura and kalamkari …
Read, Read, Read
The old maxim is still true: Someone who won’t read is no better off than someone who can’t read.
The final and usually the toughest directive: You have to read if you want to improve your writing. It’s that simple.
Don’t just read to extract information from a news article or a report. Read to absorb context, dialogue, descriptions. Read to learn something that you never knew you’d want to know. Read to become more interested in the world outside your cubicle, and you’ll become more interesting in return. Read to find your own voice.
Again, it doesn’t have to be, and should never become, a chore. Read a children’s book called Panda Bear’s Paint Box and listen to the way the words are put together. Read brief excerpts from James Herriott’s veterinary stories and ponder the understated humor. Read A Child’s Garden of Verses. Read old novels and new anime comic books.
So if you’re part of the growing underground of professionals who fear their secret inability to write effectively will come to light, simply vow — now — to end the agony. Take whatever steps necessary to improve your communications skills today. It’s an effort that will pay you huge personal and professional dividends for the rest of your literate life!
