Short written communications are so common, that many people treat them as unimportant. They’re anything but. They are often one of the things people use to assess your abilities. How trusted you are depends on what they see in your writing. Writing which is clumsy, disorganized, or loaded with misspellings will lead to the impression that you are the same.

Because I’ve been writing for many years and have been an editor on magazines and newsletters, I’ve been asked to put together short courses for clients to help their people write better. My style is informal and tries to be informative. I focus on getting a series of ideas understood. Most people like that. Some people consider me to be too informal or too personal, but I’m going to suggest throughout this series of blog entries that more writing should be that way. Overly formal or impersonal writing is harder to understand and puts up unnecessary barriers between you and your readers.

Consider customer service, If you’re writing to reply to a question from a customer and you’re not clear, you’re only going to frustrate that customer. If you’re on a help desk and responding to a user request, you could make the situation worse. If you’re trying to get funding for an important project and you’re answering questions from executives in email, you might lose the funding. There are many places where doing a good job on Short Written Communications is important.

I’ve posted the slides from one of my short courses in the Documents folder. The file, ShortWrittenCommunications.pdf, contains all of the slides used for the lecture. There was additional practical coaching which went on during each engagement after the lecture to help each participant become familiar with the techniques involved. Over time, I’ll be expanding on every technique addressed there as I go further into writing and how I think it should be done.

It’s important to recognize that all of the techniques aren’t suggested for EVERY communication. They’re a toolbox you can use as needed to help make your ideas clear.

Categories: Skills