I’m finally back online and able to post again, so I’ll be starting again in the next several days as I catch up with things. What amazes me most while I’ve been offline is the volume of spam posts there have been to the blog. So many attempts to get something posted! All of the attempts were so obvious, yet they keep coming in. I sometimes wonder why, but I’m sure I know. It doesn’t require any effort. Adding one posting address to a list and everything else is automatic. What a waste.

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I was recently reading the book ‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Clear Thinking’ looking for information on learning:

In the process of reading it, I ran across the following “Rules for Making Your Case in Written Form”:

• “Remember that you’re not speaking face-to-face”
• “In e-mails and memos, make sure your subject line accurately conveys what will follow”
• “Avoid mixing personal with professional written communications”
• “Keep private matters separate from public ones”
• “In the e-mail world, observe netiquette”
• “Take the high road”

All of these are very good things to keep in mind, but to me the first is the most important. Remember, you’d NOT speaking face-to-face. Body language, facial expressions, and voice inflections aren’t present in your writing. Different authorities quote different numbers, but most of any communication happens through one of these modes. When ALL you have is the content, you’re handicapping yourself.

Even worse is that you’re not there to explain or answer questions when someone reads what you’ve written. Whatever you’ve written has to stand on its own. Once it leaves your computer or typewriter or notepad, whatever you’ve written takes on a life of its own. People who read it will bring their own experience and knowledge to interpreting what you’ve written, so you must be sure that you’re really saying what you MEAN in the clearest possible terms.

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I recently ran across a blog post called ‘10 Signs Your Writing Might Stink & How to Fix It‘. While the blog is about writing non-profit newsletters, these are very important points to think about for anyone who wants to get their ideas across. These points in particularly seemed to apply to anyone trying to make themselves understood:

“1. You are cutting and pasting grant application text into your newsletters.” - change this to cutting and pasting from ANY document you use to communicate with other professionals similar to yourself. If you’re expecting an executive to understand your communication with another techie, forget it. Not only won’t they understand, they’ll tune you out and you won’t get your message across.

“2. You can play Nonprofit Buzzword Bingo with yourself.” - can you play ‘Techie Buzzword Bingo’ with yourself? If you’re writing with lots of buzzwords, you’re probably not communicating.

“3. You find yourself skimming your own writing. If you don’t have the patience to actually read what you wrote, what makes you think the rest of us will?” RIGHT ON POINT! if you don’t find your own writing interesting and exciting enough to keep reading, why SHOULD anyone else?

“4. Your boss takes forever to get comments back to you.” Not a sure guide since it may be the boss’ problem, but it could also be that the boss is reluctant to start because they know it’ll take forever to do a good job.

“5. The article you just wrote could have been written ten years ago.” Most techies I know aren’t plagued by this one, they’re right up-to-date. But your boss probably isn’t and neither are your readers. If you’re so far on the cutting edge that you’re bleeding and that’s coming through in your writing, you’re probably losing people.

“8. When reading your writing out loud, you can’t get to the end of most sentences without taking a breath.” Take this one SERIOUSLY. Read what you’re writing OUT LOUD. Even better, record it and play it back to yourself. Listen to your breathing, do you take a deep breath at the end of a sentence? if so, SHORTEN IT.

“10. You try to cover everything, just in case this is the only thing they’ll read.” The most important three things in Real Estate are LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. In writing, it’s FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS. It’s not easy and all of us are guilty of it, but it’s a sure way to lose people. You see this often in emails where someone tries to cram everything into a single email. DON’T DO IT if you want to get your point across!

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Sometimes, you just need some help to get things done. I’ve added a ‘Services’ page to lay out some of the things I can help you with if you need it.

If you’d like some help with a writing project, I offer a free phone consultation where we’ll review what you need and come up with a plan for how I can best help you. Send me your contact information below including a phone number and I’ll get in touch within the next several business days.

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I’ve added a comment spam filter to the blog, so I’ve activated comments from anyone. I look forward to getting a conversation started.

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