Writing Skills for a New Era

Brushing up on your grammar, spelling, and punctuation can make a big difference in how your colleagues and customers perceive your professionalism.

Even professional proofreaders embrace the fact that the English language is complex, and you’ll always have to look things up. Fortunately, low-cost writing tools like Grammarly and Hemingway can help you spot typos, grammatical errors, passive voice, run-on sentences, and other common mistakes.

Do you have the evidence you need to support your claims and make a convincing argument? If not, you might try: 

• Interviewing a subject matter expert (or several).
• Conducting a thorough internet search (beyond Wikipedia).
• Reading a book that goes deep on the subject.
• Crowdsourcing (e.g., running a poll or survey).
• Digging into company data.

Stick to plain, clear word choices. You won’t sound any less intelligent (but you will sound less pompous).

What kind of writing do you feel like you want to get better at? Read more of that, and take a closer look at why it works.

Even if your sole aim is to become a better communicator at work, it helps to pay attention to what you read. What makes an email a good email? What kind of Slack message makes you drop everything to respond? What blog posts do you find yourself sharing over and over again?

Get comfortable with messy drafts. Don’t expect to publish the first version you create, whether it’s an email, a blog post, or any other piece of writing. Learn to come back to it later and revise — revising is part of good writing.

So much of what makes writing seem intimidating is the tyranny of the blank page. Like exercise, it’s the idea of it we’re reluctant to contend with — once we’re doing it, we’re fine.

Conciseness is foundational to effective written communication. 

The ability to synthesize a complex subject, break it down, and clearly summarize it in simple terms using as few words as possible is key to retaining your reader’s attention.

When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It’s good to have a handle on when your message is best conveyed via writing, versus some other channel.

Not every piece of content is best conceived as a blog post. Sometimes it’s a video, a podcast, an infographic, or something else. 

Get a second set of eyes on your writing before sharing it with a wider audience. Your first reader will almost always find errors you didn’t spot. 

They can poke holes in your argument so you have a chance to address them before other readers catch you off guard by asking the same questions.