Tips for improving your writing

It is nearly impossible to overstate the benefits of being able to write well. Even more so than effective public speaking, a solid ability to communicate your ideas in writing will make or break your career from day one. (This is part two of this post on writing well; read part one here.)

Here are a few ideas that you can use to improve your own writing skills.

Focus on communicating

The act of writing is fundamentally the act of communicating information to someone else. This sounds simple enough, right?

Here’s a challenge: pick up a technical article in your field. Or, even better, pick up one in a field you don’t know much about. What do you see?

Does the author organize his material in an easy-to-follow, logical progression from background through the advancement being discussed and then explain the ramifications? Are the sentences grammatically correct, relatively easy to read, and written with standard vocabularies? Is she so impressed with her own vocabulary of 5 and 6-syllable words that you feel sure she is writing only to convince you she’s smart?

The platinum rule of the written word is that you aren’t writing for you, you are writing to communicate with the reader. Act accordingly.

Written technical communication is forever

I have in my personal library a book that was printed in 1501. Written artifacts have a tendency to hang around, and technical documents are no exception. [Thanks for pointing out the typo, esa!]

In the modern technical workplace, white papers are stored for future reference. Progress reports are passed up the chain and stored as a permanent record of accomplishment. Journal articles are entered into vast bibliographical databases to support other research. And e-mails are stored indefinitely on hard drives all over the world.

Keep tight control of your drafts (even “first” drafts should be fairly clean when they are shared with others) and, no matter what you are writing, be accurate and sensible. And, neatness counts!

Even in email

Yes, even your email should be accurate, sensible, and grammatically correct. Who knows where something is going to get forwarded?

Tell a story

Ok, so most technical writing isn’t bedtime reading (unless you are an insomniac), but there should be some flow and overarching organization to what you write. Your reader should have a clear sense of the direction you are headed and what it is that you want her to do when she finishes. Think about her while you write, and make sure you are giving her information she can use in the way she needs to find it.

Keep looking for feedback

How do you know whether you are writing well? There’s only one test that really matters: when your audience understands your information and is moved to act in accordance with your goals.

But how will you know when this happens? The odds are pretty good that, early in your career anyway, you won’t have any automatic indicators. Sometimes you will be writing a decision paper, and your decision will be adopted as the company line, and this is a good self-test. But this won’t happen often; more often than not early in your career your writing will not be directly acted upon.

Usually you’re going to have to solicit feedback. Cling to anyone who will give you honest feedback and constructive criticism. These people will make it possible for you to refine yourself into a polished professional.

Do you think that you are already so good that you don’t need feedback? Think about Caruso, probably the greatest tenor in history, who at the height of his career as the star of the Metropolitan Opera conscientiously took voice lessons to improve his singing and acting on stage. If you are a better technologist than Caruso was a singer, maybe you don’t need feedback. Otherwise seek it out and treasure it.

This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.