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You can all relax. This is not a grammar lesson. It is not enough to do a good job. You must also give the appearances of doing a good job. That is why writing well is so important. Writing well is not an add-on to your job skills. It is a central part of it. Your writing must communicate you doing a good job. Many who read your reports will never meet you. Yet they have powerful influences over your career. Their only vision of you is through your writings. Since only your writings are available to them, the writing must be outstanding. You are outstanding. Your writing must reflect that. Just what are we trying to achieve when we write? The US novelist Robert Stone said it best: "What you're trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You're trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves them just from mere information." Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone with a clear logical mind can write well. You have such a mind or you would not be here. Writing well is a three-step process. And you have already mastered the first two: Knowledge. Without knowledge you cannot convince anyone to do anything. Our knowledge tends to be disorganized. We learnt a bit here, a bit there and a lot from some place else. It's all good stuff but gathered then stored in a random pile, so to speak. Navigation. You must plot a logical course leading the reader from A to B to C to your conclusion. Do not worry about the verbiage at this stage. Just have the logical sequence laid out Point form, broken sentences, whatever. Your readers will not tolerate your logic wandering. You cannot be like the man who rode his horse backwards. His friend said, "That is remarkable. You have visited all those wonderful places, yet you only ride your horse backwards! Just how do you do it?" "Oh, that's easy," he replied, "I only want to go where the horse wants to go." Salesmanship. This is what we consider as "Writing," putting the words on paper. The task is to guide and comfort the reader. At the end of each sentence they must have the feeling of "that makes sense, that's
logical, that was easy to grasp, I'll carry on reading." Actually, it's writing and thinking. The tough part is the thinking. What is the next logical step? Think. What is the reader expecting next? Think. Is what I said what I meant? Think. Do not expect to write and not have to rewrite, rewrite, and rewrite. If you think, you can write without having to fine-tune it, your readers will surely be in trouble. Many readers will not bother to finish reading it. How many times have you started to read an article and quit reading it? Not because the subject was boring but because the story wandered, was confusing or difficult to read. Searching out the errors, roadblocks, and poor sentence structure makes for hard, timeconsuming work. It is so easy to be ambiguous. It is so easy to say it poorly. My favorite example of ambiguity is a manager's memo requesting "a listing of all employees broken down by sex." For some, writing is a chore, for others, fun. I cannot change that. Writing well will not change that. You are who you are. For myself, I find writing well hard work and time consuming but very enjoyable. Authority You are paid to be an authority. You are paid to make decisions. If you are not an authority on what you are about to write, put the pen down until you are. It's that simple. With all simple things, there is a trick. We do not have to be an authority on everything. Just an authority on what we are about to write. I do not mean known a lot. I mean be a true authority on the very narrow topic. If you are using a chemical, know everything about it. Who discovered it? What, why, and when is important. Know the history of the subject. Know all of today's applications. It's a narrow topic so it is not difficult. Putting some history in your report demonstrates your knowledge. It strengthens you implied claim of being an authority Consider this brief statement: "Mercury was first confirmed as a poison when the strange behavior of felt hat makers was investigated. It was discovered that they were being poisoned with the mercury used in felt manufacturing. The nervous Mad Hatter in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a fairly accurate portrayal of a person suffering from the nerve damage caused by mercury exposure." By implication, what does this brief statement tell the reader? Just to know this you must be an authority. The hazard label is well deserved and not simply a hazard promoted by some activist. And most importantly: Reader, don't hassle me on what I am saying. I'll fight back if you challenge me. Every subject has interesting historical facts. Search them out. You may be surprised what you will learn during your search. Typically, you can be an authority in a relatively short time. Remember, we are only talking about very narrow subjects. For example, I am an authority on mathematical sales forecasting. I studied it well. As a frustrated mathematician, it fascinated me. To me, exponential smoothing, seasonal variations, and probabilities are all great stuff.
I went to the library to study its beginnings of mathematical sales forecasting, it's history, and lore. A mathematician named Browne and a few others developed mathematical forecasting while in the US Air force during the Second World War. They developed the mathematics for the automatic aiming of guns to shoot down airplanes. After the war they were unemployed. So they applied their principles to sales forecasting. I can still remember a magazine drawing of a gun, the bullets and airplane's path with the military formulas beside each. Beside the military formula the same formula was rewritten using business terms: past sales (airplane's path) etc. If you know how shooting down an airplane can help you forecast sales, please let me know. As I said, I'm an authority: Mathematical sales forecasting is garbage. But it sells well. Nomex® is an excellent electrical insulation. In the '60's I used it as electrical insulation in transformer design. Did you know the US government funded its development in the early fifty's specifically for space suits? That was years before we ever heard of Sputnik (1957). I was an authority on Nomex. A very narrow field, but I was an authority. You do not need to know every regulation in the book. But be an authority on the ones that apply to you. Knowing when it was written, by whom and why was it promoted to be included in the regulations can be used to demonstrate your knowledge. It's easy and it's fun for both you and the reader. Fun: if you do not enjoy your subject, you cannot write well. Your writing must display both your knowledge and interest in the subject. Your reader must understand you enjoy making decisions, and do it willingly. You are paid to be an authority. You are paid to make decisions. Nothing less. Your writing skills must be up to your abilities. When finished reading your report there must be no qualifiers. Say what must be done. Eliminate all those words that put doubt in the reader's mind. Words such as "rather," "perhaps," "may be necessary." It is necessary or it is not. These words put doubt in their mind about you. They are called "weasel" words. You fail if the reader must sort out your options and make a decision. Every sentence must be positive. Your reader wants to read solid recommendations. Authority falters if you are not positive. No "perhaps we should." Say, "we must." Make the decision. Be bold in your statements. Don't be kind of bold. Be bold. Passive Voice Passive Voice is a grammatical term for an action statement that makes verbs become bland. Use verbs that convey an image. Smash, discharge, break, poison, gives positive images of the action. Passive Voice is also an action statement without a person in them. In technical writing it is difficult to put a personal touch to a chemical reaction. We accept passive voice in technical writing. That is what makes technical writing boring. You can brighten it through your writing. "The regulation is new" sounds weak. "The new regulation" has energy. "The motor was defective." is insipid. "The motor failed." conjures up a vision. Not "Transfer the fluid to the tower."
Say " Pump the fluid" Pump is an action word. Using vision words brightens your writing. Know Your Audience. Know your audience. That's nonsense. We have trouble enough knowing ourselves, let alone others. I've been married for forty-two years. My wife is still a wonderful mystery to me. Write for yourself. Say what you want to say. But say it well. If the reader does not like it, tough. These are my thoughts, my feelings, and my recommendations. Take them or leave them. I am not compromising my standards for you or anyone else. Above all, revel in the joy of being you. Word Processors Word processors are a great invention. Don't leave home without one. They are great for checking punctuation. Not bad for checking grammar. Not great, but pretty good. Spell checkers are great but dangerous to rely on. Word processors can point out our misuse of words. Take, for example, the word "approximate," a common engineering term. Odds are you would agree that it means: An inexact value adequate for a given purpose Those educated in the liberal arts and business, such as many of our senior executives, know the correct definition of "approximate." It means "almost exactly." The correct term for our use of "approximate" is "about." The error we make is assuming "approximate" has the same meaning as the mathematical term "approximation." Know what words mean. Another example: the difference between "Committed" and "Involved." A chicken was involved in the preparation of your breakfast. The pig was committed. Most grammar checkers object to using "but" and recommend "however." But "But" is correct. "However" is vague, boring. You run the risk of falling asleep before you finish saying it. "But" conjures up the vision of a smack in the head. It is a wake-up word. Use it. Shorter words are more prone to promote an image and have energy. Short words are short because they were created to make a point. Mark Twain said it best in a speech in 1908 and I quote: "An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down 'till the average is three and a half. ... I never write "metropolis" for seven cents,- he was paid seven cents a word - because I can get the same money for "city." I never write "policeman," because I can get the same price for "cop." ... I never write "valetudinarian" at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen (cents)." Spell checkers are great but use with caution. They only check to see if you spelt the word correctly. It does not determine if you used the correct word. And it is ever so easy to accidentally drop a letter. There is a difference between "public place" and "pubic place." Most have a feature that estimates the reading skill require to understand it. It evaluates word size
and sentence length. Ignore it. I am not interested in knowing if a grade eight reader can read it. The question is, can they understand it? That requires writing well. A complex subject is, by definition, complex. Perhaps a grade eighter cannot understand it, no matter how well you write. Many everyday activities are so complex they defy writing clearly. For example, write me instructions on how to tie my shoelaces. You can write with clarity, you can write with brevity. But you cannot avoid the subject's complexity. If you could, then the subject was never complex. But that does not mean you should accept the complexity. One must always try to simplify. You must reduce the subject to its simplest terms. Reduce it to a logical sequence of clearly thoughtout sentences. This will help make it clear to your readers and yourself. You will learn if you knew as much about the subject as you had hoped. Writing out your knowledge in logical sentences will highlight your missing knowledge and faulty logic. Few subjects are more complex than Einstein's Theory of Relativity. It is not an easy subject to understand. Yet his 1916 book, The Theory of Relativity is a marvel of logic. He understands the reader's knowledge of his theory is nonexistent. He leads the reader, step by step, going gently over the rough spots to help the reader. True, I get lost after the first half dozen chapters. But that is my weakness, not his carefully laid out logic. Word processors compare our writing to famous authors, notably Ernest Hemingway. He only used short sentences and small words. It makes for easy reading. And to write a book for popular consumption - that is the way to success. We do not write books. We write technical reports and memos, usually on complex subjects. A famous example of clarity, brevity and complexity is Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. He gave it at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, honoring those who died in the Battle of Gettysburg. His brief speech was followed by the most famous speaker of the time, Edward Everett. Everett, clergyman, orator, educator, and diplomat whose many offices included US Representative from Massachusetts was the main speaker. He spoke for two hours. The newspapers praised Everett's speech and barely mentioned Lincoln's. Yet Everett was so impressed with Lincoln's speech that he wrote him a letter the next day saying, "I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes." As brief as the Gettysburg Address was- 270 words - it is a classical model of eloquence. It is famous not because it is American; it is famous because it is one of the most moving expressions of the democratic spirit. Grammar checkers estimate it requires a grade thirteen education to comprehend it, five times as complex as Ernest Hemingway writings. It rates the sentence structure very complex, requiring well above the average vocabulary to understand it. Lincoln said what he wanted, was true to himself. He wrote for himself. He did not demean his subject by diluting it for the masses. Ernest Hemingway commented on the speech by saying: "It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg Address was so short. The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics.
Word Quality. I have talked about the importance of using short words and using vision words. Another word quality is how it sounds to the ear. While most of our writing is never read aloud, it is still heard in our mind. Certain words are beautiful to say. Some are ugly. A few sound awkward. "Got" is an ugly word. I wince every time I use it. As short as it is, it offers no vision. But its crime is that it sounds like you are clearing your throat. It is such a waste of a short word. "Filthy" is a beautiful word. Try it. It flows ever so nicely off your tongue. What a beautiful sounding name for a woman. "I would like you to meet my friend, Miss Filthy Smith." "Orange" completely disrupts the flow of a sentence. "If you have an orange house, burn it." You have to stop in mid-sentence just to say it. Having selected the correct words one must construct the sentence that sounds right. Read you work aloud. Your ear will identify the phrases and sentences that do not sound right. While the thought may be correct, somehow the sentence may sound awkward. Here is a classic example "These are the times that try men's souls." Thomas Paine, author of the 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, calling for American Independence through revolution, wrote it. "These are the times that try men's souls." Try rearranging the words to see if it can be made to sound better: How trying it is to live in times like these! This sounds like someone is ready to give up. These are trying times for men's souls. That makes it sound like wearying experience. Soul wise, these are trying times. Let's do our best to survive. That is just plain bad. All used the same words but only Paine expresses determination. Reading your writing out loud is a valuable tool. If you cannot repair a problem sentence structure then feel free to use my patented "Roe's Cureall for Problem Sentences": get rid of it. It probably was not essential anyway. Just as we tend to avoid large crowds, we surely avoid large paragraphs. Make them short. Looking forward to reading a long paragraph is not pleasant. It is viewed as a challenge. Most will say: "Why bother? I have enough challenges in my life - why voluntarily add one more?" The Information Age Appreciate the difference between information and knowledge. If you are writing to give information, you are wasting your time and the reader's. We are being buried in useless information. The Internet and mass publications flood us with information. Corporations sends out reams of information to us via email, faxes, computer reports, and pamphlets. 99.9% of it is useless to me. I do not seek information. I seek knowledge that I can convert to understanding and then, hopefully, to wisdom. Business spends far too much time measuring and reporting what can be reported while deliberately ignoring what should be reported and investigated. Why? They dare not publish internal documents criticizing the company for fear of the shareholders or the government gets access to it.
Style Lastly, writing style. Forget writing style. Write for yourself with clarity. That is a great style. I wish I could tell you how to write well but I can't. All I can do is to explain some of my thoughts on writing well. The rest is up to you and your ambitions.
As Vice-President of Manufacturing I presented this article to an environmental, health, and safety conference to about sixty of the corporations EH&S engineers. If they are to succeed their writing must reflect their abilities. Unfortunately few make the effort to master writing well.
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