Professional writing

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Writing is a skill that is acquired through conscious and persistent effort: it is not an instinctive skill that we are born with. Writers must try to perceive their text from the readers’ point of view, and write in a way that is clear and relevant to their audience. Writing professionally is extremely important as, aside from representing yourself in the communication, you may also be representing a group or company.

• Tips for successful writers
• Business email
• Visuals in professional documents

Tips for successful writers

Here are some guidelines for effective writing on which most successful writers agree. Whether you want to write creative texts, professional documents, scientific reports or promotional articles, these are some rules that writers worldwide have found valid and practical.

• No need to wait for inspiration

Writing creates itself rather like eating arouses the appetite. Most professional writers write on a schedule to meet publishing deadlines, whether they initially feel like it or not. So start writing before you have thought out completely what you want to say. It doesn’t matter if you start by writing nonsense, repetitions, fragments or mind maps. You will discover what you want to write by writing and not just by thinking. Your document will eventually write itself.

• Revise as you write

Most professional writers do at least two, and sometimes many more, drafts of anything they write. To be a successful writer, you should see yourself both as innovator (coming up with new ideas and new connections between ideas) and editor (re-arranging and cutting out parts of your text).

• Become observant

All kinds of writing emerge from experience so the more experience you get in your chosen field the better a writer you will become. Also, being a good writer by definition means being good at dealing with people. Writing always has readers and the more you understand people’s behaviour and reactions the better a writer you will be.

• Record different types of material that you may one day use in your writing

Professional writers keep a record of ideas, objects or events that catch their eye, even if these may not seem relevant to what they are writing at the moment. Writers carry a notebook and pen everywhere and many carry a small tape recorder to record their thoughts and observations immediately as they come.

• Use physical details of writing consistently

Most writers have their preferred tools and stick to them. This could mean using the same desk, which is located in a special place in your study, using a specific type of pen or word processor, or keeping your writing in special files and folders.

• Get feedback

In contrast to what some people wrongly believe, writing is not a solitary activity. A written text is meant to be read, so discuss your projects with friends and colleagues, and distribute your drafts for comment. Other people may be able to give you valuable insights on your work that you would have missed if you worked in isolation.

• Learn the conventions and standards of your language

Successful writers know standard English very well. Although writing is based to a large extent on skill, imagination and knowledge, it is still a technical medium dependent on grammatical rules. Even if you want to break those rules, like many writers in fact do, you need to know what they are so as to manipulate them.

For more advice, see writing skills and essay writing.

Business email

Professionals are often unsure as to when to submit a hard copy of a document and when an email message would be just as appropriate. This section aims to clarify such issues.

Email has one definite quality: it is fast. For professional situations, this is both an advantage and a drawback. The advantage is that your message can reach a number of recipients in different parts of the world in seconds - saving you both time and the cost of courier or air-mail. Also email can make a message public (read by many readers simultaneously) thereby opening it up to more constructive feedback. The drawback is that, because of its ease and simplicity, email often tends to be associated with speech rather than written language, which can lead to bad audience dynamics and miscommunication. When sending email as part of a professional communication, keep in mind these two points:

An email message is a written text. It is, therefore, bound by the conventions of writing, as discussed in Professional Writing. That is, your audience and purpose should determine the relative formality of style and the amount of detail. Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, the Internet does not level status distinctions; you are still writing to someone with a specific position of power and authority in relation to your own. Reflect this in your writing. Also, the ease with which a message can be transmitted and deleted does not justify sloppy composition, with mis-spelt words and ungrammatical sentences. In fact, a very common complaint with business email is that the writer seems abrupt and disrespectful and the message is hastily put together. Therefore, implement the guidelines for revision and editing given in this book also for email text.

Email does not replace hard copy. Printed and signed documents are still considered more binding and formal than soft copy. For example, although you may email a report for fast transmission, make sure you also send a hard copy to formalise the communication. One reason for this is that it is still easier to lose documents in cyberspace than if they are in tangible form. Another reason is that electronic communication depends on availability of software and hardware, whereas print can fall back on the universality and reliability of paper. Your best option for certain transmission is to send your document in both forms.

The closest hard document to an email message is the memo (note how email headers parallel memo headers). Therefore, use the guidelines on memo writing given in Professional Writing to construct your email message. Especially, make sure you have an opening address and a courteous close to avoid brusqueness. As regards practical aspects of email, here are some tips:

• For your actual email, write short paragraphs (no more than three sentences). It is more difficult to read from a computer monitor than it is from paper, so you facilitate communication by making the text as simple as possible.
• Do not use headings, tables or formatted text in the body of the email. The reason for this is that email text is based on code - HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language). This means that layout and formatting may “get lost”, and your document will not appear as you intended.
• If you want to send formal documentation, such as letter or a report, write an introductory message, memo style, and attach your letter or report in an easily printable format. Your best options are Word documents or PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Find out which is preferable, or save and send in both formats. The current convention is to use Word for shorter documents and PDF files for longer documents. Do not copy your letter or report in the body of the email message since fonts and layout appear differently in different operating systems and different browsers. For the same reason, printing may cause problems, as the text may not appear in printed form as you intended it to be.
• Email can replace letters (for external communication) and memos (for internal communication) if your purpose is to: notify of a change or development, ask a question, make a formal request for documentation to be sent to you, express an interest to be considered for a task or be put in a group, complain about a situation, negotiate a change, or make an announcement, such as the completion of a project or the acquisition of a new product. In all cases, choose email if your message may be deleted after action is taken, and does not need to be kept as a record. For formal, developmental procedures where the actual document is important, and not just the action it recommends, make sure a hard copy is available - and maybe signal its existence by an email message.

Visuals in professional documents

Visuals are alternative methods of presenting information and form a useful non-linear complement to the written word. Information presented diagrammatically or in pictorial form is memorable and can simplify, and thereby make clearer, complicated data. When including a visual in a report, assess it in relation to two factors: content, that is how it communicates meaning that is complementary to the meaning presented linguistically; and design, that is in terms of its size and positioning on the page.

As regards content, these points are important:

• The visual should be necessary to clarify a point in the document. Do not include a visual just for decoration. The problem here is that not everybody can interpret a visual, and sometimes readers may have different interpretations. Also if the visual adds nothing to the text but just repeats the same information, it would just take space and the reader’s time. In all, unless the reader is known to be specifically schematically oriented, if the relationships between data can be easily expressed in words, use words.
• Ask yourself whether the kind of visual you have chosen (pie chart, image, table, etc) is the best for your purpose. For example, a line diagram may be inappropriate for discrete data.
• The visual must be introduced, discussed, interpreted, and integrated in the text of the document. Remember that raw data is useless unless its relevance to the issue at hand is made clear. The reader should not have to figure out why the visual is included in the document, or what the significance of the data may be.
• The visual must be the best way to present the particular information you wish to express. It should convey a message more emphatically, more clearly, or more concisely than written sentences, or it should clarify the meaning of the sentences.
• The visual must stand alone in meaning. While it should be interpreted in the text of the document, it should also be self-explanatory and complete.
• All visuals must be numbered consecutively and given a specific, meaningful title. Include the title of a table above the table, and the title of all other visuals below the visual.
• As with all writing choices, visuals must be designed and formatted in a manner appropriate for the likely audience of the document. Will the visual be clear from the intended reader's perspective?
• If you have copied the visual from another document or website, remember to write “Source” under the visual followed by the name of the source.
• If using a table, make all like elements (the factors to be compared) read down not across.

As regards arrangement and design these points are important:

• Make the visual easy for your reader to find; the visual should closely follow the reference to it in the text. Format the document so that visuals do not appear on different pages from where they are mentioned in the text. The exception to this is, of course, visuals included in an appendix.
• Surround the visual with white space. This makes it easier for the reader to absorb the information presented.
• Consider whether the visual would be better located in an appendix rather than in the body of the report. If the body of your report is becoming too cluttered, some visuals may be moved to an appendix.
• As a convention, the visual should take up no less than one third of a page, again, for reasons of clarity and visibility.
• Position the visual in alignment with the text, for balance.

If using colours, note that by ordering colours from light to dark vertically or horizontally, elements will appear to be next to each other. This is because lighter colours tend to stand out and darker colours to recede. Take care if using red in a business context because red connotes failure (as in the expression “we’re in the red”).

For more advice, see presentation skills.

The content has been written by Sky Marsen, author of Professional Writing.