Communicating your ideas effectively through writing is a key ingredient to your success in any modern day enterprise. E-mails, instant messages, presentations & whitepapers- have all become a regular feature of everyone's work day. Ability to summarize your own work, critique another's work, make suggestions & recommendations, share ideas through the written word- are all key components of your work as a leader, both in technical or executive line of work. To top it off, each of these and more require that you write in different styles, appropriate to the occasion:

1. Scientific style for explaining technical specifications of your work
2. Formal business style for executive briefings
3. Simple article style for consumption by your business partners
4. Easily absorbable style for your customers
5. Service style when writing as part of your Customer Support department
6. Research style when filing intellectual property disclosures (patents)
7. and many more.

And then there are the legal implications. Twenty-first century court cases have made all forms of written communication, including e-mails and instant-messages, legal documents which can be used in the court of law. Thus what you write and how you communicate effectively while avoiding misconceptions becomes doubly important in your work.

Fortunately, a few simple tips can dramatically improve the readability of your writings:

1. Keep your sentences short.
2. Always re-read what you have written before hitting "Enter" or "Send" button. Make sure you can read and understand what you have written. This is true regardless of the length or mode of communication.
3. Try and remove clutter from your writing. Every word should carry its weight and not be redundant.
4. Spoken English is different from Written English. Understand the difference.
5. Read these two books:
   • "The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White
   • "On Writing Well" by William Zinsser

Even the best of writers make glaring errors occasionally. It is useful to learn from them.

"She wore the dress same color as her eyes her father brought her from San Francisco." - Danielle Steel, Star

The sentence above makes it seem that her father brought her eyes from San Francisco! Sure, the reader can guess the real intent of the sentence and understand what the writer meant- but that is not the way to communicate effectively. If the subject matter was a little more obscure, or where the possibility of the eyes really being brought from San Francisco was not so far-fetched, the sentence would be plainly confusing.

"The new-comers made such a stir and commotion that the four children came out of the waiting-room to watch. Everyone was very hilarious" - Enid Blyton

"Everyone was very hilarious"? Like a car that is "very moving"? Looks like even the best of them can go astray.

The above examples are from the bulwer-lytton.com site on real-life examples of bad writing by professional writers. There are many more examples on the web-site.

But the point being made is simple. A badly crafted sentence, paragraph or essay can fail to convey your idea or worse, convey the wrong idea.

Action

Even though you might be writing a lot, most of the writing is likely to be casual e-mails, instant messages and such. Perhaps you are working on a thesis or an article for a class you are taking and that is giving you some practice of formal writing. In any case, you need a more thorough and rigorous practice in the art of writing to take it to a highly effective level.

1. Read good books - at least one classic every year. Classical authors have a way with words, and subconsciously, you will improve your writing skills by imbibing their style.
2. Is there a topic that you are an expert at? Perhaps you are an expert programmer? Or good at a musical instrument? If so, then you have the perfect topic to write about! Write in a fashion that a lay audience would understand. Communicate your ideas simply and effectively. Try getting them published in a free e-zine (you can do this by submitting to an e-zine website such as http://www.ezinearticles.com.
3. Do you have opinions on different subjects? Politics, sports, home & garden maintenance, state of research in USA and so forth? Put them to the paper. Let it out, clearly and effectively. Share them with friends- get their opinions. At a later date, you could get these published as well!

Writing one article every month will automatically begin improving your writing skills, if for no other reason but practice. And if you begin incorporating the styles mentioned in "The Elements of Style" and "On Writing Well", your writing will rocket to the top 1% of employees in your firm- and you will begin seeing yourself getting called in for creating presentations, writing to customers and for providing easy explanations to others.

Writing well takes some effort and time, but has one of the longest lasting impacts for all of your life.

Writing as a Career

There is more information on this topic under the Additional Streams of Income Pillar. However, it is worth noting that as a writer, you could

• Become a copywriter, writing sales letters, web-site copy and so forth
• Write general interest articles and get them published in e-zines for a fees
• Write resumes! Which requires some additional skills, but relies on good writing as well
• Write books or ghost-write books

And many more.

Good writing is simply an imperative today regardless of your actual choice of career. Take the steps recommended above right now to improve the effectiveness of your writings.