Business Communication

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Pros test their draft documents — with readers

April 16, 2013 by ProsWrite

Because pro writers recognize their limitations, they adopt practices designed to overcome them. One of those practices is testing a draft before delivering the final document. That’s why I highlighted the practice within my post: What is plain language? (Part Four: Putting It All Together in a Process). There are lots of document quality testing methods. While the source […]

Is your vision clear — or blurry?

April 8, 2013 by ProsWrite

I’m working on a post about research articles, but it’s not ready for the world yet. So I wanted to share a terrific piece on vision statements from Gavin over at Make A POWERful Point. He contrasts this vision statement attributed to Albertsons: Guided by relentless focus on our five imperatives, we will constantly strive to implement the […]

Amateurs don’t know they don’t know

April 4, 2013 by ProsWrite

I’ve been struggling to understand why teaching undergraduate students to write for the workplace is so difficult since around 1988. Quite a while back, I recognized that students have to clear a psychological hurdle to succeed. I just couldn’t figure out what to call that hurdle. Until now. In a 1999 article in the Journal […]

Warren Buffett, pro writer

March 19, 2013 by ProsWrite

I was reading my digitial issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) this morning and found Ben Yagoda’s Warren Buffett Is a Better Writer Than I Am. Damn It. (Yagoda is one of a handful of contributors to CHE’s Lingua Franca blog.) The piece is a terrific analysis of Buffet’s writing ability based on his recent Letter […]

Comparing organizations who promote workplace document quality

March 18, 2013 by ProsWrite

I recently discovered the Simplification Centre, which originated at the University of Reading in the UK, now functioning as a non-profit organization devoted to what they call information design. For our purposes, we can think of this as document quality. A couple of years ago, they published Criteria for Clear Documents: A Survey in which they compared the […]

What is plain language? (Part Three: Writer outcomes)

February 15, 2013 by ProsWrite

In the first two posts defining what I mean by “plain language,” I have focused on two points of the rhetorical triangle: textual elements like style and organization (Part One) and reader outcomes like comprehension and usability (Part Two). Now it’s time to tackle the third, the writer’s purpose. This is arguably the aspect of rhetorical context that […]

What is plain language? (Part Two: Audience outcomes)

February 10, 2013 by ProsWrite

In Part One of my attempt to explain how I understand plain language, I focused on the elements of a text that must be managed to create a plain language document. Anyone who has known me for long, however, could have predicted that I would talk about the rhetorical context of a high quality document in Part Two. […]

What is plain language? (Part One: Elements of the text)

February 5, 2013 by ProsWrite

One of the comments to How Do Your Sell Plain Language to Your Manager? insisted that a software program called StyleWriter is the key to management support for more successful writing in the workplace. I want to respond to that recommendation. But I realized that the commenter and I understand “plain language” differently. So I’m going to […]

A lesson on the bottom line

January 29, 2013 by ProsWrite

The AACSB peer review team left this morning after a whirlwind onsite accreditation visit to our business school. I shared a copy of our report with you a couple of months ago. Today I want to share a lesson on bottom line messages. Some background. One area in which the College is reviewed is called Assurance of […]

How can you sell plain language to your manager?

January 2, 2013 by ProsWrite

You’ve heard me talk about my interest in the obstacles to widespread adoption of plain language before. Over the holidays, I read Joseph Kimble’s Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please. What a terrific compilation of resources for those of us interested in more successful workplace writing! Kimble is a law professor with a long history as […]