Your Company Is Only as Good as Your Writing

Article from HBR Blog Network by Kyle Wiens

Good writing: Businesses claim to practice it, support it, and value it. But more often than not, their money isn’t where their mouth is. Poor grammar and jargon-riddled writing are rampant. We’re great at inventing terms — the instruction manual for my toaster refers to the lever that pops up the toast as the ‘Extra-Lift Carriage Control Lever’ — but poor at communicating what we actually mean.

We could learn a thing or two about communication from our forefathers. One of the most effective speeches of all time, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, was only 701 words. Of those, 505 were words of one syllable and 122 had two syllables.

Great leaders consider communication a core competence, so why don’t more businesses? Manufacturers spend millions on safety training to get people to wear hard hats, but spend very little to make sure their safety critical work instructions are written clearly.

That’s not good enough. Effective writing must be a company-wide endeavor.

If my marketer misses a typo while writing about a product, I want my packaging staff to catch it before the design gets sent to print. If my technicians don’t capitalize a tool’s name consistently, I’d hope my videographer notices the error when he glances at the report on their desks. When I’m writing an essay, I always ask my software engineers for constructive feedback. (I’m not too proud to admit that many of them are better writers than I.)

Over the years, I’ve worked hard to foster an atmosphere where everyone has the right to critique, question, and suggest. Just because most team members don’t have “professional writer” in their job descriptions doesn’t mean writing is off limits to them. Everyone here is a writer.

In my experience, the practice of good, collaborative writing makes the difference between great business and bad business — a sale or no sale.

Last year, I kicked up a bit of a stir ’round these parts when I wrote “I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why.” I confidently declared myself a “grammar stickler,” unwilling to hire qualified applicants if they couldn’t pass a basic grammar test.

After the article was published, I heard back from a lot of different people. Some disagreed. One participant in a New York Times debate exclaimed that my “requirements that viable candidates write with Strunk and White on their minds are highly questionable.” Others wholeheartedly shared my convictions. The range of feedback is to be expected. After all, the grammar debate tends to be divisive.

The feedback did prove one thing: It’s not easy to talk about writing. Certainly not in business. Writing, even writing in public arenas, is always personal. It exposes the writer’s ideas and ability (or inability) to navigate language. Writing is vulnerability.

Plus — and this is the frustrating part — there is no right way to write. Even the most basic rules are fuzzy. Prepositions aren’t something you should end a sentence with. You should never start a sentence with “because.” Why not? Because. Sentence fragments are unforgivable. Unless they’re not.

We like to think that we learned everything there is to know about grammar in our 10th grade English classes, but the conventions are constantly changing. The standards shift. That makes writing hard — and difficult to talk about.

Read entire article on HBR Blog Network.