Whatever your career goals, take these steps to improve your writing skills now. It is what I call a career-enhancing technique. Being a good writer will give you a competitive advantage when a promotion opportunity opens up. You will be glad you invested time and energy to improve your writing skills.
Are you aware that blue chip businesses are spending more than $3 billion each year on remedial writing training? And the training is for people with a college degree. These are people who employers expected would know how to write when hired.
Being able to write clearly, concisely, and effectively is critical to your success. The further up the ladder you go, the more you have to write. Wherever you are, learn how to improve your writing skills now. You’ll be glad you did.
Your goal–always–is to produce documents that
can be read, understood, and acted on the first time they’re read
Before you write a word, think.
When I taught writing classes for the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), we preached this point. Thinking before you write saves you time and helps you communicate better —even with email.
Ask yourself these questions—before you start writing.
Jot down your answers to these questions to guide you as your write.
The top comment I hear from managers is “Why am I reading this thing?” Hear this again: It is your job to organize your information so the reader can read it once, understand it right away, and act on it. To reach that outcome, you have to focus on organization—even before you begin writing.
Before you begin writing, organize your information. It will make the writing go faster for you—trust me. Here are some techniques to improve your writing skills by learning to organize information.
If you’re not familiar with mind mapping, these are the key points.
After you get all the ideas down, look for repetition or information that appears in more than one leg of the mind map. How are you going to handle that information?
Only after you’ve cleaned up any overlaps do you assign a hierarchy to the legs of the mind map.
Remember that this is not an essay like you wrote in high school or college. The information needs to be presented in an order that makes it easy for your reader to follow your message.
NOTE: This is vitally important because people do not read documents, even emails, word for word. They scan. You want to be sure they find your main point. Using subheads and bullet points makes it easier for a scanning reader to find the key points you want them to read.
The best way to ensure readability and improve your writing is to use active voice and avoid the passive. Don’t remember the difference? Here’s a refresher.
Active voice is when the subject of your sentence is the doer, the actor. The doer is doing whatever the verb states.
The chairman opened the meeting.
[subject “chairman,” verb “opened”]
Passive voice is when you use a form of the verb “to be,” usually followed by another verb and possibly the word “by” later in the sentence.
The meeting was opened by the chairman.
To improve your writing skills, look for passive voice and change it to active—usually by inverting the sentence. There are occasions when the reader doesn’t care who the “doer” is and passive voice is OK. However, do not fall into the trap of saying, “The type of writing we do here really requires passive voice.” Bull.
If you’re using Word, it will help you by pointing out where you use passive voice. Under Review, click on Spelling and Grammar check, then run it. Word will show you places where it believes you have used passive voice. Use that as a guide to decide if you need to change your sentence.
Looking back at this post, I knew I had to update it. All the info above is still some of the best advice on writing you’ll ever get. As they say in the infomercials:
But wait! There’s more!
In the last tip above–Get Active–I mentioned the Spelling and Grammar check. Take advantage of Word’s Proofing function (see link) and find what grade you get on your writing.
How to get your readability score
Your readability score tells you how easy it is for someone to read your document. 
And remember our motto: Your goal is to produce documents that
can be read, understood, and acted on the first time
The readability score looks at the length of your sentences and the number of syllables in the words you use. You will get something like this.
You are aiming for a Flesch Reading Ease Score of 65 or above. Don’t go crazy trying to get a 100, like one woman did. Even the Sunday comics get a score of 95. 🙂
Or you are aiming for a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score of 8 to 10. Documents in this range mean they
can be read, understood, and acted on the first time
I believe this is where the phrase “write at an 8th-grade level” comes from. It is NOT derogatory; it means you are writing well. You are not dumbing things down.
When I was at GAO, I saw lots of documents that were at grade levels in the high teens or even 20s. This means they are practically impossible to read, and I guarantee almost no one can make sense of them on the first readthrough.
When a document showed up at grade level 17, for example, I’d show that to the author and suggest he/she spend more time editing it. Often I would get one of two replies:
If you are writing about a highly technical subject, you have to work much harder to make your document easy to read. That excuse doesn’t cut it.
The first writing class I taught after leaving GAO was for what was then Bell South, the telephone company long before wireless. The class was for people who marketed and sold ads in the Yellow Pages. For the younger folks, the Yellow Pages were, in fact, the yellow pages that listed businesses in the printed telephone directory. And the businesses bought ads to get more attract customers.
This group’s challenge was that one phrase was used repeatedly in most documents: “telephone directory.”
If you scroll back up a bit, you’ll see that the readability score counts the number of syllables in your words. Look at how many syllables are in “telephone directory”–three and four.
Those folks had to learn to write simply then edit their work to make their documents understood, because “telephone directory” was everywhere.
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Excuse B: I don’t need to write to an 8th-grade audience because my audience is made up of people with advanced degrees. Or: I’m writing to the CEO; he certainly doesn’t want documents written for an 8th grader.
To which I would reply, “Bull!” I have never met a CEO who asked that a document be made harder to read. They are busy people. They want content that (have you heard this before?)
can be read, understood, and acted on the first time
If the person giving me either of those excuses wanted to argue with me, I would simply suggest we diagram his/her sentences. We all were taught this process in 8th grade, and almost no one enjoyed it. The diagramming threat was enough to send most writers back to their keyboards to work on simplifying their writing.
What do you do if your draft document scores 35 on the reading ease scale or in the teens on the grade-level scale?
Look at the length of your sentences and identify the really long ones. If your sentence takes up more than three lines on your computer screen, it’s too long. You probably have a run-on sentence. That’s a sentence with too many ideas in it and probably incorrect punctuation.
Each sentence should be about one primary idea. Ideally, your sentences should average 15-20 words. It’s fine to have sentences shorter than that. Many of mine are.
You also want to have longer sentences that use compound subjects or predicates, with clauses and phrases that add color or dimension to your topic. (25 words) It’s hard for me to write a sentence that long. I borrowed this example from an article on Time.com:
There are also accessories, like a $12 “Finger Lickin’ Good” gold nameplate necklace, and home goods, like a $14 pillowcase stamped with the likeness of mascot Colonel Sanders or an $80 framed print of mashed potatoes. (35 words–“Colonel Sanders” counts as one word because it’s a proper name.)
This sentence is fine. Its length comes from the details within it.
You want variety in your sentence length. Not every sentence should be the same length. Those put people to sleep.
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I learned that when editing a document at GAO. The writer was a really sharp guy. But when reading his document, I kept falling asleep. Really.
I analyzed the document for a host of problems and finally realized every sentence was 23-25 words long. He lulled me to sleep. When we talked about it, he told me that’s how he was taught to write when he came to the U.S. English was his second language. If English is your second language, make sure you don’t fall into that trap.
Look for words of three or more syllables, and see what other words you can find to use. In the editor’s note below, I wrote: This post was originally published in April 2016. Why use “originally” when “first” would work?
Here are some funny, clean-cut classics from George Carlin.
Here are some excellent fine humorous funny examples from the Plain Language movement.
Get more insights from the great infographic from Skills You Need.
In the late ’90s, the Securities and Exchange Commission launched the Plain English movement in the U.S. Similar efforts had been growing in other English-speaking countries around the world.
Since the SEC’s action, Plain English–or Plain Language, as it is sometimes called–is now required of federal agencies. It is also required in legal documents, tax forms, insurance policies, and so much more. You can read more about Plain English, along with examples and guidance, here.
I promise to keep bringing you more tips and techniques on making to make sure your documents (what’s the chant?)
can be read, understood, and acted on the first time
Editor’s Note: This post was originally first published in April 2016. It has been updated to include new information and resources to help you improve your writing skills.
© Pamela A. Scott, MentorLoft.com 2017
P. S.: According to Yoast SEO, this blogs scores 74 in the reading ease scale.