Journal #2 1/21
And now we get into the meet of the book. The two ideas I’ll be discussing are the philosophy of professional writing and the importance of plain language. To understand why professional writing is the way it is first we need to understand a few things.
Money Talks
Unless you’re with Doctors Without Borders, we ain’t running a charity here. The document must be easy to understand and to the point, not wasting words because every moment and every dollar can count to someone.
Building Trust
In the past chapter a rental car company with a crappy ad was discuss, and the idea that anything that appears non-professional and chocked full of errors will erode the trust of the customer possibly leading to them bringing business elsewhere. A simple way to battle this could be with strong writing.
Plain English
The business-world isn’t the place to wow people with the girth of your lexicon. You want to be memorable and simple, writing just enough so that the reader is able to have a full understanding of your document. Remember, K.I.S.S.
Journal #1 1/21
My two main takeaways from the introduction are the extents to which good writing matters in what the book refers to as a ‘post-literate’ age, one where reading is no longer that way that the majority of folks get their information. Thanks to TV, videogames and the internet the move in design philosophy now highlights audio and visual methods of relaying information compared to the novels and newspapers of yore. With the newsstands disappearing from metropolitan streets and quicker snippets entering our smart phones through Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat one could imagine that to succeed they mustn’t require a deep knowledge of literary method. This couldn’t be further from the truth, skilled and professional writing hasn’t disappeared. The way one communicates through the written word has transmogrified from the duties of copy editors, memo authors and advertising moguls and placed firmly upon the backs of near every professional. In a series of statistics collected by “TD Bank” the relationship between literary ability and income is elucidated. The study shows that cunning linguists can earn twice as much as their less-library-inclined counterparts. Really, this just makes sense to me. In a world where the communication between worker, boss and customer is near constant those who are able to excel at sending professional appearing emails and other documents will be seen as more professional overall, even if their output isn’t as strong as a fellow worker. Professionalism matters.
