Remedial Writing Tools

July 22, 2005 7:33 AM

Are there any resources I can recommend to a coworker who has very poor writing skills?

This person isn't dumb. She managed to get an MA from a pretty good college. But her writing is often very bad. At the macro level, it simply isn't organized. She has very poor grammar: she uses sentence fragments, non-grammatical run-on sentences, random punctuation. There's usually one serious malaprop every two or three pages.

I have the responsibility to review this person's work. I need to do something more than rewrite it. I'd like to do something other than recommend she be fired. Unfortunately, we work at a very poor non-profit, so a business-writing class is not something we could pay for (unless it was very very inexpensive).

Can anyone recommend books, web sites, low-cost classes or other resources that could help?

posted by alms to writing & language (15 comments total)

I'm a professional writer in corporate America, and believe me, the writing skills I see in evidence every day from people with degrees from "pretty good colleges" are shockingly bad.

If you don't have a writer or editor on staff who could work one-on-one with this person (best solution), and you can't afford to send this person to a remedial writing class (second-best solution), then, frankly, you are going to be stuck with the Band-Aid approach.

CourseILT, a division of Thomson Learning, puts out a fairly decent set of books and videos on a variety of business topics, including communications. Their "Fifty Minute Book" series are pretty good guides and workbooks; you might consider getting copies of, for example:

Better Business Writing
Clear Writing
Fat-Free Writing

etc. and hope against hope that something in there actually sinks in.

(There's actually a decent living to be made these days as a consultant teaching remedial writing classes to people in giant corporations. As more and more IT jobs get outsourced, it's a market I've looked into.)

Good luck!
posted by enrevanche at 8:11 AM on July 22, 2005

Is she aware of how bad her writing is and why it might be important to change it?
posted by Wolfdog at 8:13 AM on July 22, 2005

I am a big fan of On Writing Well by William Zinsser. However, it assumes that the writer already possess a basic grasp of grammar fundamentals. The Elements of Grammar by Margaret Shertzer provides a pretty concise grammar review. This person really should avail themselves of the spelling and grammar checkers built into most word processing software today. It will find many of the kinds of errors you describe.
posted by caddis at 8:31 AM on July 22, 2005

I found this and this via del.icio.us/popular a few days ago. Of course, Strunk & White's The Elements of Style is essential for any writer.
posted by ijoshua at 8:31 AM on July 22, 2005

This site has tons of great writing resources.

Try to introduce it like- "I used to have lots of trouble with [insert grammar/writing issue here] and this website really helped me figure it out"- and it will go over much better than if you say "Hey you suck at writing! Look at this site, willya!"

Good luck- and props to you for wanting to help this person develop their own skills, rather than simply (grumblingly) correcting it on your own.
posted by elisabeth r at 8:34 AM on July 22, 2005

The Economist Style Guide is useful and accessible. It is also available in print.
posted by nyterrant at 8:43 AM on July 22, 2005

I really like Franklin Covey's Style Guide. It is very useful.
posted by nimsey lou at 10:11 AM on July 22, 2005

I second Strunk & White. And because it's a smallish paperback it's not intimidating. I've bought a copy or two for co-workers in the past and it's always been well received.
posted by theinsectsarewaiting at 11:37 AM on July 22, 2005

Thirding Strunk & White. It's small and easy to follow yet seems to cover everything. It was one of the first books I bought in undergrad and it's currently getting me through my master's in journalsim.
posted by awegz at 12:26 PM on July 22, 2005

Well, although I adore Strunk & White, I don't think it's the best resource to give someone in all cases. Some people (many, perhaps) won't get much out of reading a style manual, and worse still, won't be able to parlay what they've read into decent writing.

I know that when I had to help a colleague in graduate school overhaul her pretty terrible writing (poor grammar, a penchant for malapropisms, etc.), the grammar and style manuals were the very last thing she found helpful. They were useful once she'd gotten the hang of writing better and needed to check or confirm something, but early on in the process, they gave her far too much to think about when even constructing sentences.

With all of that in mind, I'd recommend that you give your co-worker some examples of good writing-- lengthy ones and short ones alike-- and discuss what makes them good. Then have her work towards writing a paragraph or two in a style that mimics the examples. Emulating another person's writing can be the perfect entree into fixing the problem; but this does depend on your ability to find good examples, and preferably ones that are contextually appropriate.

You should know that this process might be glacially slow, so be prepared. At the same time, if you work with her a bit, you'll be doing her much more good than you would be if you just handed her a style manual and left it to her to figure out the solution to the problem.
posted by yellowcandy at 2:06 PM on July 22, 2005

Is the person's job to be a writer? I'm asking because of the remark about recommending she be fired. If she's not in a writer position, find other things for her to do.

I like S&W, but not everyone does. The cranky folks over at Testy Copy Editors don't have much good to say about it.


posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:29 PM on July 22, 2005

I'm with yellowcandy. I don't think style or grammar guides help people with truly terrible writing skills. (I say this as someone who taught remedial composition for four years in college.) I think you have to take a step back and get that person to become a more critical reader. Critical as in paying close attention to what she reads, to analyzing what she likes about one piece of writing versus another, how a writer constructs an argment that she finds persuasive, that kind of thing.

Honestly, when I taught remedial comp, I came to a conclusion that all the coursebooks in the world were not going to help someone if they didn't read. I think reading widely helps you internalize the patterns of language so that you can at least be a decent writer. In fact, I can't think of anyone I know who is a reader and a terrible writer. Plenty of bad writers I know, though, don't read at all.

My suggestion is to engage your friend in reading; discuss newspaper or magazine articles and share stuff that you think is well-written and that she'd enjoy. Offer fair (not bludgeoning) critiques of what she does write.

Some classes may help her develop a greater consciousness about her writing. I know in Chicago we have a program called the Community Media Workshop that offers training like this at a low cost to nonprofits. I'm sure there must be something like that in your neck of the woods. Perhaps Idealist.org would be a good place to look.
posted by Sully6 at 3:34 PM on July 22, 2005

I think Sully6's advice is spot on, particularly I can't think of anyone I know who is a reader and a terrible writer. Plenty of bad writers I know, though, don't read at all. One exception is uncorrected dyslexics. I dated one. She wrote like a sixth grader but read plenty of decent literature.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:05 PM on July 22, 2005

I bet your dyslexic girlfriend, Mo Nickels, still talked well. Dyslexics can be helped by having them dictate to you, or using speech recognition software. Dyslexics can write well in their heads, but can't get the writing to come through their fingers.
posted by Monday at 3:51 PM on July 24, 2005

I cannot say enough about Joel Saltzman's book If You Can Talk, You can Write. For someone whose writing skills are very poor, some of the more academic tomes on the subject will just make it seem overwhelming. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is uncomfortable writing.
posted by Independent Scholarship at 9:35 PM on July 24, 2005