How can I improve the writing ability of the people I work with?

August 9, 2007 5:05 AM

How can I improve the writing ability of the people I work with?

The group of people I work with - a pool of management consultants from 22 to 55, below, at and above my level at the company - seems to think that their writing skills do not need to extend beyond drafting bullet points for PowerPoint slides. Most of them cannot communicate their thoughts clearly or convincingly; many of them cannot even form coherent sentences.

The fact that some of them believe they are excellent writers makes them that much more dangerous.

I have asked them to proofread their work and make sure it's "client-ready" before it leaves their hands, but that doesn't go nearly far enough. It's getting to the point where I don't ask others to write anything at all, since it's easier for me to draft than to edit their work - which is, of course, a poor solution to the problem. We have a real need for concise, convincing written work in our company.

Occasionally the company has training sessions, including writing workshops, but these are voluntary and brief.

How have you solved a similar problem?

posted by VeniceGlass to work & money (33 comments total)

How have you solved a similar problem?

Nope. So take what I say with a pinch of salt. I'd be inclined to either send the work back, saying that I couldn't read it, and could they please redo it, or just leave it go to the client as it was, and wait for the bomb to drop.

Is there a HR dept you could contact to explain the problem to?
posted by Solomon at 5:18 AM on August 9, 2007

I feel your pain - I've been in a situation very similar in the past. Sorry to say, you're fighting what is almost certainly a losing battle. It's extremely unlikely that you'll be able to get people to admit that there's a problem in the first place, much less do something to remedy it.

A few years back in a previous position, my manager used to send emails to business partners and clients littered with appalling spelling and grammatical errors, all the time. It was a source of much amusement to his staff then - he was an insufferable dictator and we quite enjoyed to see him make a fool out of himself.

Eventually, it became obvious that he was in danger of losing business as a result of his unprofessionalism, so it was pointed it out to him directly. All it did was make his staff's lives hell for a week or two until he got over the cheek of someone to question his English skills.

This was someone who thought 'copyright' was spelled 'copywright'. And he'd been in marketing for a long, long time.
posted by StuMiller at 5:22 AM on August 9, 2007

Have your company only hire people who read for pleasurse. If they don't consume at least one book a week, then don't be shortlisting them.

And that includes the admin staff and the cleaners as well as the fee earners.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:32 AM on August 9, 2007

I have solved problems like this with team members in the past, but it can take lots of time and lots of effort on your part. First of all, identify what the exact problem is. Is it not meeting a particular in-house style? Inability to construct extended prose? Spelling or grammar? Some of the steps I've taken after doing this have included:

- taking the time to go through a draft with someone sentence by sentence. This is painstaking and you have to work hard for it not to come across as patronising - but doing it face-to-face to explain why a certain thing is incorrect or needs improving works much better than just sending a draft back covered in red pen or with track changes.

- producing template documents if you have particular formats. For example in my job (central Government) we are required to submit policy advice to Ministers. This has a standard template but over and above that, I've produced templates that say what's needed under each heading. Eg for the introduction: "one or two short pithy sentences needed here. Needs to set out what the problem is at a single glance. Should be concise and jargon-free." Your team members can then use this as a reference tool.

- get fellow team members proofing each other's work. This depends in part on whether they are of the same rank and on your organisation's culture. But if pitched right, this can work well and free up time for you a bit.

- help your team to understand the audience for their work. If it's just you, that's one thing - but if there is a client, or member of the public, or senior executive reading it, that's another. I've found getting the private secretary to our lead Minister (a kind of executive assistant type role) to do a seminar for my team to explain likes and dislikes has worked well. Equally, if it's clients who the audience is for, see if you can get a friendly contact to give some advice to your team on what they like to see. Reaching an understanding of who needed a particular document, and why, worked wonders with my team.

- if you have individual yearly objectives in your organisation, set improving writing skills as one of them for each relevant team member. And put this in your own objectives so your boss calls you on whether you've achieved it or not.

None of these are magic bullet solutions and they won't work all of the time. However, I have found them useful in improving the quality of written work my team produces. But underlining them all was being able to build time into enough projects to allow for proper proof-reading and feedback. As you say, otherwise it does just become easier to do it yourself. There's never enough time in any job and this option is of course very tempting, but making a concerted effort to make the time may be the first step you need.
posted by greycap at 5:33 AM on August 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

And of course all of my advice above only applies to those below you in the organisation. For those above, I can't help you...
posted by greycap at 5:34 AM on August 9, 2007

I've had this problem a few times in the past, and always just buy a copy of The Lively Art of Writing for the people in question.
posted by ukdanae at 5:47 AM on August 9, 2007

oops, hit post too quickly! Here's the link for the book, it's a common high-school-advanced-english read, and is by bar the best and most readable writing book I've ever read. It's a bit dated, but that makes it more fun for me. I highly recommend it.
posted by ukdanae at 5:48 AM on August 9, 2007

This seems to be a commonplace problem in business anymore. It's even more horrifying when it's someone in senior management...the guys writing important correspondence to potential clients and business partners. Some of their letters were embarrassing. Not just misspellings, but horrible construction, as well.

Of course, they would lean heavily on spellcheck to catch their mistakes, but, of course, that did nothing for context or proper sentence construction. A lot of their work resembled posts you'd see on bulletin boards, complete with the ubiquitous mistakes (there, they're, their...its, it's...etc)

They real issue is how to correct the problem without making it look like you're calling them 'stupid'. I would suggest sending everyone through some basic language and writing course, perhaps at a local community college.

Barring that, I would second the "group proofread" approach. For executives, I'm afraid, the best fix is to make sure they have a sharp assistant to fix the correspondence.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:52 AM on August 9, 2007

Franklin Covey has a great book called Style Guide.
They also offer a training course called Writing Advantage. I took it about 8 years ago and thought it was really good.
posted by nimsey lou at 6:16 AM on August 9, 2007

Maybe have some kind of contest, with an outside judge to give feedback. This would get someone outside the company to review writing samples, someone who could be seen as both authoritative and disinterested.

Or, if you could make a case for it, get the company to hire a consultant to assess the writing level of the company as a whole, with recommendations to follow.

Making a case for it is another problem, I suppose. Good luck.
posted by amtho at 6:21 AM on August 9, 2007

Start hiring people with English degrees.
posted by pluckysparrow at 6:42 AM on August 9, 2007 [3 favorites]

My experience in software consulting has been that clients have extremely low standards for writing and place little value on written deliverables. Most are happy with a document that meets their page-count expectations and is not egregiously sophisticated in vocabulary or construction. Unless customers are raising bad writing as an issue with your management (and maybe they are in your field), I think you need to accept that solving this problem is not and should not be a priority for your organization.

Of course, maybe I've just talked myself into acceptance and better writing would increase revenue for your company. If you can make that case, an effective solution would be to require review by an editor before any document goes out. This would not be a role for a consultant; the tasks can be done faster and better by an inexpensive contractor. The feedback provided by the editor on documents would, over time, improve writing quality in less formal contexts like e-mail and working papers.
posted by backupjesus at 7:14 AM on August 9, 2007

I don't know that you can do anything about general style problems. With grammar and punctuation issues, I have had some success using a "we're in this together" approach with a boss who thought he was a great writer but wasn't.

I brought in my Chicago, and when I saw something that I just couldn't let slide I would look it up and say, "Gee wiz, I had no idea, but did you know that you don't need to capitalize the names of vegetables?" That way it was a lecture from the book, not from me. I also learned a lot myself.

The same technique also seems to be working at my current job. Most people like to learn, but in general, they do not like to be lectured by their work peers. By making the manual the teacher, that friction is removed.
posted by quarterframer at 7:15 AM on August 9, 2007

"I also learned a lot myself."

I think I meant "I also learned a lot."

Still learning.
posted by quarterframer at 7:17 AM on August 9, 2007

...since it's easier for me to draft than to edit their work...

My advice is to continue editing. In my experience, one of the best ways to improve writing skills is to see how one's work is improved by the edits of a skilled writer.

Of course, this assumes the person gives a shit about improving his or her writing. If they don't (i.e., if there's no incentive or motivation for them to improve), I'm not sure there's anything you can do.
posted by pardonyou? at 7:18 AM on August 9, 2007

My first job out of college was at a tech company that had a wealth of folks who had a poor grasp of the English language, including some who did not have English as their native language.

My job existed almost entirely to help senior folks in the company send out communications to prospective clients that were readable. I was part of a small group for this major (more than $1 billion revenue) company that essentially provided in-house editorial services.

Perhaps you could hire someone to serve such a function for your group or company? Someone with an English degree (as suggested above!) who could take responsibility for proofreading, correcting, and clarifying critical communications?
posted by scottso17 at 7:24 AM on August 9, 2007

I definitely recommend hiring a proofreader. Everything that goes out goes through this person first. Most people simply don't write well and they have no idea.

As an aside: people who are very well read can't necessarily write to save their lives. I don't understand it, but I see it in action nearly daily.
posted by iguanapolitico at 7:46 AM on August 9, 2007

I've never been in quite this situation, but I know the two things that have done the most to improve the mechanics of my own writing are 1) reading a lot of well-written prose (the Economist has great writing), and 2) having my own writing mercilessly marked up. I had one teacher who would completely recast the sentences in my papers to save a word or two, clean up the parallelism, that kind of thing—these papers probably came back to me with as much red ink on them as black. I had a boss who did more or less the same. Very instructive.

Of course, this will only work if the people in your organization actually want to improve their writing. And if you have enough people with good English skills and free time to take on red-penciling duties.

My wife works in an office where (among other things) she does a lot of proofreading. She often tells people "make sure I get a chance to proof that before you send it out." They don't always listen. So piping everything through a proofer isn't always foolproof.
posted by adamrice at 8:14 AM on August 9, 2007

A very good, surprisingly effective technique for improving wirting is to use peer review. I refer here to a technique for teaching wrting as implemented in a classroom situation (not as in scientific peer review). Peer review has to be orchestrated to work - it isn't simply giving your writing to somebody else for comments. This site will give you some idea how this works in education. I'm not sure whether it could be adapted to the workplace or your situation but I have found it to be a very effective way to focus poor writers on the goal of communication.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:21 AM on August 9, 2007

Don't hire a proofreader, hire a copywriter. This person will probably be part of the marketing department, but could also be in some customer-service-type department. They would be in charge of either talking to your co-workers to get the info, or taking the drafts the co-workers write, and creating lively, readable prose. They should be looking at *everything* that goes out to clients.

(I've been this person, and many companies have these people. I wrote web content, brochures, client letters (both customer service responses and general boilerplate letters and emails), and newsletters; I did ghostwriting for everything that went out under our CEO's name; and because most of the people in the company trusted my skills, they often would run other things by me for quick edits/proofing. The role really does exist because most people's writing skills are atrocious, and it's easier to pay someone else to do it rather than to try to teach people with different skills to focus on this one.)
posted by occhiblu at 8:28 AM on August 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Perhaps appealing to everyone's concern for the public appearance of the company might help.

A semi-guerrilla approach might be to edit together some of the more egregious examples into a single document, print it out under some other company's letterhead and pass it around as a "can you believe this crap?" example. Then, once everyone has had a good laugh at how stupid the other company is, reveal it as a compilation of their own works.

Of course, you would probably piss everyone off and end-up fired...but they might get the message in the process.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:03 AM on August 9, 2007

No; you're screwed. I tried for a long time to get the quality level up at my former employer (rhymes with Nikerocoughft) and failed miserably. I kept a copy of Strunk and White on hand to point out the most basic errors they made. Nothing I could do ever got them to bother reading what they had wrote before sending it out.
posted by jeffamaphone at 9:10 AM on August 9, 2007

Nthing the uphill battle. For a while after I moved back to Virginia in 1999, I worked as an online producer for a local NBC affiliate station, taking newscast scripts and turning them into individual news stories for the station's web site. When I saw how inconsistent the style and the quality of writing was on the site, I took the initiative of calling up the NikerocoughtNBC editorial desk and asking about the existence of any style guides the lowly NBC affiliates were supposed to be using.

That didn't make my boss very happy. As Thorzdad said, I ended up pissing everyone off and getting fired.
posted by emelenjr at 9:57 AM on August 9, 2007

This seems to be a commonplace problem in business anymore.

Thorzdad, not to pick on you or derail the thread, but I've been curious for a while about this construction, which I feel like I see more and more often lately. I've seen it in both casual and business writing, and I always correct it, but people have defended it in formal writing. Has using "anymore" as a substitute for "in recent times" become accepted, or is it just slang that I'm not familiar with? I can correct this when I see it in business writing, right?
posted by decathecting at 10:00 AM on August 9, 2007

In Buffalo, the literary center has a Work*Write! program which can be engaged to send professional writers into the workplace to coach groups or individuals. Maybe your area has something similar.
posted by Riverine at 10:12 AM on August 9, 2007

I have also used greycap's solutions - and he's right: it's possible to do but can take a great deal of time and frustration, especially if people think they are already good writers. The idea to get the end-user to tell your team what they want is a good one, but it's perhaps unlikely that you want to show a client just how crap your team's writing skills are. Internal peer review is more easily accomplished but even a simple reminder to "put yourself in the client's shoes when writing" can work in the short term.
posted by patricio at 10:57 AM on August 9, 2007

I have asked them to proofread their work and make sure it's "client-ready" before it leaves their hands, but that doesn't go nearly far enough.

Because it's an extremely difficult skill to proofread your own work effectively - especially under time pressure. Also, I've worked in an environment where it was part of my job to sit with writers and go over their work, and it's not effective without explicit respect for everyone's role in the process. From my experience, writers should left to write, and another pair of eyes should proof everything anyway (even if this method is handled among writers rather than by adding editorial staff).

If your company values proofread or edited work, it simply has to hire proofreading or editorial staff. Copywriters must have their work proofread, too. Hiring readers isn't enough. Hiring English majors isn't anywhere near enough; some of the most frustrating training experiences I've had have been with English majors who couldn't tell the difference between editing text and just revising it to sound as if they wrote it themselves (often with the effect of perpetuating misunderstandings they gleaned in high school or were taught by teachers who, shall we say, exceeded their authority).

Basic writing issues may be amenable to improvement in workshops or a change in hiring practices, but if you expect clients to see only error-free - or even nearly so - work, then you must staff accordingly.
posted by caitlinb at 11:23 AM on August 9, 2007

Have your company only hire people who read for pleasurse. If they don't consume at least one book a week, then don't be shortlisting them.

Uh, what? Reading for pleasure, great. But one book per week?
posted by croutonsupafreak at 11:31 AM on August 9, 2007

My advice is to continue editing. In my experience, one of the best ways to improve writing skills is to see how one's work is improved by the edits of a skilled writer.

Exactly. It can be tough but worthwhile if you think everyone will be around for a while. I normally spend quite a lot of time each week proofing, retooling, and rewriting everyone's work - everything from letters to emails to op-eds. It's been years, and I still do a lot of editing, but my boss' writing has improved tremendously - to the point that he has even noted it himself.
posted by gemmy at 12:35 PM on August 9, 2007

Go to the boss character and pitch the idea of contracting with a copywriter/tutor to work with your colleagues between projects. You want a good writer who's an effective teacher and who knows something about consulting's crazy reliance on PowerPoint and business jargon. If you're a little bit lucky, there's already someone on staff in the back office who could do this (some moonlighting grad student who'd jump at the chance to tutor over picking up lunch for some partner). Smart management will be willing to invest in an outside consultant -- and if you pitch it as a downtime project I think you've got a good chance of making it work.
posted by gum at 1:01 PM on August 9, 2007

Has using "anymore" as a substitute for "in recent times" become accepted, or is it just slang that I'm not familiar with? I can correct this when I see it in business writing, right?

A bit of googling reveals that "the positive use appears to have been of Midland origin, but it is now reported to be widespread in all speech areas of the United States except New England," and that the usage in Northern Ireland goes back at least to the 19th century. It seems to be generally be considered an element of casual speech. Personally, I quite like it.
posted by ludwig_van at 8:39 PM on August 9, 2007

I definitely agree with the idea of hiring someone -- a copyeditor, perhaps freelance or part-time -- to deal with the problem. Some people, regardless of their education or upbringing or reading habits, just don't have an aptitude for grammar and spelling.

I find it extremely frustrating to watch writing go out full of obvious mistakes. In my last job I often copy-edited documents for my boss, who would then turn right around and un-correct my corrections. Even though it's difficult to not intervene, I guess at some point you just have to let people do what they wanna do and remember that it doesn't reflect on you personally. (Hopefully the ratio of people with poor grammar and spelling is the same on the reading side as it is on the writing side!)
posted by loiseau at 9:46 PM on August 9, 2007

Has using "anymore" as a substitute for "in recent times" become accepted, or is it just slang that I'm not familiar with? I can correct this when I see it in business writing, right?

A bit of googling reveals that "the positive use appears to have been of Midland origin, but it is now reported to be widespread in all speech areas of the United States except New England," and that the usage in Northern Ireland goes back at least to the 19th century. It seems to be generally be considered an element of casual speech. Personally, I quite like it.

I'm not sure, but I'd wager that it would not be widely understood in the rest of the UK (excluding Northern Ireland). It's a handy construction, though.
posted by altolinguistic at 8:55 AM on August 10, 2007