Script your success story (3)Tips for effective writing [Archives:2007/1070/Education]

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July 23 2007

Anupma Tripathi, MBA, LLM
[email protected]
Sana'a

“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man”, opined Francis Bacon in his famous essay entitled “Of Studies”. In the skills hierarchy writing occupies a very important position. In fact, your writing skills speak a lot about you. Writing appears to be rather boring and difficult to many because unlike speaking or listening, it is not an innate or natural skill. It needs to be very scrupulously cultivated and carefully nurtured. Despite all distractions of the electronic media, knowing how to write, and how to write well is one of the highest priorities.

The mechanics of writing begin with the alphabet and proceed through vocabulary, syntax and semantic organization till we finally reach the structuring of our message in to communicable units that begin with a paragraph, and end with a coherent and cohesive discourse.

Writing is a secondary skill unlike speaking and listening. For example, a person may be illiterate but can communicate very efficiently in the local language. But when it comes to writing he may not know an alphabet of the language. Unlike speaking, writing is not temporary. Spoken words disappear as soon as the words are articulated, whereas the written mode of communication is ever lasting.

Basically, good written communication requires a unity of effect. We can achieve it if our writing has a clear progression of the beginning- middle- end variety. The following are the few tips for effective writing:-

– Be direct and explicit. Remember, nobody has the time to unravel the relevance and significance of your material.

– Do not waste too many lines in introduction.

– Stick to the structure and topic of your writing

– Deal with the issues one by one. Don't put many ideas together

– Don't provide too many appendices and footnotes

– Your presentation should be effective. The page should present a neat, clean, legible look.

– Write several versions, if necessary, of your material. Revision helps

– Copy- edit your writing to avoid spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes.

Use every draft as a stage in the process of writing, and not as the final, finished product. It indeed helps to determine in advance the length of your written communication because you can arrange and organize and explain your points accordingly.

Good, effective communication through writing pre- supposes clear thinking. Only if you have thought through an issue to its last details, you can write effectively. Next, good written communication requires thorough research into the data and lastly planning the actual document, its lay out and giving the draft a final shape.
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