How to write

Last week was so busy with keeping up with client work and delivering the workshops.  I came to some interesting conclusions

about writing after taking part in them.  Some of the exercises were designed to try to help them understand that everyone writes differently and will look at text in an individual way.

I took a proof reading/editing exercise and asked them to find the queries.  Since I’d created the exercise I thought I knew where the mistakes were.  What happened was that they came up with all kinds of queries that I hadn’t included.

Fascinating.

And one other exercise was again to see how people approached a piece of text.  I took a copy of an article from the Guardian.  Now laying aside the political stance of the Guardian, I’d chosen an article of around 700 words on a general topic.

Not only did they not like the article, they criticised the language, the layout and the approach of the writer.  I asked them to pick out three key points in the article.  In the time given for the exercise, one delegate scanned the article three times, one gave up at the end of the second paragraph and the three people I chose all picked out different points.

This underlines something I’ve been taught with my writing research and work, that we have no idea how your reader will approach, read or understand your text.  Now this may not seem very important if all you’re doing with your writing is creating notes in a formatted system.  Though even there the clearer you make the information the more chance you have of understanding it when you or someone else goes back to it.

When you extend your writing to persuasive writing in reports, or sales proposals, then that becomes of paramount importance.  And it’s important also if you’re producing training manuals or help material.

I hoped of course that the workshops were useful to the attendees.  I received some productive feedback to say they had.  But it taught me as much as it taught them.

One other thing that came up in all three workshops was the issue of e-mails, their protocol and the general effect of the increased use of emails in business.

More on that when I’ve had time to reflect.