Helping Staff Member Write Clearly?

[AmeliaJane]

Does anyone have suggestions for helping one of our staff change her writing style? Her grammar, spelling, punctuation etc are excellent, but her natural writing style is extremely florid and erudite, with lots of multi-syllable words, passive tense etc. She is welcome to write internal materials as she pleases, but unfortunately her preferred style isn't a great match for our print and web materials which have to be very brief and extremely direct. We are in a community with a lot of English-as-second-language visitors and residents for whom clarity is important; we are also starting to work with a wider range of children and families, and she struggles with writing at a level appropriate for younger children.

My first approach--to edit her work and explain what I was changing and why--doesn't seem to have helped very much. I would love any suggestions of resources or approaches that have helped you or someone you know write more clearly--I would like to be able to offer a few options. I was lucky enough to have a high-school composition teacher who prepared me very well for the work world but it was so long ago, I don't remember how she did it.

[JaneV2.0]

Technical writing classes, on line or otherwise? The first thing they teach you is to write to your audience and aim for clarity. I always thought the perfect job for me would be as an editor for people like your staff member, because I'm nothing if not concise.

[Miss Cellane]

I like the suggestion of a technical writing class. Another possibility might be a basic journalism class, if they still have them geared towards newspaper writing. Lots of emphasis on being concise and getting the main points in the first paragraph (which is all that a lot of people will read).

You could also find good examples of the kind of writing you want, and give those to her to read--IMO the best way to learn how to write is to read things by good writers. Then have her model her next piece of writing after one of them.

Somewhere in the depths of the Tools menu in Microsoft Word, you can set the Spelling and Grammar check to check the "readability" of a document. In my version, you can check for passive voice, number of words in a sentence, wordiness, subject/verb agreement and several more. Some of those would be a help to your employee in determining wordiness, or sentences that are too long and similar issues. It will also give you a rough idea of the grade level of the writing.

I just ran a document from an academic conference through the grammar checker. It was written at a 12th grade level, and had 13% passive sentences. You could run some documents that meet your criteria through, and average out their reading ease and grade level, to give your employee something to shoot at. There are a number of vocabulary lists for various grade levels on the Web--those would give her an idea of what words a second or sixth grader might know.

And if you have been working on this with her for a while and she hasn't made any progress, put this in her next performance review. It is clearly an important part of her job, and she isn't making any progress on this skill. So make "writing clearly and concisely for a variety of audiences, including elementary school children and English as Second Language adults" one of the skills she needs to work on in order to get raises and promotions. Chances are, she hasn't been working on this because she doesn't see the need--she can read her own writing with ease. She's probably proud of the poly-syllabic words and convoluted syntax. You need to give her a good reason to change her behavior. The idea that she might not get her next raise might be what spurs her to change.

[iris lily]

I stress "Active voice" with my staff. Active. Once they learn that and since she's got the other stuff down,
that's the main thing. I also tell staff to read it over out loud and eliminate syllables. Their editing process should always reduce syllables.

Agreed, the erudite third person business writing is annoying.

However, one of my reports is supposed to go out in third person, so ok, I do that. But internally in my department--Active voice. I can't say it enough.

[JaneV2.0]

I had forgotten all about that nifty Word application. Maybe AmeliaJane could take one of her staff member's florid writings, edit it for maximum simplicity, and show her a readability comparison between the two documents.

In my brief career as a technical editor, I used to do informal editing for co-workers. One of them had such incomprehensible output I didn't know where to start. She had a couple of degrees in education that apparently rendered her incapable of conveying a straightforward thought.

[AmeliaJane]

I had totally forgotten that Word tool! I used it often in a previous version years ago, and had sort of lost track of it with the redesigned interface. That will be really useful. Also, for this particular staff member I am realizing that I should try having her edit her own work with the guidelines suggested here, and then giving feedback. As I consider what I know about the work culture at my employer, I have a feeling that she may never have been taught or expected to write multiple drafts and edit herself, as opposed to writing whatever comes to mind and then handing the first draft in to an authority figure for changes.

Thanks for the ideas--so helpful!

[steve s]

I sent several employees to a commercial seminar on this subject. It helped. I was happy enough with the results that I attended the next time it was given in town.

That was about 20 years ago, I imagine the materials evolved since then. Thus, YMMV.

http://www.pryor.com/mkt_info/seminars/desc/BW.asp?zip=95819

The problem I had to deal was younger employees (mostly Math and Business majors) writing the way adjunct professors had taught them to write. Much of what they wrote looked like it was written by a mediocre academic clumsily attempting some kind of doublespeak.

The course opened most of their minds to the idea of writing to get their message across and meet the reader's mind.