Month: September 2023

Throughout this semester while writing my blog posts I have been reading “How to Write with Flair” by  Dr. Heather Holleman where she discusses 5 overarching strategies to help improve writing skills and create much more exciting and dynamic text. While all of the strategies in this text have been extremely helpful to my writing, I found that two of the chapters stand above the rest in elevating my writing from before. Those sections include; Choosing a verb with flair and garnishing it with wordplay.

Before the section about choosing verbs with flair, I would often write sentences with the dreaded list of boring verbs, which often resulted in my writing being as stale as week-old bread.  While those words would get the message across it would be at the sacrifice of making the text more engaging. I had learned many verbs to use and not to use, what I found most valuable from the text was understanding the full importance of verbs. At the end of the chapter, the author stresses verbs’ importance of being the “flavor” in texts and understanding that it helps me to use verbs that effectively get the message across while not focusing too hard on making them overly complex to the point where they confuse the structure of the sentence.

While verbs are considered the, learning to garnish with wordplay gave my writing the kick it needed. Whether it be puns or figures of speech learning to use these strategies helps grab attention more than anything else. This has even been proven scientifically with it being found that wordplay heavily engages the Broca part of the brain. 

While all of these strategies have been extremely helpful to my writing they can only be so useful separated. What makes all of the strategies mentioned in the text effective is not each element on its own but how to incorporate with one another to strengthen each other. By creating wordplay with creative verbs it can make it much more effective than had I used verbs from that list of boring verbs.

Besides having to show up, everyone’s least favorite part of having a job is the potential for layoffs. Layoffs are a stressful and complicated process that the employees often have little control over. So imagine while having little control over your future the CEO tries to not only “relate” to the laid-off employees, but also contradicts themselves throughout. Well, that is exactly what Jack Dorsey did when he announced layoffs that were happening at Twitter (now known as X). 

In the memo, Dorsey starts off by acknowledging how messages like this can be filled with corporate language and how he promises to not do that and “Give it Straight”. Dorsey then gave it as straight as a circle, detailing the company’s entire future plans. Even when the memo does get to announcing the teams being laid off and which departments it affects the most, it requires a little bit of interpreting to figure out, and throughout the message never admits that they are layoffs and instead tries to soften the message by using terms like “streamlining” and “part ways”. To then add icing onto the cake Dorsey includes 2 paragraphs expressing gratitude for the work of the employees and shows sorrow for having to let them go but fails to include any information about when the layoffs are expected to take place, if anything will be done for those laid off, or even how many specific people across each department are being laid off.

While I understand there may be many corporate or legal reasons that this language is used by Dorsey in the memo. That does not negate the fact that he opened it up promising the very thing he proceeded to do the entire memo. When it comes to writing corporate messages from an exec to an employee it needs to be understood that the exec can’t relate to the employee since they do not have that same risk of their livelihood being taken away. This mistake is exactly what Dorsey got wrong, by trying to be relatable at the beginning and following it immediately with corporate speak it ruined any level of trust that could be had with his writing. Instead what people want in these situations is how likely they are affected and what to do if they are affected. Employees who are getting laid off are not going to care about the future of the company, they just need to get straightforward information.

While Bill Taylor made it very clear how important and effective it is for text to be read out loud when going through proofreading or criticism what I feel is not stressed enough is how ineffective solely reading over text is. Throughout the video he provided countless reasons for the strengths and effectiveness of this strategy however there are so many inherent issues with reading over text solely on paper instead of reading aloud.

 

The first and biggest issue with reading over text to proofread or criticize it is bias in the review process. When solely reading over text proofreading, you subconsciously ignore errors in structure or missing words due to prior familiarity with the writing style, leading the brain to fill in gaps that the reader might not be able to. It is not even major grammatical or structural errors, many times we will scroll over words spelled wrong due to not taking this step back and viewing the text in the same way as the audience. While not doing this strategy can lead to one-off issues in text, it also reinforces bad habits and errors, not understanding how to evaluate your points from an outside perspective leads to this unhealthy circle of reinforcing errors that could’ve been easily caught by taking these extra few steps.

In addition to reinforcing biases lack of reading when proofreading text also worsens general communication skills. One aspect that is understated in this whole process is how it forces you not to not only on the text but your own perspective. I often find myself getting so caught up in trying to write the best text that I often write the best one for me instead of writing to the point I am trying to communicate. Taking that 5-second step back, and realizing what I am saying and how the reader will process it allows me to not only understand how the reader feels when coming across my message but also understand if my perspective may have been flawed in the first place and do a full rewrite.

 

Over the past few centuries, communication has evolved massively, going from spoken word and letters to voice calls and emails in about 200 years. Despite this massive evolution a lot of the core skills and traits needed for these new technologies are identical to those needed for the technologies of the past. 

I came to this realization as I was reading through an article by Natasha Lekic, where she talks about the five things that we can learn about writing emails from the exchanges between Steve Jobs, and James Murdoch of Newscorp: have one purpose, simple design, remove filler, use an active voice, and close with a request. While these strategies are key to communicating more effectively via email, only applying them to communication via email would be a waste. Steve Jobs had learned all of these strategies for improving communication over email before the internet even existed, meaning that to truly improve email writing and online communications it is crucial to focus on in-person and base communication skills. 

We see so much of our world revolve around online communication, however, it often fails to resonate with people. While it is important to have good online communication skills,  to truly advance the core skills the focus needs to be on improving general and in-person communication skills and learn how to apply them to other avenues. This is largely because the true payoff for online communication is done either in person or over a voice call. Also, online communication often strips away the emotion in the message. If someone focuses on building up online communication skills it can worsen their ability to express and understand emotion in communication and could have their skills dated based on technological development. Whereas focusing on developing in-person and general communication  has emotional communication and reading at its core and can be adapted to how we develop rather than being hyper-specialized