Good corporate writing: why it matters, and what to do; poor corporate writing—in press releases, ads, brochures, web sites and more-is costing companies credibility and revenues. Here's how to put the focus back on clear communication

Communication World,  July-August, 2005  by Natalie Canavor,  Claire Meirowitz

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However, people are coming to work unable to write because, the report charges, public education is failing to teach them.

George Giokas, CEO of Hauppauge, New York-based Staff Writers Plus, which supplies companies with writing services, agrees with this finding. He sees definite erosion in writing skills even among entry-level people who aspire to writing careers. "Young people are not reading enough. Learning the rules of grammar is not learning to write," he says. "You have to listen and feel words, not go by subject and verbs, which is how teachers teach."

What's the bottom line?

The ultimate result: 40 percent of the companies responding to the Writing Commission's survey said they find it necessary to invest in training employees to write--to the tune of an estimated $3 billion-plus annually.

Are corporate communicators involved with making these expensive training arrangements? Are they advising business leaders about how to improve writing company-wide?

We suggest that corporate communicators should not only be involved, but should be leading the charge. Nothing could be more important. If we can't write, we aren't communicating.

Skill-building strategies

If you think your company's communication skills could use improvement, there are steps you can take.

* It's like psychotherapists say: First you've got to acknowledge that you have a problem--in your department and/or your company overall. You also have to decide that good writing is worth the battle. If your communication unit is turning out sterling, appropriate prose, good for you. But according to Diane Turnbull's recent article on communication in Lab Medicine, "business consultants and counselors vouch that communication is the No. 1 problem in the workplace."

* Centralize the review of important written materials, and make writing supervision an important job. Vica Vinogradava was hired by DataArt Inc., a New York software outsourcing firm with a development center in Russia, to be the vice president of corporate communication. Part of the reason Vinogradava was hired was that DataArt had signed some important clients, and a typo on an invitation to a corporate party was no longer an option. DataArt has just 165 employees, but a company with thousands of employees could implement this approach on a department-by-department basis.

* Training, training, training, in the old days, many corporate communicators had honed their skills early on as journalists. Today, those without that experience--whether they are professional communicators or employees in other departments who find themselves writing for internal or external audiences--can benefit from intensive training. A set of outside workshops or an internal course by a good writing instructor can be productive.

* Give employees tools to use. A reference book or style guide can solve a lot of problems, but few companies use them. You can urge adoption of an existing one (see list on page 32) or, better yet, create your own, dictating how things should be done. Yes, it's time-consuming, and it needs to be done collaboratively. Also consider furnishing templates for lower-level employees to draw on for writing letters and other day-to-day communication.