Writing is a difficult skill that many people struggle with. Writing that flows is hard to achieve. We teach writing to people from a wide range of organisations and we often include tone, choice of words, grammar and use of jargon in our training courses. There are the micro-level things that can be fixed – choose simple everyday words, avoid jargon, reduce adverbs, write with short simple sentences (remember subject-verb-object!) and so on. But there is a bigger problem at the heart of it – something missing – the clarity of the ideas.
Clear, precise writing tells you something about clarity of thought. Good writers do not need to rely on flowery words, superlatives and basic techniques like making bold and underlining key words. When your thought process is clear your readers are more likely to get the message. We check our grammar, word choice and punctuation but there still something missing in the flow.
We need to look at the flow of ideas. It is easy to overlook the bigger things going on in the text – the organisation of ideas, the paragraph structure. But I can sense poor structure when I read too many linking words like ‘moreover’. ‘furthermore’, ‘additionally’ – and these don’t cover up for poor writing. We need to structure our paragraphs with strong topic sentences and follow up with ideas that naturally flow into the next paragraphs. Then we have something that really works.
Writing skills training
At Communicating Europe+ we customise writing skills training for our clients. It’s one of our most popular programmes because it is a difficult and crucial skill. Our writing skills training includes assessment of your texts, we make ‘tracked-changes’ comments and then give written assignments for you to improve.
Our clients prefer to have a series of short ½ day sessions with writing assignments that are assessed by the trainer. Our learners often feel a sense of relief after all this.
Contact us at info@communicating.eu or 00 32 473 391890 for details of how we can help your teams with their writing skills.