How To Improve Your Writing Skills At Work

[Reyed Mia (Apprentice, DIU)]

How To Improve Your Writing Skills At Work

For many employees, writing at work is nearly as worrisome as public speaking.

Maybe your proposals fall flat or you dread penning quarterly reports. Perhaps you sweat over emails, only to have the recipients demand clarifications. Or writing might just take you too long, making you exhausted once you've finally done that last spellcheck.

Confidence and Efficiency

Lack of confidence may cause you to write slowly — thinking and rethinking the simplest emails until you feel safe hitting "Send." Fortunately, there's a lot you can do to get more comfortable.

First, assess your skills. Use an online program like Grammarly to review your work and identify trouble spots. Available in free and paid versions, Grammarly checks up to 250 elements of grammar in your documents. It will point out punctuation issues, poor sentence structure and contextual spelling errors and even help build your vocabulary.

Organization and Flow

Confident or not, you may have trouble organizing your ideas when it's time to write. If you suspect — or have been told — your emails are too long and rambling, get samples of successful emails and compare them to your own. Email Excellence offers sample emails with explanations of why individual sections work.

If long memos and reports give you trouble, Purdue University's Online Writing Lab has several valuable tutorials. It provides guidelines for memos, a checklist for creating reports and other resources.

Grammar and Spelling

Better grammar is largely a matter of practice. Keep a reference book on hand such as Jan Venolia's Write Right! or Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by Mignon Fogarty. Also, read blogs such as Fogarty's, Grammarphobia and Daily Writing Tips.

Once you've read up, use an app to quiz yourself. Grammar Up's basic version is free for iOS and Android devices. The Practice English Grammar app for iOS and Android has free basic quizzes and premium exercises.

Comprehensive Writing Help

If your writing needs work in every area, consider an online course, local class or one-on-one tutoring.

Syntax Training's online Writing Tune-Up for Peak Performance covers everything from planning your documents to avoiding passive verbs. The Business Writing Center offers a wide variety of online courses.

Many colleges have business writing classes; search their sites for "non-degree" or "continuing education" courses with titles like "business writing," "business English" or "workforce English."

Finally, paid one-on-one sessions with a tutor are surprisingly affordable. Check out the websites of Wyzant and University Tutor.

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