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Legal Writing

Manage Your Writing

By Kenneth W. Davis

Post Frequency: 2.8/day

Last Entry: March 28, 2011 at 17:03:57

This week: Speak your reader's language

Posted on November 09, 2009
According to a story I once heard, when the United States and the USSR were planning their first joint space mession, planners thought hard about how the language barrier would be crossed, especially in the perilous situations that could occur...

The "Ultimate Guide"

Posted on November 08, 2009
I'm pleased that Manage Your Writing has been included in "The Ultimate Guide to Better Business Writing," by OnlineDegreePrograms.org. Check it out; it's a great resource.

This week: Beware the dreaded "it is"

Posted on November 03, 2009
In his book Claw Your Way to the Top, humorist Dave Barry writes: State that something is your understanding. This statement should be firm, vaguely disapproving, and virtually impossible to understand. A good standard one is: "It is my understanding...

This week: Read it out loud

Posted on October 26, 2009
Dan Santow, at Word Wise, a blog for public relations professionals, reminds us of a powerful tool for revising your writing: read it aloud. He concludes: . . . by reading out loud you?ll hear when sentences are meaningless and...

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This week: Start with purpose

Posted on October 19, 2009
If a coworker interrupts us while we're writing a letter and asks, "What are you doing?" most of us will answer "Writing a letter." That answer reveals a focus on the written product, not on its purpose. Such product-focused thinking...

This week: Avoid thundershower activity

Posted on October 12, 2009
In his book Claw Your Way to the Top, humorist Dave Barry provides a helpful question and answer: Q. What do they mean on the TV weather forecast when they say we are going to have "thundershower activity"? A. They...

This week: Check out www.B-Kom.Net

Posted on October 05, 2009
I've just launched B-Kom.Net, a business communication network. At B-Kom.Net you can post a question about writing you're doing and (I hope) get an answer. I won't promise to answer all questions myself. I hope you will answer some as...

Feedback needed

Posted on October 02, 2009
McGraw-Hill has asked me to revise The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Business Writing and Communication for a second edition. I'd like your help. If you've read the book, please send me your feedback: What should I add? What should I...

This week: Don't waste your readers' time

Posted on September 28, 2009
Recently, one of the strongest champions of good writing has been best-selling marketing guru Harry Beckwith. In his book Selling the Invisible he wrote that vague empty pieces of writing "tell your prospects one thing: They say you are willing...

This week: Track your writing

Posted on September 21, 2009
As you may know by now, I argue that writing is the chief value-producing activity in this economy. But that may or may not be true for you. This week, keep an informal log of the writing you do, and...

This week: Read like Your Reader

Posted on September 14, 2009
The key to revising is looking at your work as your reader will. That requires objectivity. Have you ever had the experience of reading a piece of writing that you did as a child or adolescent? In my own experience,...

This week: Make a non-Mind Map

Posted on September 08, 2009
Reader Dwayne Phillips commented on last week's post: Before writing, I do a non-Mind Map. It sort of looks like a Mind Map, but it isn't as neat and organized as the Mind Maps I see people "publish." It helps...

This week: Make a non-outline

Posted on August 31, 2009
The great twentieth-century philosopher Winnie the Pooh defined organizing as "what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it's not all mixed up." That's good advice for us writers. But too many of us carry...

This week: Eliminate COIK

Posted on August 24, 2009
Some technical writers and editors use an acronym, COIK, that stands for "Clear Only If Known." You'll sometimes find that an editor has scribbled "COIK" beside a passage that will be perfectly clear to any reader who already shares the...

This week: Find facts first

Posted on August 17, 2009
Executive Donald Walton, in his book Are You Communicating, says, The biggest mistake you can make in a report, letter, proposal, or other important message (and it's made all the time) is to write without first getting and correctly analyzing...

This week: Tell a story

Posted on August 10, 2009
Stories have always been important in forming communities and organizations. As The Cluetrain Manifesto reminds us, "Stories play a large part in the success of organizations. With stories, we teach, pass along knowledge of our craft to colleagues, and create...

This week: Pay attention to results

Posted on August 03, 2009
"There is one thing worse than not communicating," said educational theorist Edgar Dale. "It is thinking you have communicated when you have not." This week, pay special attention to the results of your speaking and writing. Notice when you're understood...

This week: Translate into English

Posted on July 20, 2009
Winston Churchill once wrote, in a sentence made up entirely of one-syllable, English-origin words, "Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all." Churchill's great friend and ally, Franklin D. Roosevelt, also was a master...

This week: Read and listen more broadly

Posted on July 13, 2009
This week, make it a point to read or listen to at least one piece of communication from a culture other than your own. Pick up an issue of an unfamiliar magazine. Spend a few minutes with a cable channel...

This week: Don't throw good money after bad

Posted on July 07, 2009
In poker, I'm told, it's important not to think of any of the money in the pot as your money. If you put $10 in the pot before the draw, you just have to forget that fact. If, after the...

This week: Ask WIIFM?

Posted on June 29, 2009
Management consultant Bill Jensen wrote in his book Simplicity, "About 80 percent of your internal communication?meetings, teleconferences, presentations, emails, etc.?consists of Sharing information that does not require action, and/or Communicating something for which there is no discernible consequence if the...

This week: Do the alphabet shift

Posted on June 22, 2009
This week, each time you've drafted something, go back and choose a word you've written beginning with a letter from the first half of the alphabet. Replace it with a more effective word beginning with a letter from the second...

This week: Find the "we"

Posted on June 15, 2009
Peter Drucker, the father of modern management theory, wrote, "There can be no communication if it is conceived as going from the 'I' to the 'Thou.' Communication works only from one member of 'us' to another." This week, as you...

This week: Create Value by Organizing

Posted on June 08, 2009
In my "Welcome" message, in the left column of this blog, I use the term knowledge economy. I prefer that term to the terms information age and information economy because information by itself has no value. To be valuable, information...

This week: Build a prototype

Posted on June 01, 2009
Once, while training at a manufacturing site of a Fortune 100 company, I had trouble persuading my trainees to stop revising and editing while they were drafting. They insisted, "Here, we work hard to get it right the first time."...

(I hope you won't) Mind the Gap

Posted on May 27, 2009
I hope you'll accept my apologies for the gaps in postings the last three weeks.. Those weeks have been occupied by a cross-country move. My wife, Bette, and I are now getting settled in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, region. I...

This week: Respect your customer

Posted on May 11, 2009
Every reader is a customer: an actual external customer, an actual internal customer, or at least a customer of your writing. This week, as you plan and revise each message, think about treating your reader/customer with the same respect you...

This week: Start a "steal" file

Posted on May 04, 2009
This week, watch for a piece of writing that appeals to you, something that does its job especially well. Then, make a copy of it highlight, or note in the margin, what makes it especially effective put it in a...

This week: Go "which-hunting"

Posted on April 20, 2009
This week, as you revise, follow the advice in Strunk and White's Elements of Style, and go "which-hunting." That is, look for places you have used the words which, who, or that to introduce a subordinate clause, and see if...

Top 30 writing blogs

Posted on April 18, 2009
A hearty, if belated, thanks to the Delaware Employment Law Blog for naming Manage Your Writing as one of The Top 30 Blogs on Writing.

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