Writing and Communication

Language, as people say, is just a part of communication. In turn, writing, like speech, is one of the things we can do with language.

Writing, in any form, has the job of conveying information and meaning from a writer to an intended audience, or readership, for a particular purpose. The form it takes is quite various, and is to do with the medium or media in use.

Students have to demonstrate to their supervisors in an essay or dissertation that they have mastered its subject. Business organisations need to attract the attention and patronage of their customers through very brief radio and television ads, or, increasingly, through banner or pay per click (PPC) ads, online. Best men continue to address 'dearly beloved' audiences with not a little trepidation, but a carefully prepared and hopefully well rehearsed speech. The variety of writing is endless.

Writing then, is any planned, and structured, language-based communication, designed with an audience, a particular purpose, and a medium or media in mind. Its special significance - distinguishing it from more casual or spontaneous uses of language - is that it functions in the absence of its author. We do not need a Walton or a Sainsbury to tell us in person that their latest offers are too good to miss. Likewise, a well written research paper from the 1950s may reveal its author's errors of understanding, or lack of data, but will leave us in no doubt as to their way of thinking or rationale.

The reason authors or publishers can leave us to decode their messages is our community of language, values, cultural norms and references. So long as a piece of writing fits in well with those things a particular audience shares in common, the communication has a good chance of doing what its author intended. To get this right, the writer has to recognise the context in which they are writing, and plan the attributes of their writing accordingly.

The attributes of writing

We have already alluded to several different domains of writing (e.g. education, business). Depending on where we are working, media selection and/or document type(s) selection will be more or less automatic. In education and research, though there may be local differences in format and editorial preferences, the accepted or conventional forms of essay, dissertation, or thesis, paper, and article are well known and understood. Professionals are often required to produce bids, proposals, or pitches, which sometimes take a shape prescribed by the sponsor of the project, and are at other times left to the discretion of the authors.

In business organisations however, where customers, employees, investors, and other stakeholders have to be communicated with, at different times, for different reasons, and where some activities - e.g. brand building - call for integrated media selections as part of a coordinated campaign, these choices will be far more discretionary. Each piece in the jigsaw, however large or small, is a structured communication, requiring careful planning and execution.

All of the most effective communications are planned at the level of the individual execution or document (whether a thesis, brochure, or webpage).

Decisions on structure and layout are very important. Subject to the guidelines offered (e.g. word count, running time etc), one choice of structure over another can do much to affect 'standout', readability, look and feel. On some occasions, sections should be used to break up a whole into manageable parts. Perhaps these are better left undeclared or unseen (though they may have been used to write the piece); perhaps very obvious signposting is an advantage.

The use of language itself is more complicated a matter than it first appears. Style, register, tone of voice, and diction all need to take into account the positioning of the author or publisher, given the audience, the objectives of the communication, and the medium. A more or less formal style might be appropriate. Words and phrases need to be chosen with care, asking more or less of the reader, and creating a particular sort of impression.

A similar point needs to be made in relation to idiomatic words or phrases and other culturally-specific references.

Proper sentence construction follows on from choices about style and register, subject to the proviso that voices and tenses should be kept consistent as far as possible. Grammatical errors should be avoided, except at the expense of stilted English; 'this is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put', said Churchill.

Finally, spelling errors, typographical errors, or 'typos', and other production errors need to be corrected. Whilst production errors do not necessarily impede a communication's effectiveness, their risk and potential cost tend to vary with the audience. The indignation of a lay readership over a journalist's or editor's fallibility may not stop it from enjoying a piece, or continuing to take a newspaper. On the other hand, a large procurement function trying to form an overall impression of the likely competence, reliability, and accuracy of a professional firm, may, whether consciously or not, look less favourably on the production errors in a technical consulting bid.

Good writing

To recap then, writing is any structured, language-based communication, designed for a particular purpose, with an audience and medium in mind.

Good writing is writing which delivers the objectives of the communication, reaching and affecting the intended audience in the desired way, as far as possible within the selected media.