How to Become a Smarter Writer by Solving Word Puzzles

It’s no secret that poor writing creates big problems: Loosely organized letters and memos. Confusing email and text messages. Tedious reports. Stale proposals. Assignments falling behind schedule. Misunderstandings … frustration … lost opportunities … the needless waste of human and financial resources.

In this GSA-approved introduction to the Write Smart program, the focus is on the fundamentals: How to turn useful information into sentences and paragraphs that are direct, interesting, and easy to follow. People in your organization will learn a series of “plain English” techniques that skilled professional writers and editors in the American publishing industry rely on to communicate clearly with their readers.

Under the Plain Writing Act of 2010, agencies of the Federal Government are required to provide ongoing writing training for their employees. The OMB Guidelines spell out the need for learning how to communicate in “clear, concise, well-organized” sentences that avoid the problems of “jargon, redundancy, ambiguity, and obscurity.”

In annual surveys conducted between 2000 and 2023 by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, communication skills — clear writing and speaking — have been at or near the top the list of skills that employers value most. According to the 2005 survey, “the number one skill that employers say they want … is the very skill they most often say candidates lack. Many respondents reported that college graduates lack good grammar and writing skills …”
https://writesmart.org/nace-communication-skills-2005/

Over time, the writing skills of college-educated government professionals have continued to decline. Even most of our elite schools have failed to heed the call from business and government leaders for graduates who have learned how to present their ideas in plain English. https://writesmart.org/nace-job-outlook-2020/

In the online How to Become a Smarter Writer class, we’ll begin by looking at the fundamental language patterns that skilled professional writers and editors in the publishing industry rely on to communicate clearly and persuasively with their readers. We’ll also consider how to interact with AI successfully. (When will AI help us improve our writing, and when will it make our writing worse?) In the process, participants will learn how to treat sentences as word puzzles — and how to solve writing problems by putting the pieces together.