Posted February 19th, 2015
By Guest Blogger
What do a nurse, an electrician and a security guard all have in common? The answer is that at the end of the day they all need to have well-developed writing skills to do their jobs correctly. In fact, you could really say this about any job—from a nuclear physicist to a custodian—and it would remain true, because even if a job doesn’t focus on writing, there’s almost a certain guarantee that an important aspect of doing the job right includes being able to communicate well through writing.
“But I can’t write very well!”
Most people realize their dislike, love or indifference to writing in a high school English classroom and unfortunately, it’s usually determined by the grade they got on their first big essay.
Sadly, many people’s confidence (or lack thereof) when it comes to writing is deeply engrained in the grades they got in school—but this isn’t a good benchmark for writing in the real world. Those people who say, “I can’t write well” or “writing was never my thing,” are often convinced of this after struggling with one type of writing and, thankfully, writing essays is rarely going to be part of your job in the real world.
There are more types of writing than just researched-based writing: learning about something and regurgitating it back for a grade. In fact, the writing you did in school can be some of the hardest writing you ever do!
Writing for a job
By this point, you’re probably wondering how writing for a job is any different than any other writing you’ve had to do over the years. A fair question and one that’s easily answered with three important points:
First and foremost, you’re probably going to be writing about something that’s interesting to you or something you like, and it’s much easier to do if you’re engaged in your topic. For example, if you love your job as an electrician, it means two things: you know exactly what you’re doing and you can explain it to someone else. When you’re writing out a work estimate, that’s exactly what you’re doing: talking about what you love and explaining it to someone else! The same holds true for any job.
Next, something to always keep in mind when writing for a job: there’s a good chance that you’re going to be writing for the benefit of other professionals who understand you and what you’re trying to say. As a nurse, for example, if you’re monitoring a patient and you record in their chart that their CRIT levels were slightly higher than normal at 2:30pm, you’re communicating something important to fellow medical professionals, who understand what you’re trying to say—you don’t have to worry about going into a lot of depth because the basic concept is already understood by everyone who will read your writing.
Finally, writing in the real world is often a lot easier to comprehend topically—in most cases, you’re writing about what you see or what happened. Unlike school where you need to pick a topic, research the topic, create a hypothesis and find data to support or refute your ideas, real world writing is often an explanation of what’s already known. As a security guard writing up an incident report for example, all you’re going to need to do is explain the facts—facts you already know!
The importance of good writing skills
All of this is to say that any job you have will involve writing to some degree, but more than that, it will require that you have the abilities needed to write properly, descriptively and thoroughly. Writing is one of the best ways to communicate, but it can also be one of the most misunderstood if your objective or information isn’t clear.
A grammatical error in a patient’s chart can compromise nurses’ ability to tend to that person; a component of an electrical estimate that’s missing could result in you doing the work for free; and not filling in a security incident report thoroughly could result in missing facts that cause a case to be thrown out.
Writing shouldn’t be something you’re scared of, it should be something you accept and practice. Embracing your writing abilities and improving them or polishing them as needed will put you ahead of the curve when it comes to being successful in your career and make you a more qualified candidate for any position you’re looking to pursue!
Find the skills and the words will come
So now the only question that remains is “how?” How do you practice or gain the skills needed to be a better writer?
The best answer for this comes in the form of learning and knowing the concepts you’ll be talking about first. If you understand what you’re talking about and know what needs to be said, you’ll already have the words you need to say it in the right way. Writing will come second nature, just like talking. In fact, compare the two: which did you learn to do first, talk or write? If you can talk about something, you can write about it because all you’re doing is putting words on paper!
At the end of the day, your ability to write about something is a product of understanding it—it’s a key facet of professional development and it fits consistently with any other skill you’ll learn about your intended career.
This is a guest blog post written by Kyle Danowski, Senior Editor of ProPRcopy. ProPRcopy delivers high-quality press releases, blog content, articles and website content.
