Stylin'

Before I get to the heart of this post, I want to first point you to an article I read from The Philadelphia Inquirer.  It touches on an issue that we've talked about before, and what has become an important workplace issue and writing--not workplace writing per se, but the broader effects of writing on the workplace.  I've isolated a couple of sections from the article below; I've also included the link to the article if you want to read the entire thing.  This is an issue that tends to agitate many, particularly so-called millennials who have come to see social media as an integral part of their lives.  The article is entitled "Balancing Act."

The nation may still be debating the NFL's handling of Baltimore Ravens' running back Ray Rice's domestic troubles, but the message the incident has sent is clear – messing up in your private life can get you fired. 

In an era when people are working 24/7, we are being judged round the clock, too. Any behavior that embarrasses our employer and affects revenue or reputation has become a punishable – even fireable – offense, regardless of whether it takes place in a cubicle, online or in an elevator. 

"It's a new day with respect to intensity of accountability," says Anita Cava, a business professor and director of the Business Ethics Program at University of Miami. "There are no secrets. That is the reality of our viral world, where everyone has a recording device and camera at their fingertips." 

 And a little later in the article:

By law, companies have the freedom to run their businesses the way they want – and fire people whose behavior they consider harmful. "What people do wrong doesn't always have to be illegal to get them fired," explains Gerry Hoeffner, president of Personnel Dynamics Consulting Group in Fort Pierce, Fla., who consults organizations on business and the human element. "Employers are saying, if it puts our organization in a bad light, we have to address that."

Balancing Act

Getting Ready for the Ol' Routine

Stylin' Whip

One of the most common types of writing you'll do in your workplace will be something called a routine message.  (More on the specifics of this later.)  As is often the case with such messages, the content isn't particularly challenging or complex.  The challenge in these kinds of messages is something that's perhaps a bit unexpected: can you say what needs to be said simply and efficiently without leaving out what's essential and without burdening the reader with unnecessary stuff  and "hey-look-at-me-I'm-smart!" language?  We're talking about situations where how you say something is as important, and sometimes more important, than what you say.  We're talking about style.  

More importantly, simplicity and efficiency are crucial skills for virtually all types of workplace writing.  While some types of writing will require more content and elaboration of ideas (as in your next writing task), generally whatever the message is that you're trying to communicate, it needs to be delivered in a style that's clear and accessible.

Often workplace messages are pretty simple and straightforward, but whether a message is effective depends upon the words you use and how you use them.  

What are the specific components of style? Typically they involve the following:

* level of vocabulary
* sentence length and complexity
* tone (generally this means the "personality" you want to convey. For example, if you want to be assertive, you'll typically use shorter sentences and active voice. In a future post we'll take a look at some examples of workplace writing where writers carefully choose language and style to convey a particular image about an organization: mission statements. 


Style tends to take on greater urgency in workplace writing. The point of the writing is to get something done, so you need to successfully connect to your readers. If your readers can't follow the message, or don't understand what you're trying to say, or are put off by your attitude in the message (an attitude you may not even know you created), they will often just stop reading, or not read at all. Which of course means nothing gets done.

For example, several years ago a customer was unhappy with the service offered by a bridal shop, and wrote a letter to say so.  (I can't be more specific, since this is an actual letter, and not a textbook example.)  As complaining customers are often wont to do, the customer was somewhat direct in expressing her frustration that the bridal shop was not fulfilling its end of the agreement.  The manager of the bridal shop responded, and below is a portion of her response.  Now, note that the manager is responding with good news, telling the customer she will get her refund; also note that I've retained the original spellings, grammar and format:

After trying very hard for a long time, I finally received good results from our corp., all in your favor and to your benifit.

I am sending your letter back, as it probably will be of more use to you in the future than to me.

I am also taking this opportunity to thank you for mailing it to me, but your threats are meaningless.

Signing legal business contracts, commits an individual to the terms, rules and policies of such.

We try very hard to assist an unsatisfied customer, such as yourself, when in return, rudeness and untruthfulness are the results, then I wonder, was it worth it????

Good luck to you in the future and to all the people you will be dealing with.

What can be boggling about this message is that it is good news, yet the writer somehow managed to craft a message that only deepened the conflict, rather than ended it.

The Effects of Bad or Inappropriate Style on Readers

The factors that play into determining your style for a particular message:

* level of knowledge of your readership
* direction in which you're writing: are you writing upward (to your supervisors and those higher than you in the organization's hierarchy), downward (to those you supervise and to those you are higher than in the organization's hierarchy) or across (to organizational peers).
* how you expect your readers to respond to the message
* organizational culture
* the seriousness of the message (good news, bad news, neutral news)
(Note that all of the points above refer to the rhetorical situation.)

 

Comparing School Writing to Workplace Writing

The following sentence is taken from a writing handbook:

“As a third-year college student majoring in history who has already acquired a bit over ten thousand dollars in student loan debt, I find McPherson and Schapiro’s rejection of Clinton’s national service plan to be short sighted and insensitive to the experiences of many college students who are struggling to put themselves through school only to face enormous financial burdens upon graduation."

The handbook offers the sentence as an example of good academic writing—and it is. For school writing, this sort of style works well.  Teachers will salivate over sentences like this, and encourage this.  This has several common markers that scream "A" or "B": a relatively elevated vocabulary, an apparent command of complex sentence structures, personalization of a complex idea, and righteous indignation (which signals that the writer is invested in the topic, which helps teachers feel good about themselves for assigning it in the first place).  
However, if you have good career karma, you will likely never see a sentence like this in effective workplace writing. Here’s why:

1. It’s too long—63 words by my count.
2. Long sentences typically mean that the sentence contains subordinate clauses, conditional clauses and phrases, and/or multiple ideas. All of these can obscure the main point of the sentence. In workplace writing the main point needs to be crystal clear, so simple and direct works best.
3. The first part of this sentence (through “I find”) refers to the writer’s state of mind about an idea. The writer also refers to himself/herself. In workplace writing, readers want the focus to be on actions, not states of mind. The important question for readers in a work setting is “What should we do?,” not “What do you think?” (Though don't take this as dogma.  Even so, talking about what you think is useful only when it will ultimately lead to some action.)  Also, since one typically writes as a representative of the organization or some segment of the organization, the point of view represented is typically the organization’s point of view.
So, if I were to convert this sentence into one that reflects a style better suited to the workplace, here’s what I would do:

“Many college students face enormous financial burdens upon graduation. We recommend implementing President Clinton’s national service plan to help those students.”

· I’ve reduced this from 63 words to 21—I’ve removed over half the words from the original. What I’ve tried to do is reduce the original sentence to essential information. It’s important to keep in mind that one does not shorten things just for the sake of shortening them. Effective workplace style means efficient—simple, direct and containing all necessary information.
· I’ve changed this to two sentences, each focused on a single point.
· I’ve recommended an action.
· I’ve written from the point of view of an organization or segment of that organization (“We”).

Too Cool for School

Movin' On Up

Movin' on up to the East Side,
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.

Movin' on up to the East Side,

We finally got a piece of the pie.

                  --Dubois and Barry

For those of you who have yet to start your careers, eventually you'll compose a successful resume and letter of application (documents we'll deal with later), and find yourself in that career-type position.   Terrific.  What that means, of course, is that it's time to become familiar with the issues and strategies of writing in an actual workplace: writing where there is more at stake than an arbitrary letter grade; writing upon which the very functioning of the organization (and your ability to pay the bills) rely.

This doesn't necessarily mean leaving behind everything you've learned about what we call "school writing," though there are significant differences between successful academic writing and successful workplace writing.  It does, however, mean knowing how to adapt to your circumstances.  Workplace writing has different demands and different needs.

Let's begin at the most basic level, which is:

The Rhetorical Situation

Let's start with a simple scenario.  We're sitting at the dinner table, passing the food and having some good conversation, when I look at you at the other end of the table and say "Could you pass the salt, please?"  The chances are quite good, I'd say, that you would pass me the salt.  It was, after all, a simple question, and I used the magic word to boot.

But did I, in fact, ask a question?  Yes, my statement was in the form of a question, but realistically what are the chances that you would say "No"?  Slim--very slim, indeed.  "Could you pass the salt, please?" is a yes-or-no question, but do you really think that "no" is a possible answer?  Even though we ask the question, we typically do not expect--and likely would be shocked--that someone might say "no."  There's really only one option: pass the salt.  So, have I asked you a question?  In reality--no.  What I've done, in fact, is given you a command.  So then why do we ask this as a question?

Because dinner is a social situation that we see as a form of family or community bonding.  Consequently we typically expect certain standards of behavior at the dinner table--including politeness.  So we ask a question about passing the salt to be polite, not because we are genuinely giving the person we're asking a choice.  This is actually a command ("Pass the salt") masking as a question, because the context demands we be polite.  So when you ask the question "Could you please pass the salt" you are reading the context and adjusting your language accordingly.  You are responding to the rhetorical situation.

Let's use a couple more examples to complicate the issue a bit.  Watch the following two videos, both of which exemplify a growing (and disturbing) trend: very public marriage proposals (almost always initiated by men, an issue for another time and place).  Let me apologize in advance for the lousy sound quality of the second video:

          

Here again we have the same question, asked twice: will you marry me?  But is it, in fact, a question?  The social conventions of marriage proposals require that a question be posed (or as the saying goes, "pop the question"), and certainly many proposals have been turned down.  But to what degree does the very public nature of these proposals change the rhetorical situation and make the possibility of saying "no" incredibly difficult?  In other words, to what degree does the public context change the question (Will you marry me?) into a command (Marry me)?  

In the first video, the woman answers "yes," but she's clearly not thrilled--look at her body language, her tight-lipped smile, and listen to the way she says "yes."  We could say this is an example of a woman being pressured by the context into giving a particular answer.

In the second video, the woman doesn't answer--she runs, runs fast, runs far.  Again, looking at her body language, she also seems clearly underwhelmed.  At one point she seems to be looking around, desperately hoping someone will take her anywhere else but there.  In this case, I would suggest that the result is the consequence of our Romeo's misreading the rhetorical situation, which consequently leads to a poor result (remember that).  For one thing, he clearly does not understand the nature of his "reader" (the woman to whom he is proposing), and one of the fundamental aspects of a rhetorical situation is readership/audience (who is receiving and who is responding to your message).  For another, he is proposing in a food court.  A food court.  In a mall.  Seriously?    

Fundamentally, then, a rhetorical situation simply means understanding the context within which you are communicating, and adapting your words for that context.  In other words, you adjust how you write depending upon the situation.   To break it down to its simplest components, the rhetorical situation refers to:

• What's your message?
• What's the purpose of your message?
• Who's your reader?
• What do you know about your reader that might affect how the reader receives the message?
• What do you need your reader to understand?
• How do you think your reader will react to the message?
• What external circumstances might affect how the reader receives and reacts to the message?
• How can you shape your language and message to best assure the reader receives and understands the message?

 
When we talk about the rhetorical situation in workplace writing, we mean that any message we send occurs within a network of relationships and events.  In other words, there are factors beyond the message itself that affect how we communicate the message and how the message is received. Our concern, or course, is the rhetorical context of the workplace, and the network of relationships and events that occur within the workplace.  We need to be able to adapt to that situation.  This can be more challenging than one might initially think, since most of us have been indoctrinated to "school writing" (as I'll address in a subsequent post), and "school writing" is a very different beast from workplace writing.

Now, pretty much all writing--all communication--exists within rhetorical situations.  It's not usually something we think about, but because humans are relatively clever beasts, we learn to "read" people and situations and adjust our language accordingly.  While we might swear like a sailor after we've shanked a golf shot into the water, the chances are for most of us that if we did the same thing while golfing with a parent, child or parish priest, we'd likely moderate our language.  In this case, it's the rhetorical context of the audience that affects how we use language.  

Here's another example.  You've may have seen (or remember) the Mac computer commercials featuring the cool young dude and the middle-aged suit.  The core message is simple--buy a Mac, not a PC.  But the advertisers create a context within which buying that Mac will align you with the forces of hipness (and conversely, buying a PC will align you with the forces of authoritarianism).  The advertisers understand how they want their message to be received, and they base that on what they understand to be the values of their targeted audience. 

Imagine for the moment Mr. Suit communicating to Mr. Dude.  Wouldn't you think it necessary for Mr. Suit to adapt his language in order just to keep Mr. Dude from rolling his eyes and going back to Angry Birds?  Same for Mr. Dude communicating to Mr. Suit.  

And so it goes, and so it goes, and so it goes.

To use another, less pleasant example, downsizing and layoffs have been an unfortunately common event.  Let's say one company lays off employees in the spring, and another lays them off two weeks before Christmas.  The message for both companies is the same.  But I'd be willing to bet that most of us would be more perturbed by the Christmas layoffs than the spring layoffs.  Why?  Because something about the context of Christmas alters the impact and the value of the message, even though the message is fundamentally the same.

So when we think about the rhetorical situation for an act of writing, we are trying to be aware of those elements that may affect how we communicate a message, and perhaps more importantly, how that message is received.  Generally the following elements are part of determining the rhetorical situation in a workplace setting:

• Purpose -- What do we want to happen?  Are we writing to inform, persuade, correct, support, inquire? 
• Reader(s) -- Perhaps the single most important element, since no message is worthwhile unless someone "hears" it and responds to it (ideally responding as we would like the reader to respond).  Who is this person?  What is this person like?  What does this person think of you (assuming he/she knows you)?  What does this person think of the situation about which you're writing?  What is your relationship to that person?  What does this person know, not know, need to know?  How do you think this person will initially receive the message? 
• Corporate Culture -- What are the values and beliefs that inform the organization, and how does your message fit into those values and beliefs? 
• Culture outside of the Organization -- Will your message have an impact, directly or indirectly, on the world outside of your organization?  (This is often the case with messages that have ethical or moral issues embedded in them.)  

 

Let's Get This Show on the Road

 

Why Workplace Writing Instead of Business Writing?

As you’ll learn pretty quickly, I prefer the term “Workplace Writing” to “Business Writing.”  This is not exactly an earth-shaking change, but I do have my reasons for that preference:

•  “Business Writing” tends to connote writing done be managers and high-level executives.  In fact, the kind of writing we’ll be talking about occurs at all levels of an organization

•  “Business Writing” also tends to suggest writing that is strictly in-house to an organization.  In fact, those who are good at this kind of writing—particularly in this age of the internet and explosive social media—recognize external readers, and are able to adapt their writing for in-house readers and for out-house readers.  (Sorry—couldn’t resist.) 

•  “Business Writing” also implies formal writing that is strictly relevant to the needs of the organization.  While most of this kind of writing is that, we also need to be aware that any writing that occurs within the context of an organization, including jokey emails, text messages or social media postings, qualifies as “workplace writing.”  A little later in the semester you'll see a recent example of an exchange between a customer and a business that exemplifies, in a cringe-worthy way, the often very public nature of workplace writing (much to the dismay of many).

  Our Mantras of Workplace Writing

If all we needed to worry about when writing as professionals was the message itself, workplace writing would be easy--just say what you have to say and move on.  However, workplace writing occurs within organizations, and organizations are composed of people, who are complex and often behave in complicated and conflicted ways.  And because organizations are composed of people, they also develop their own cultures, with value systems and ideals that need to be reflected in the documents you produce.  Basically, then, when we talk about the rhetorical situation (as we'll do a bit later in the semester), we're trying to figure out what factors within an organization and organizational culture will affect what we want to say and how we want to say it.  Keep in mind three fundamental principles about workplace writing, that distinguish workplace writing from other kinds of writing: Workplace writing exists to get things done          One does not write as a professional to bare one's soul, get in touch with one's feelings, or lift the slovenly masses with one's artistry.  In the workplace, one writes to do something, or to get someone else to do something.  Of course, if one fails to take into account the complexities of the reader(s), then there's a real good chance that what one wants to get done, isn't done.  Success in professional writing isn't measured by eloquence; it's measured by effectiveness. Workplace writing exists to benefit the organization first       The organization is paying your salary, and they are not paying you to express yourself.  They are paying you to get things done that will benefit the organization.  So taking into account the needs and culture of the organization is crucial. When you write as a member of an organization, you write as a representative of the organization       Whatever you say, and however you say it, it needs to align with the values and ideals of the organization.  Thus it's important to understand the context of the organization.  Of course, you're free to attempt to change the values and ideals if you think that appropriate or necessary.