Want an easy way to immediately, easily improve your standing in your field and professional community? Improve your writing output.
If nothing else, fairly or unfairly, people judge you and your organization by your writing. “Sometimes I can see that the person has more to offer than the prose would suggest, and the disconnect leads me to judge, uncharitably, that he or she has not tried hard to write well or does not know how,” writes Barbara Wallraff, author of three books about the use of language.
However, the relationship between writing quality and professional standing goes beyond superficial judgments. Your writing is often what determines how seriously people take you and your organization. That’s because writing is the medium through which an organization communicates its expertise and contributions to its field. Your writing’s accuracy, clarity, and integrity directly reflect your commitment to excellence, which shapes your reputation and credibility. More specifically, writing quality can directly affect how readers perceive your:
- Authoritativeness: High-quality, well-researched, and accurately presented documents, whether research papers, technical reports, or policy briefs, position an organization as a thought leader.
- Trustworthiness: Consistency in producing reliable and error-free content reinforces an organization's image as dependable and meticulous.
- Ethicality: Clear and honest communication, particularly in disclosing methodologies, data sources, and potential conflicts of interest, enhances an organization's image as transparent and ethical.
Unfortunately, several common issues plague most scientific and technical writing. Complex technical jargon, overwriting, poor structure and organization, the potential for misinterpretation, and more can erode writing quality and effectiveness. Moreover, without a careful approach to the writing process, unintentional biases or inaccuracies can creep into writing and tarnish the organization’s credibility.
Strategies for Strengthening Writing Output
- Invest in Quality Control: Implementing rigorous editing and peer-review processes ensures accuracy and consistency. This not only catches errors but also offers a platform for critical evaluation and content improvement.
- Promote Ethical Standards: Adhering to ethical guidelines in writing, such as proper citation, avoiding plagiarism, and transparent reporting, must be ingrained in the organization’s culture.
- Embrace Clarity and Accessibility: Simplifying complex information without compromising its integrity makes it accessible to a broader audience. This involves avoiding unnecessary jargon and explaining concepts in lay terms when possible.
- Get Training: Nothing substitutes for targeted skills’ development when it comes to improving professional writing. Unfortunately, academic instruction is often inadequate to meet the demands of a professional environment, where good grammar is only the start of good writing, not its endpoint.
Turning Credibility Into ‘Credit’
Why does all this matter? Because it directly impacts career and organizational success.
“By adopting a systematic approach and by regularly seeking feedback from trusted colleagues throughout the study, writing, and article submission process, authors can increase their likelihood of not only publishing original research articles of high quality but also becoming more scientifically productive overall,” say science researchers John Iskander, Sara Beth Wolicki, Rebecca T. Leeb, and Paul Z. Siegel.
In other words, better writing is more likely to lead to more publications and more productive output overall.
How? One author argues that credibility is a form of “credit” that can be leveraged into more and better research: “In general, the commercial metaphor of ‘credit’ has been used in previous writing, where the scholarly publication cycle is presented as a series of moves that is designed to maximise [sic] credibility. From a successful publication, researchers may gain ‘credit’, which they may ‘convert’ into more time and equipment for further research and thus progressively increase their ‘credibility’.”
In other words, the relationships among institutional credibility, professional productivity, and the quality of scientific and technical writing are symbiotic. Strengthening one aspect can affect the others and, potentially, even kickstart a virtual cycle of continuous improvement.
Ready to build the kind of credibility that can be a “credit” to your organization? Our team of experts can assess your situation, diagnose your writing challenges, and prescribe the perfect course to help you achieve your goals. Contact Hurley Write for a no-obligation consultation.