If you haven’t had big dollars thrown at you by a BV employer, you probably…
John Borrowman III
Borrowman Baker LLC
Gallatin, TN
Improving your writing skills can be more valuable than you think when it comes to moving higher in the ranks at your BV/LS practice. Time that you spend making your writing better pays an easily overlooked dividend.
One of the main reasons is that on the whole, writing skills just aren’t what they need to be. BV/LS practice leaders consistently voice this sentiment. Even incremental improvement in writing skills can let you stand out when it comes time for advancement.
It’s not as hard as it might look to improve your writing. A good place to start is with the advice of William Zinsser in the 30th anniversary edition of On Writing Well. Zinsser lays out simple principles involving simplicity, clutter and usage.
Usage is OK, Zinsser says. Jargon is not. “Bottom-line” qualifies as usage, a metaphor borrowed from accounting that conveys the image we can picture. “Prioritize”, on the other hand, is jargon because it sounds more pompous without telling us anything different from “rank”.
On Writing Well is a quick and pleasurable read. In fact, Zinsser’s book is so well written that the very act of reading it will expose you to new ways of thinking how you can improve your writing you do.
On Writing Well is published by HarperCollins, and is available through most online booksellers. William Zinsser died May 12, 2015, at the age of 92.
