Almost all of us have been there: we get an email from our boss or a work colleague that is wordy, indirect, and impossible to understand. Now you have to go to that person, ask them to clarify, and hope they don’t get upset with you for not understanding – even though you wouldn’t be in this situation if they had just taken the time to make sure they made sense!

Poor writing within a business may seem insignificant on the surface, but it has a greater effect on the success of that business than you may think.

Waste of Time

Quickly sending an email or rushing through writing a memo might seem like it saves time, but it creates confusion for those who are receiving it. If an employee can’t understand a proposal, then they need to take more time to decipher what it says. The employee may even need to find the person who wrote it and ask them to explain it; this is now wasting the time of two employees.

If the employee who wrote the proposal took extra time to make sure the it was comprehendible, then all this wasted time could have been put toward something more productive in the company – not to mention the proposal might not have even been accepted if it couldn’t be understood!

Misunderstanding

Using ambiguous language may seem helpful when you’re not quite sure what to say or how to say it, but that doesn’t help the person who is on the receiving end! You may think that giving a vague deadline for a project is helpful, but now those working on the project can react in a couple of ways. They can:

Rush to get the project done; not knowing when something is due can create some major stressors for people. There’s no timeline so to eliminate the stress of it, they rush to get it done as soon as possible and the quality of the finished project suffers.
Take their time with it; no deadline was set, so why worry about when the boss needs it by? If their boss actually needed it done by a certain time, they would have said something. Now when the project needs to be completed, it’s still in the planning stage.

Neither of these reactions are beneficial for business. You want your team to succeed! Provide them with those opportunities.

Poor Company Image

Poor writing and communication in a company will tarnish that company’s image, internally and externally. Internally, employees will lose respect for those who have poor writing skills. If the manager can’t take the time to write a clear and direct email, why take the time to try to understand?

Externally, consumers notice when communication in a company is lacking. A company makes a statement they didn’t actually mean, and the public knows. If the person making the statement actually understood what the message was supposed to be, then the company’s image would not be tarnished.

Lost Business

Using business jargon or acronyms that only people in your industry understand is a sure-fire way to lose new business or scare off new hires. Don’t try to sound overly smart or in-the-know; you may think it makes you and your business sound like the more qualified choice, but in reality it makes you sound snobby and hard to work with. And once that reputation starts, it’s hard to shake!

Don’t say “paradigm” when “model” will get your point across! Keep your language clear and simple.

These results of poor writing all effect each other, too. Poor writing leads to misunderstanding, which will take extra time to get clarification, which can lead to a poor company image, which will lead to lost business. Take your time when you need to write something, no matter if it’s an email, ad, script, or project proposal; the ability to be understood is incredibly valuable to a company. Skip the wordy memos and press statements; say what needs to be said and leave it at that!

Effects of Poor Writing in the Workplace