The first thing about this chapter that is both important and sets the premise for what is necessary to take out of this chapter is the eight C’s of being a professional communicator. As the book states, these eight include: clear, concise, concrete and specific, complete, courteous, coherent, constructive, and grammatically correct. It is important to note that although these are treated as separate categories, these sections will overlap and intertwine with each other in order to succeed in professional communication. Out of these, one specific one that stuck to me was under the category of clear writing. It’s described as avoiding prepositional phrases or “word salad”. This means that as one writes, they tend to include multiple “as” , “is” , or “and” phrases when it is not always necessary. Doing this can cause ones professional writing to become clunky and harder to read due to the overuse of certain phrases. The reason as to why this stuck out to me is because I catch myself doing this often even in my academic writing. When I am given something with a certain word count, I often struggle to maintain that word count due to unnecessary phrases such as those listed above. It is almost a second nature action that I then notice when editing or reflecting back on my work. In being a editor and writing fellow also, I see this happen in many students work due to (again) it being a second nature.
The other part of this chapter that stuck out to me was making sure your writing is complete. In other words, that ones writing answers the questions of who, what, where, when, how, and why. These are also known as the Five W’s plus H. I found this connected to me most because I am both a writer and journalist myself who often has to use and remember to include these elements of writing. It was interesting to see the different contexts this rule applies, especially in professional communications. In the book, it explains how leaving the reader with questions as to what happened or why is creating incomplete writing. When writing, one must provide the upmost information possible in order to have the reader understand and feel satisfied with what they read. The chapter also notes again how time is money, and it is wasting time to not be complete in writing. Complete writing goes hand in hand with producing clearer writing.
