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FROM THE FOUNDER
People judge you
A s a college professor, I often find myself telling my students that people will judge them by the quality of their writing. It’s a fact. Those who read your emails, letters, reports, social media posts, and resumes are all deciding how intelligent you are in large part from your writing. Those who read your emails, letters, reports, social media posts, and resumes are all deciding how intelligent you are in large part from your writing.
Mark Zweig
Then the thought occurred to me that this judging doesn’t just happen to college students. It also happens to YOU and each of your people! If your writing isn’t up to a certain standard, your clients, potential clients, regulators, subcontractors, and everyone else will make harsh judgements about how smart or dumb you are, or worse, what kind of person you are. Seems unfair, you might say? You and your people are architects and engineers – scientists, planners, land surveyors, and technicians. You don’t HAVE to be good writers; you just have to be competent at what you do. But – you are wrong! Educated, intelligent, successful people are judgmental, right or wrong – it’s just the
way it is. And these judgement calls make a big impact on whether or not they want to work with you or will listen to your advice at all. So it’s critical for you and everyone in your firm to write well. Here are some common mistakes I see made every single day: 1. Plurals on apostrophes. When did people start putting apostrophes on plurals? “Your door’s are in.” What? It drives me mad. 2. Not using paragraphs. Why do some people think it’s OK to write a long email or report with no paragraph breaks? Makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to read.
See MARK ZWEIG, page 6
THE ZWEIG LETTER DECEMBER 11, 2023, ISSUE 1516
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