Thread by @SnoozeInBrief

After 16½ years of editing, writing and drinking coffee [poss ambiguity: were you editing and writing the coffee?] [shut up] at Wellcome, today is my last day. I’ll miss all my lovely colleagues who’ve made my time there such fun.

I’m going to have a few months off the employment treadmill so that I can watch TV and tweet angry nonsense, or, as we middle-class graduates say, “take a sabbatical”. I might even try writing something a bit more substantial.

But first, here’s a thread of 16½ things I’ve learned in the last 16½ years as a professional sentence wrangler:

1) A large part of writing is thinking. If (like me) you find it hard to plan a piece in advance, use your first draft as a way of figuring out what you want to say. This draft will not be reader-friendly, but that’s OK. Take a break, and then tidy the piece up.

2) A lot of the time, your “readers” aren’t really reading: they’re skimming. The ungrateful bastards. So make sure your key points are prominent, and use headings and paragraph openings to highlight what each part is about.

3) Make sure everyone involved in a project understands the process from the start, so you don’t find a piece getting a substantial rewrite after the proofread. (NB imposing schedule discipline doesn’t *always* work in practice, but it’s a nice idea.)

4) Don’t cling to all the so-called “rules” of grammar and usage from your schooldays. Plenty of these are really just preferences or suggestions that got over-interpreted by people who like the comfort of absolute right and wrong. If they’re getting in the way, ignore them.

5) Although it’s always useful, spellcheck is never enough. Just ask our Pubic Engagement team.

6) If you don’t know who a piece’s audience are, or what you want them to think/feel/do as a result of reading it, you have no way to judge how well it’s likely to work. Don’t just set out information for the sake of it; write so you’re telling it to someone it will matter to.

7) Most people who overuse jargon and buzzwords don’t do it to look clever. They do it because that’s what they think is expected. With permission and support to break bad habits, most are glad to write more conversationally. If you’re in a position of influence, set the tone.

8) If you’re quoting statistics, you need to make sure you understand exactly what each one means (is X% big or small? X% of what? Over how long a period? Compared with what? Defined how? Measured when?) and whether it really does support the point you want to make.

9) You can’t prevent every possible misinterpretation readers might make. But to spot the likeliest points of confusion, try imagining that a hostile lawyer will be looking for anything in your writing that can plausibly be twisted to make you look bad.

10) No one will enjoy your jokes as much as you do. (To be honest, while I’ve learned this in the sense that I know it to be true, I haven’t learned *from* it in the sense that this knowledge has changed the way I write.)

11) You may well be able to get people interested in what your organisation does, but you won’t manage it by talking about how you categorise and manage those activities. Less on departments and strategic objectives and delivery plans, more on the actual stuff and why it matters.

12) Phrases like “In other words…” or “To put it another way…” are often a sign of either low confidence (let me try again) or vanity (look at my clever way with words). It’s good to find different ways to make a point. But see if one version will do the job better on its own.

13) It’s important to learn to distinguish between people who are being difficult because they’re involuntarily overflowing with the difficulties that a difficult situation has imposed on them and people who are being difficult because they’re just bloody difficult.

14) When ideas that were developed by a narrow group (scientists, activists, managers…) seek a wider audience, that group’s language may be unhelpful. It can be hard to find the self-awareness and confidence to question the established (yet niche) vocabulary, but it’s worth it.

15) A “useful distinction” between two similar words is not all that useful if most people don’t draw it themselves. Communication requires getting your words to correspond with the meanings in readers’ heads, not with the meanings in a dictionary or other textbook.

16) Your mistakes will haunt you for years, but everyone else will soon forget them.

16½) Something I kind of knew already but have come to grasp more deeply: You can always improve your writing skills – however good or bad you or anyone else might think you are.

I’m still learning. Thank you to everyone who’s helped me along the way.

Elvis’s stand-in bass player’s cousin’s accountant has left the building.