Guest author, Eric Snider, PE, Principal with SynTerra Corporation offers a back to school lesson in A/E/LA professional writing. Take this opportunity to evaluate how effectively your e-mails to clients and colleagues enhance your image. This article first appeared in "Pulse Weekly" PSMJ Resources, Inc, July 6, 2015.


A well-written phrase... a well-written sentence... a well-written paragraph... indeed, a full piece is well-written... each is a joy to a discerning reader. Two of my favorite writers, John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill, were true masters of the well-turned phrase. I'd like to think that their communications skills were at least partially responsible for their success in the political world.

Now fast-forward to 2015. We now have e-mail, IM, texting and others. All lend themselves to helping us become lazier about our writing. After all, we can convey lots of information with a pithy "LOL" or "OMG!!". Let me beg of you...do not let that slow slippage into ineffective communication happen to you. Why? Because there are still people out there- a lot of them, in fact- who value well-focused and succinct written communication. Even in an email!

For proof, see the email below that an engineer in my firm sent company-wide complimenting two of our staff on first, their technical work, but a close second, their effective communications via e-mail. All names are changed to fictional names, but the message is abundantly clear.

"I hope this doesn't embarrass Ron and Hal, but...

John Jones of Duckburg CPW made it a point to pull me to the side this evening at the Blue Ridge Hills District of the Water Environment Federation meeting. He proceeded to tell ne how impressed he was with SynTerra's knowledge and work. He was extremely complimentary of Ron and Hal and said he would recommend us to anyone who would listen. What stood out to him even more was the quality and attention to detail in a simple task such as sending a well-written email. In his words, "Not everybody takes the time to do that and it stands out when they do."

Nice work!

Civilian Engineer, PE
SynTerra"

Out of this simple and earnest (and real-life) e-mail comes a few truths for all of us who communicate with clients, vendors, team partners, regulators, n, others:

* Give every communication medium its due attention. Compose an email, save it as a draft, and re-read it an hour later. I do this often and usually end up saying, "Snyder, what were you thinking?"

* Assess the communications skills of your recruits and potential hires before hiring them. You get a pretty good idea of verbal skills in the interview process, but that is only part of the suite of communication skills. Give them a scenario and ask them to compose an e-mail to a client in response and then follow up with a memo to file.

* Adopt the "I am writing this for the ages" approach in your own communications. I have found over my 40+ years in the engineering field that well-crafted communications of all types have time, confusion, money and image, for starters.

So, kudos to my colleagues Ron and Hal. Way to go! We all can learn something useful from their example.


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