Written Communication Skills

Written communication skills means that someone can write an efficient document with ways of checking it beforehand such as:

• Spelling
• Grammar
• Capitalisation
• Proofreading

Spelling and Grammar

Spelling and grammar is important when communicating information effectively because if there are spelling or grammar errors this can make it difficult for the reader to understand what you are trying to say.  To remain professional within a document you must not make grammatical or spelling errors because these are vital mistakes that can impact on whether the person reading what you have written understands what you have said.

When using programs like Microsoft Word there is a spell check available however since the spell check provides many options you may chose the wrong spelling. Also the spell check is American so words that have ‘S’ in them are sometimes changed to ‘Z’ an example would be ‘Organized’ when it should be spelt like ’Organised’. One simple spelling mistake such as spelling definitely as defiantly can totally change the meaning of what you have written and the reader would have a hard time trying to understand the message you are giving them.

Spelling and grammar is important when communicating information effectively because the person reading the document must be able to understand the meaning you are trying to portray. If there are too many errors the meaning can become unknown and the reader will give up trying to figure out the correct spelling or grammar to understand what is being said.

Proofreading

Proofreading is important when trying to communicate information effectively because if you do not proofread your work you would not be able to correct where you have missed out words and these words could be important to the point you are trying to make. Things involved in proofreading are:

• Missing words
• Structure errors
• Spelling errors
• Grammar errors

Knowing how to proofread your own work is extremely difficult because you already know the meaning you are trying to get across in your head and you may think it is clear in your writing. Proofreading is important in communicating information effectively because each word has to be noticed individually to ensure all the words are present in the sentence and nothing important has been missed out. If something important has been missed out then the reader will not understand what you are trying to communicate to them. Proofreading can help you in many ways because doing this can make sure you know when you have made errors such as grammatical errors which the computer spellchecker will not pick up to tell you, which will result in a different message being portrayed to the reader.

 

When reading in general people will be put off if you write a huge chunk of text this means they will not even attempt to read it, because it will take too much effort to decipher the text. However to effectively communicate you must do a reasonable paragraph structure that is organised and stays on topic throughout so that the reader does not become confused because this could prevent them from understanding the message you are trying to tell them.