Comments on: Why Academic Writing Skills Are Useful for Managers https://www.customerservicemanager.com/why-academic-writing-skills-are-useful-for-managers/ The Magazine for Customer Service Managers & Professionals Fri, 20 Nov 2020 17:02:48 +0000 hourly 1 By: J https://www.customerservicemanager.com/why-academic-writing-skills-are-useful-for-managers/#comment-51536 Fri, 20 Nov 2020 17:02:48 +0000 https://www.customerservicemanager.com/?p=23078#comment-51536 I scanned article thinking there would be a definition of academic writing vs. vernacular. As someone who’s written for college management text books, I understand academic writing, which is too laborious for 80-90% of business comm. situations, such as emails, memo’s, collective intelligence notes in weekly or monthly reports. It really only applies to legal or detailed executive communication. The title of the article implies there will be a) help in understanding the definition of academic writing, and b) a contrast to common social/ vernacular styles, and/or how to adapt fully rigorous, traditional academic writing to the work place in order achieve both goals of being effective AND efficient w/ communication. The post did neither – hate to say – and I don’t mean to be mean, but after the title and opening sentence of paragraph one, all I could think was “thanks captain obvious”. Then there’s mostly circular logic from there – “you need academic, i.e., better, writing skills b/c… it’s important to write better”. Beyond that, what did we learn? Do young professionals (I’m 47 btw) really not know that it’s important to follow basic – college 101 basic – business comm. practices? That said, I think a list of the top 3-5 ‘academic” writing principles combined with a “how-to” adapt to the brevity required in 80-90’s of biz comm, would be a very helpful post.
Best,
JG

]]> By: William Ray https://www.customerservicemanager.com/why-academic-writing-skills-are-useful-for-managers/#comment-51534 Fri, 20 Nov 2020 16:36:28 +0000 https://www.customerservicemanager.com/?p=23078#comment-51534 Good grief – talk about ignoring your own advice!

While academic writing is actually mostly dreadful, if you want to argue that people should be doing it, it would behoove you to practice what you preach:

“You need to be able to effectively communicate in the workplace. In fact, this is not even negotiable.”
=>
“The workplace requires effective communication. This is not negotiable”.
or, with even less fluff =>
“Workplaces require effective communication”.

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