What is Good Writing? - My View...

Tony Karrer blogs about Good Writing here. Tony has interesting views on the topic and I agree with many points. The question, 'What is good writing?' often comes up in many of my discussions with budding writers and seasoned instructional designers. There are multiple rubrics that are used to grade writing. I designed one in my current organization and used it to assess and calibrate the writing skills of all authors and designers. Automated systems are also making their presence felt. And we have rolled out a certain application too. However, if you notice the criteria across writing rubrics - many items in the list don't match. Sometimes, items contradict. Therefore, there are no fixed 'rules' about good writing. But we all recognize good writing when we see it!


In this situation, how do I define 'good writing’? I say that a piece is well-written if it meets its objective. For example, if I need to write an essay about the role of media in the world today – it should have an introduction, a few body paragraphs, and a conclusion to do justice to the nature of content. But if I need to write an ad copy about the same thing – shorter is always better!

I agree with Tony on writing for skimming. But skimming is nothing new. Since the inception of web, editors and reviewers have been stressing about brevity. And not only the web, we almost always skim through much of other material including newspapers, journals, books, and manuals. Do you remember the last time you read the manual that came with your digital camera, word-by-word? Guess not.

Therefore, if your writing is aligned to its purpose, to meet the objective, it is good. I would just look at some of the traditional principles of instructional design and use those as factors to be considered when writing anything! Two things that help me define how I want to write include:
1) who is my audience (audience analysis)
2) why should they read the piece of information/what do they want to achieve out of it? (task analysis)
When I align my writing to the specifics received by answering the questions above, I am likely to write well. Applying principles and rules of grammar and punctuation and an ability to write using Global English are things that further add clarity to my writing. But I don't believe that a grammatically-correct piece of writing is 'good' until it helps the reader achieve what it meant to! So there's my story.
But if you are interested in more...here’s an interesting link to explore on what makes good writing. This is by ‘Teaching That Makes Sense’.
What is good writing (HTML)?
What is good writing (PDF)?

7 Things You Do Not Need to Know About Me

Manish Mohan tagged me in the ongoing meme on the 7 Things You Do Not Need To Know About Me ...
Here are 7 things you don’t need to know about me:
1. I learnt how to swim by being thrown into 12-feet deep water by my coach!
2. I recently learnt that for the last 3 months, on an average, I sent 300 SMSs each month.
3. If I was not a full-time training professional, I would have been a full-time traveler doing shows for the Discovery Travel & Living channel!
4. I read many self-help and management books. But not the 'chicken soup' variety.
5. I love to bake...
6. I am intrinsically motivated at most times and a die hard optimist!
7. I'd love to go for long walks on nature trails but currently do most of my walking on the treadmill, between my office buildings, and in shopping malls! :-)

Most of my blog contacts have already been tagged. However, if you are reading this and want to participate, please go ahead! If you don't have a blog, just put the 7 things in a comment and let me know who you are!

Learning About Learning in 2008

December’s Big Question from the Learning Circuits Blog is “What I have learned About Learning in 2008?”

Well, because I am a learning professional, I give a lot of importance to my personal learning. And owing to my profession, I am fortunate to understand and appreciate the value of learning.

I started my learning this year on the perfect note - I wrote my first blog! I think this simple activity brought me closer to most of my learning this year. After I wrote my first blog, I found myself interested in exploring the world of Web 2.0, social networking, and collaborative tools and technologies. I started to write atleast one blog every month and use you tube, slideshare, twitter, delicious, and joined many online discussion forums to read and share my views. Through all of this, I felt completely responsible for my own learning.

I extended my best practices to my training sessions and my trainees. I incorporated you tube videos in my classroom training sessions, referred to multiple e-learning and instructional design blogs to update my 'legacy training' in Instructional Design, incorporated online reading activities as pre-work and post training reflection activities as blogs for my trainees, subscribed to second life and shared the experience with many others, reviewed some powerful Brandon Hall E-learning Awards nominees (e-learning courses) as an independent judge, used many free web tools...and...developed my personal learning network.

I also felt very satisfied and energized during the entire learning process. This learning was mostly self-directed. Blogging helped me reflect on the things that I was doing and allowed me to articulate my learning with each activity. It helped me connect with many other people all around the world. It helped me break the shackles of my own mind.

To sum it up, in the year 2008:

• I learned that Web 2.0 is not about tools and technologies - it is about a new way to learn.
• I learned that the more I shared, the more I learned.
• I learned that the world is indeed a small place and its very easy to connect, if you want to.
• I (re) learned that to learn, I need to reflect, apply, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes.
• I (re) learned that learning is limitless.