Understand Your Incentives. Why Write? Why Write Better? - (Power of Writing Well)

"A bad writer has no rights whatever. Any mercy shown to him is wasted and mistaken." H.L. Mencken, 1880-1956.

I wrote THE POWER OF WRITING WELL to address everything managers, leaders, engineers, scientists and others need to be better senders and receiver s, not to cover everything they need to know about the language or to be the perfect sender or receiver; nobody is.

The many books on writing and communicating that claim to be everything to everybody fail simply because they are overwhelmingly complex, full of jargon and useless labels and distinctions such as participial phrase as opposed to gerund phrase, or transitive verb versus intransitive verb. Most of us outside of academe don’t care, and we shouldn’t since they are not relevant to our needs.

This short book condenses the habits and techniques—your tools—that work most of the time for most of the people who write at work and want to be happier in all parts of their lives: nothing more, nothing less . It is also a true and accurate reflection of my forty years of writing for business and of teaching writing at two prestigious universities and many professional societies and companies. You can trust that what I’m telling you will improve your abilities to communicate and think, and make you more productive, promotable, and happy. It will also make your organization more efficient and profitable.

I guarantee it, and my students attest to it .