Page 84 - Today’s Business Communication; A How-to Guide for the Modern Professional

WhY MUST I REMEMBER ThE FOUR “F” WORDS? 73

understand that when we fail to proofread and revise our written work,
there comes a point when the work is more about the errors than the
message.
Anne Grinols, a well-respected professor of business communication,
delivered a presentation at the Annual Convention of the Association for
Business Communication in 2010 about the importance of proofreading.
She shared with the audience a demonstration that drives home the point
about errors undermining our messages.
Grinols told us to think about our writing the same way we do about
drinking water. Imagine a hot summer day. Your friend has been toiling
away in the yard pulling weeds and tending to the garden. She asks you
for a drink of water. So you go to the tap and pour a glass of water for
your friend. In this scenario, the friend should be delighted to accept
the clear, crisp water. We hope in business writing that our readers feel
the same way about our prose—they should be happy and the message
should be clear and crisp.
But what if, just before handing the water to your friend, you stir a
teaspoon of dirt into the water? How do you think your friend would
respond? What if you stirred in two teaspoons of dirt? Would your friend
still be happy to accept the water? Would your friend drink the water? At
what point does the glass of water become more about the dirt and less
about the water?
If we think about errors in our writing as pieces of dirt, we have to
ask at what point is a message more about the errors and less about the
content. And over time, what does the accumulation of errors say about
us as professionals? We all make mistakes but polished professionals work
diligently to make that number as small as possible. People prefer to drink
water that has been thoroughly filtered. They like their messages to be
similarly filtered.
3
In this chapter, we will share with you a four-step process that we
use to proofread and revise our written work. The process can be used to
evaluate just about any piece of written work, including emails, memos,
letters, and reports. Although many people may use one “F” word when
they think about proofreading and revising, we prefer to use four “F”
words: Format, Filling, Feeling, and Filth.