Management System Professionals Support | CBG Inc.

General words are minefields when it comes to professional writing in quality management. Examples of such words are: always,  never,  all,  none,  lack,  almost, alike.  If we used the word "never” and a single occurrence compromised this word, it has also compromised the reader’s trust to the whole message. Words that express opinions should be used very carefully.Examples of such words are comprehensive,  clear,  consistent,  unambiguous.  What is clear to one person may not be clear to someone else. If we decide to use such words, we need to agree on their definitions as a first step.

It is an important stylistic rule of non-technical writing to avoid repetitions in consecutive sentences. For example, if we talk about “Maria’s accomplishments” in one sentence, it is better to use “her achievements” in the second one. In technical correspondence it can lead to confusion because “accomplishments” and “achievements” may have some differences in meaning. Here is a real example from quality audit report: “Process XYZ Suggestions: the Process XYZ was very good, but the following issues were discussed afterwards”. In this example a quality auditor used words “issue” and “suggestions” interchangeably. However, from the users’ perspectives an issue must be addressed while a suggestion can be considered. To add more confusion, the overall mark was “very good”.

A quote often attributed to Mark Twain states, “Sorry about the long letter, I didn't have time to write a short one”. We value the reader’s time and try to be as concise as possible. We try to use descriptive words instead of descriptive paragraphs. E x amples: More practical tips in our best selling training course Audit Interview: Learn Journalists' Secrets . 10% off Registration Fees in July 2013.

It is said that “a goal well set is half way achieved”. There is no better way to set up a goal than to describe it in details. It can be a picture of what we want or conversely, what we don’t want to achieve as an outcome. Using an example from risk management practices, it is not as important to describe what can go wrong, but what our Plan B is. In other words, keep focus on solutions but not on problems and on expectations but not on precautions.  E x amples: