Professional Style

Professional Style Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Introduction • Last week, we talked about the unique environment of government communication. • Two guiding concepts: • Transparency • Openness • Information in the government’s possession is presumed to be public information, unless made confidential by law. • Goverments have a responsibility to provide the public with clear and informative communication. • This week, our focus is on something more basic: writing in a professional style. • I emphasize this because writing on behalf of the government is a very serious activity, whether it is the United States or a tiny town with population of 50 people.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Introduction • Of course, all professional writing is serious. When you write for a company or other organization, your supervisor will expect your document to be neat and organized. • The quality of a company’s written product affects its reputation and public’s perception of the company. • This also applies in the context of government writing. Not only are you represeting your entity to the public. • In many cases your document is an expression of sovereign power • the power of the state over persons and things. • It is a very serious responsibility that should be exercised with a good deal of care and prudence. • This mindset should inform your communication style.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Professional Style • This doesn’t mean that government communicaiton should be stuffy, overly-formal, or bombastic. • Rather it is about being professional: adopting a tone and attention to detail that shows you have given the matter your serious attention. • “Professional style” is a term we are going to use to describe the style of writing used in professional, business, and public-policy situations.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Professional Style • All writing to and from the government is written in a professional style. • Even if what you are writing doesn’t feel very important or formal, you are writing on behalf of the sovereign. • Even if you are a lowly clerk in some obscure government office. • Even if you are writing a routine letter which your office sends out hundreds of time per month. • Writing in a professional style is important for all types of writing we talk about this semester.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Professional Style: Some General Points • Professional style requires a higher level of formality than most people are accustomed to. • We live in an age of informal communication: • email • Twitter • Facebook • Because informality is the norm, you have to consciously adopt a more formal tone in professional writing. Almost like you are speaking another language.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Professional Style: Some General Points • Professional style also matters because of the Public Information Act. • If you work for the government, you have to imagine your emails displayed on a billboard over Interstate 35. • Would you be embarresed?

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Some Elements of Professional Style We are going to talk about four elements of professional style: • Maintain a professional tone. • Avoid laying blame unless you must. • Focus on facts, not assumptions or opinions. • Learn the art of effective briefing.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Professional Tone • Professional tone means a level of formality and professional distance. • Talk about people by using Mr. or Ms. rather than their first name or nickname. (Exception of inter-office communications and email). • First person is usually ok. • Keep personal information to a minimum for your own protection. Assume that whatever you are writing is open to the public. • Always keep it polite. • Never put anything down in writing that you would want to take back later. You can’t! • Avoid slang on one hand and unnecessarily stuffy words on the other. • No: “What’s up?” • No: “What is the subject-matter of this inquiry?” • Ok: “Whatis this about?”

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Professional Tone • Resist the temptation to • Say anything sarcastic • Make any jokes, especially about anyone • Say anything crude or in poor taste • Adopt shorthand: incomplete sentences, typos, texting speak. • Email is generally understod to be a less formal medium than a business letter. So you can get away with things like incomplete sentences in email. • But remember, email is a permanent record with your name attached to it. You will be judged by your style and tone.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Professional Tone • Suppose the following email were retrieved from archives three years after it was written because the company was the subject of an investigation. • The email was read by the writer’s boss and was released to the press. • How might the author and his company be judged by this document three years later?

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Avoid Laying Blame • This is another tip for your own protection. • Police maxim: Anything you say can be used against you. • Don’t be overly paranoid, but there is some truth to this. • Think very hard about creating a document that expresses your opinion on fault. • Find ways to address a problem without throwing jabs at those you believe are responsible. • Usually, assigning blame does not help solve the issue. It is more about making the writer feel better. • Of course there will be situations where you have to assign blame. My advice is simply to try to avoid it whenever you can. And when you must, make sure you have the facts to back you up. • Speaking of facts …

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Focus on Facts • As a general rule, professional writing is about facts and what conclusions should be drawn from those facts. • Most everything you will write in a professional context will boil down to these two concepts. • “Facts” as opposed to the writer’s own personal feelings on the subject. Thus, professional writers must resist the urge to editorialize in their writing. • This is especially true in the public-policy or business context. • If you are writing under a government or business letterhead, you are speaking for that organization. • Whatever you say will be attributed to it. • Thus, professional writers must filter their writing through a “work persona” who doesn’t express the same views as the person their friends or family knows. Skilled professional writers learn how to take on multiple personalities.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Focus on Facts • Consider this situation: • Sue is an employee of BP. • BP was the operator of the notorious Deepwater Horizon oil rig. • In April 2010, an explosion on Deepwater Horizon resulted in an enormous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the loss of several lives. • BP fell under intense public scorn. Many people believe that the spill was caused by BP’s negligent operations. • Sue is part of the environmental compliance team at BP and must correspond with the Federal Minerals Management Agency, Coast Guard, and other governmental entities on a regular basis.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Focus on Facts • Even though she is a BP employee, Sue personally dislikes BP and thinks the spill could have been prevented. • Sue’s environmental team has received a letter from the Coast Guard requesting documents related to operations on another oil rig called the Deepwater Nautilus. Sue is responsible for responding to this request. • In her response, Sue concludes with the following comment:

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Focus on Facts • What do you think? • Do you think Sue could get into hot water over these comments? • Do you think it is fair? • Is she being paid to express her opinions about the spill? • Shouldn’t Sue’s bosses at BP be able to control the views expressed by the company? • Would this comment be appropriate to a friend written with her private email address?

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Focus on Facts • Focusing on facts also means writing in a way that avoids making assumptions. • An assumption is a conclusion you make without having the facts to back you up. This is especially important in investigative writing. • Government agencies often write investigation reports. The purpose of these documents is to collect and record facts and conclusions. • These documents are important because they can become evidence in a trial. Millions of dollars may hang in the balance. • We will talk more about investigative-report writing later in the semester. • Investigators must be very careful to report on only those matters they observed rather than assumptions. • Why? Assumptions are sometimes wrong. Thus, they can undermine a writer’s credibility and can be misleading.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Focus on Facts • Paul is an investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Paul inspects commercial aircraft to ensure that the airlines are complying with FAA’s safety regulations. Paul records his findings in investigation reports. These reports cover a variety of checks Paul performs on each aircraft. • Some of the items Paul checks include the landing gear tire pressure, the integrity of fuel and hydraulic lines, window and door seals, and the integrity of the aircraft body. • On one occasion, Paul was assigned to inspect twenty aircraft in one day. Because he was in a hurry, Paul took some shortcuts that, in his mind, were entirely sensible and justified. • For example, Paul observed several “fresh drops” of fuel in the area of the fuel lines on one aircraft. He didn’t have time to crawl into the space with a flashlight to see if the drips were actually coming from the line. Paul thought a leaking fuel line was the only possible explanation for the presence of fuel outside the fuel lines. • Thus, Paul recorded a violation of FAA rules for leaking fuel lines.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Focus on Facts • As a result of the violations Paul recorded, the FAA initiated an enforcement action against the airline and sought a substantial fine. Leaking fuel lines are considered a major violation of aircraft safety rules. • The airline denied that there was any leak on this aircraft. The FAA agreed to re-inspect the aircraft with safety personnel from the airline. • When investigators actually looked at the suspect fuel line and tested it, they found no leaks. • It turns out that the “fresh drops” near the lines were a result of refueling the plane. As the fill hose was disconnected, some excess fuel escaped from the hose and left the drops around the fuel fill port. • This occurred just prior to the investigator's arrival.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Focus on Facts • Moral of the story? • The investigator made an assumption about what he was seeing rather than relying on observations. • His assumption caused the FAA to pursue an frivolous enforcement action against the airline. • Thus, time was wasted and the FAA looks bad.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Learn the art of effective briefing • Managers and decision-makers in both government and private industry have the difficult job of making decisions based on complicated or confusing matters. • Often these issues are tangled up in thousands of pages of documents. • Thus, there is a need for someone to make sense of all this information and condense it into a more digestable form. • This is the art of briefing. • Briefing means taking a long document and providing a concise summary that focuses on the relevant facts and conclusions. • What facts and conclusion are “relevant” depends on the situation and audience.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Learn the art of effective briefing • People who work in professional settings have to write some form of briefing all the time. • Sometimes these are very informally done in an email. Sometimes they appear as more formal reports or “briefs.” • The purpose is often to give a decision-maker the essential information they need to make a decision. • There is an art to this. • You have to learn to sift though, in some cases, mostly irrelevant information and find the facts that matter to your audience. And you should present them in a narrative fashion. • You have to understand and concisely explain technical concepts that are involved (unless you are sure your audience already understands them). • You must decide how much background information is necessary to provide a coherent mental picture of the situation.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Finding Facts that Matter • It is difficult to understand a complicated situation through a dry recitation of facts or a chronology. • The mind has trouble connecting a series of seemingly unrelated facts. • Thus, good briefs extract relevant facts and weave them into something that resembles a story. • I don’t mean telling it as a gripping thriller novel. • Rather, employ stratigies like these: • Make the focus of your story people or other actors, rather than events. Stories are about people doing things. Also, the actors and actions usually convey the essential meaning of sentences. • Use transitions that show relationships. “He did this. As a result, that happened.” • Don’t write a chrononlogy: “On January 2, 2010, this happened. On March 3, 2010, that happened. …” • But do keep events in chronological order unless there is a good reason to jump ahead or go back.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Finding Facts that Matter • In order to make your brief meaningful and concise, you must focus on relevant facts. Not every fact is relevant. • We talked about the importance of audience in professional writing last week. Here is a clear example. • Not everyone is interested in the whole story. In fact, with very complicated events, there is probably nobody that is truly interested in every detail. • Imagine all the possible details one could preserve about some huge event like 9/11. What would you have to include in order to create truly comprehensive telling of what happened? • Background of the hijackers? • Air traffic control on that day? • Physics of how the planes caused the buildings to collapse? • The personal stories of the thousands of families affected? • The difficulties faced by the New York City government in cleaning up streets? • Others?

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Finding Facts that Matter • The point is that different audiences may care about only one or two aspects of a very complicated, detail-rich event. • Be sensitive to this. Tailor your story to your audience. This is where the work comes in. The decision-makers want someone to screen volumes of information for the information they need. • Example: • The following document is a timeline of events from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 (from offshore-technology.com.) • Suppose you are briefing your boss on this event. You work for an environmental engineering firm hired to perform clean-up activities. • In order to prepare a response crew, your company needs to know something about the volume of oil spilled. • Your boss wants you to give a brief run-down of the spill, focusing on this issue. • Which of these facts are relevant to the issue of how much oil was released?

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Explain Technical Concepts • Reviewing technical information to prepare a summary or brief usually involves technical terms or concepts. • In some case, the audience for your brief is already well aware of these concepts and doesn’t need them explained. • But in many cases, the technical issue will be novel or unfamiliar. In that case, your challenge is to proivde a very clear and concise explanation. • Consider these examples: • You are summerizing documents that refer to a chemical compound called molybedum oxide. You may need to explain what this is. • You are summerizing a document about an accident on a piece of equipment used in oil-drilling operations called a mud tank. What is this?

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Explain Technical Concepts • It is helpful to explain technical or obscure concepts even if they are not central to your story. If there is an un-explained object or concept in your story, it might raise questions or leave the reader feeling like they don’t really understand the situation. • You don’t need to write a treatise on the subject, or pretend to be an expert. • But you might have to do a little research if the document you are summarizing doesn’t provide enough detail. • In such cases, you might need to include a caviat that to the best of your knowledge, or from your quick research, the thing is … • If the decision-maker thinks more research is warranted, they can proceed accordingly. • For example, consider the accident involving the mud tank. Your brief of the accident might be concerned primarily with the cost of the accident or the type of injuries that resulted. But most readers will instinctively want some kind of bare-bones explanation of what a mud tank is.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 Provide Relevant Background Information • Another important part of the art of writing a brief is knowing how much background information to provide. • This, of course, depends on your circumstances. • In some cases, you are reporting on a familiar situation. Less background information may be necessary. The audience might already know the basic players, rules, or circumstances involved. • But if the situation is novel, you might have to back up quite a bit to provide a sense of the “big picture.” • This might involve descibing who the actors in the story are or the rules that generally apply to the situation. • The “art” is developing a feel for how much background is necessary in any given situation.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 An Example • Suppose you are back with the mud tank accident. You are briefing your boss on an accident on an oil rig that occurred when a worker slipped and fell off of a mud tank. • In this case, your audience has no idea what a mud tank is. • But it’s not critical for your brief. It doesn’t involve the type of injury or the cost of the accident. • In this case, it might be helpful to provide at least a basic explanation so that the reader can see a rational connection between this device and the activity going on that day. • If the reader sees that a mud tank is critical to a drilling operation, then it make sense that there was one in operation at this site.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 An Example • A “mud tank” is used at a drilling operation to store a mixture of mud and water that is injected into the well. • The mixture keeps the drill bit from overheating as it grinds through earth and rock, and it also carries away the material that the drill bill removes. • The mixture is continually recycled as it is pumped down into the drill hole and is pumped to the surface. • Assume for the purpose of this example, that these tanks are usually very slippery and difficult to work on.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 An Example • FYI … This is a mud tank.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 An Example • So how could one incorporate this basic information into a brief on the accident to explain the technical concept?

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 An Example

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 An Example • Do you see how the background details provide a rational connection between the type of equipment at issue and the accident? • What about more background information? • Suppose the audience is unfamiliar with this company’s operation.

Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012 An Example

Professional Style