Unlearning to Write

How School Habits Sabotage Professional Writing

Most Army writers write as Soldiers the way they learned to write as students. Unfortunately, while students learn useful academic writing skills, they also pick up bad habits that sabotage their professional writing. These habits include mistaking correct writing for good writing, writing what they know instead of creating value, and writing more rather than better. Army writers must break these habits to write successfully as professionals.

Correct ≠ Good

The first bad habit is conflating correct writing with good writing. School rewards correct writing. Teachers require students to follow the rules—grammar, spelling, punctuation, and so on. Students who follow the rules earn high grades. It’s easy to see how students come to believe correctness is what makes writing good.

Professional writers, however, must do more than follow the rules. To be sure, good professional writing respects the conventions of standard written English. But it must also be well-organized and logical, guiding the reader from one idea to the next. Professional writing must be clear—uncluttered and easy to read and understand. Most importantly, professional writing must be valuable to other professionals (more on value below).

To break this habit, focus on rewriting. Rewriting is the work writers do after the first draft. It’s not just proofreading to fix errors. That’s important, but it comes last. Rewriting includes revising to strengthen arguments and improve organization, and editing it to make the writing clear. It’s only after revising and editing a draft that writers should proofread for errors.

Creating Value

The second bad habit students learn is that the purpose of writing is to tell others what they think. Students often write to show teachers they’ve learned the course material. The writing reveals what’s in the student’s head, and if it’s the right stuff (and enough of it), they earn a high grade.

In the professional world, however, no one cares about what you know. Instead, professionals care if you can use your knowledge to create value by contributing to the profession. Professionals write to debate important ideas. Valuable professional writing contributes to and advances these debates. Skilled writers situate their arguments in broader professional discussions.

To drop this habit, focus on your article’s value proposition. Early in your article, explain the problem, why it’s important, and how the article illuminates or solves it. In other words, explain why the reader will find the article useful. The value proposition links the article’s main idea to a broader professional debate. It also makes readers care and want to read more.

More ≠ Better

The final bad habit students learn in school is that more is better. As mentioned above, when writing to show what you know, it’s often better to make the writing as long as possible. Teachers frequently assign minimum page counts; students often respond by adding “fluff” to make the paper longer, such as unnecessary background information, extra details, or needlessly dense language.

Professionals, however, are busy and have no time for “fluff.”   Good professional writing respects the reader’s time by getting straight to the point. It includes only the necessary information to advance its argument and nothing more. Strong professional writers avoid wordy, dense language and prefer clear, simple, and concise writing.

Break this habit by rewriting. During revision, murder your darlings by removing ruthlessly any phrase, paragraph, or passage that does not advance the main idea. During editing, prune your writing to make it as clear and concise as possible. Cut extra words and sentences and simplify those that remain.

Writing Beyond the Basics

Although school teaches students the writing basics, professional writing requires a different approach. It’s not enough to express what’s in your head using grammatically correct prose. Professional writing must be clear, well-organized, and valuable. It respects other professionals’ time while advancing professional debates. Breaking bad student writing will help Army writers contribute to the profession.