Page 242 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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10

Communication: Written English

After reading this chapter, you will be familiar with:
• Aspects of writing as a communication skill
• Basics of grammar
• Vocabulary building and punctuation as sub-skills of writing as a communication
skill
• The use of these sub-skills to structure academic writing

INTRODUCTION TO WRITING AS A COMMUNICATION SKILL

‘Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact
man’, opined Francis Bacon in his famous essay entitled Of Studies. This
axiom is indeed the motto currently. In the Internet era today when words
rule the virtual space as well, the Hamlet like exasperation—‘words! words!
words!’—is no longer valid. In fact, your writing skills speak a lot about you
these days.

Defining Writing
In other words, despite the entire contemporary visual and/or oral-aural
distractions-knowing how to write and how to write well is the need of the
hour, howeverboring and dull the staid skill may appear.
Apparently writing may appear ‘dull’ and/or difficult because, unlike
speaking or listening (the skills you are to learn more about in the next
chapter), it is not an innate or natural skill. Speaking or listening is inborn
to the human species excluding those who are hearing disabled. In the
case of the rest of us, as we grow older, we merely need to refine these
skills. Writing, on the contrary, is a skill that is not inborn. We need to
consciously learn it, beginning with the alphabet and proceeding through
orthography, vocabulary, semantics, and syntax, till we finally reach the

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