How Good Grammar Progresses Your Career

Today’s workplace and business landscape have become competitive, and being able to communicate clearly and effectively gives you an edge over other competitors in the workplace. It is not enough to only be able to write clearly, but it has become essential to have good writing skills, which may be the factor that sets you apart at every stage of your career. It can even be a deciding key factor in future promotions.

Think about it; your writing is the first introduction of yourself to the working world, starting from your resume all the way to simple daily memos, work emails, and more complicated proposals and project reports. People will start identifying you by how you write and form their impressions about your competence at work. If you start out by applying for a position with a resume filled with typos or spelling mistakes, managers who are looking to hire will interpret these errors as signs of lack of language skills or laziness on your part. If you can’t produce documents that are written correctly and error-free, how will you be able to perform the job you are applying for effectively?

Text is not allowed

While today’s social media platforms and outlets have become fairly relaxed in letting go of the strict grammar requirements and rely on casual written language, abbreviations, and we have learned to accept the tendencies of improper communication, this does not replace the need to have proper grammar skills in the workplace.

This is especially the case for employees who are required to produce significant amounts of written data regularly. Whether you are in an administrative role that requires a high level of professional writing or a self-employed blogger, writing about your favorite topics, or any role in-between, you need to master proper grammar in order to progress in your career.

Career advancement

It is quite obvious why use of proper grammar would be directly related to career success and advancement. When managers see that you are taking the time to formulate proper sentences and that you proofread your work, it shows you have great attention to detail. People who care about their writing skills and accuracy in the work they produce and know-how to structure a correct sentence are seen as having critical thinking skills, attention to detail, intellectual aptitude, and complex problem-solving skills.

Employees who are able to use correct grammar are deemed to be better at their jobs and have a higher rate of opportunities presented to them because their writing reflects their professional capability that doesn’t go unnoticed by managers and clients alike, which in turn can be one of the factors that lead to a promotion or salary increase in the future.

Improving your grammar

There are several ways to help you practice your writing and foolproof your grammar usage. Even if you are currently in the workforce and have been writing for many years, everyone has the space to improve in that area.

One of the most basic ways is to proofread your work more than once. This is the first step towards ensuring that your writing is impeccable. You have to make proofreading a habit because no matter how confident you are in what you have written, mistakes happen to even the most experienced writers. To help you through, there are online tools that can spell-check and fix grammar, and some are even able to check the sentence structure and suggest alternatives. If you have a habit of mixing your possessives or writing complex sentences, SelfDevelopmentSecrets.com suggests using grammar checkers whenever unsure. There’s a lot of online review if you need to decide which one to use as well.

Alongside making use of online grammar tools, regular practice on sharpening your writing skills is a must. There are many typical mistakes that we tend to make when writing. A simple search will list out the most common errors we make in our everyday correspondence. Take the time to do a little research and start practicing how to avoid making these mistakes.

As an example, one of the mistakes people often fall for, regardless of educational backgrounds and levels, is not using possessives correctly. Knowing the difference between when and how to use they’re vs. their and you’re vs. your can make the biggest difference in your writing. These mistakes are the first that others pick up on and can give an image of carelessness and poor quality to the overall written piece. The more you practice, the easier it will be to produce correct communication. Whether it’s a budgeting report or a blog article or even a simple email you are sending to your coworkers, focus on pinpointing your grammatical tendencies and fix them on the spot.

Jargon out the window

Another way to help you practice is to minimize the use of jargon. Unless your job requires you to speak in very specific and field related subject matter, try to keep all your correspondence and writing as clear and clean as possible. Sometimes poor grammar is a by-product of the excessive use of jargon and informal writing. Try to go back to generic writing and focus on correct punctuation and sentence structure. And if you do happen to use abbreviations to save space, spell it out the first time you use it in your resume, cover letter, email, etc.

Your writing skills are a reflection of your work skills and competency. It is part of the impression that you leave with your clients and fellow employees. It is assumed that how you write is related to how you do everything else. Future managers and clients will take notice of your written work when assessing your aptitude for open positions. This is one of the factors that will allow you to stand out compared to other people at work and help you progress your career further. While not everyone is a talented writer, everyone can write correctly and produce error-free work, with the use of the available online tools and making proofreading a usual thing to do.