Mandy Pearse, FCIPR, is our CPD trainer for communications courses. Mandy is a former local authority Head of Communications and PR consultant. She is a Chartered PR professional and Chartered Marketer.
When we write emails, letters, policies, articles, or reports, we always want to think about our audience. There is no substitute for considering what our audience needs to know and planning how best to convey that information. Few of us can just put all our thoughts onto paper and have it well written, we all usually need to craft our text. Luckily there are editing tools we can use to help us with this process.
A basic but essential is to use the built-in tools already provided by Microsoft, Google or Apple. All these programs in their word processor contain tools to check spelling, grammar, word count, and readability. It's always important to ensure that if you are writing for a UK audience you have the English set to United Kingdom, not United States.
However, the grammar checker in most word processors will show you what is wrong but not always the best way to put the problem right. A great way to improve your Grammar is to use a tool like Grammarly. This tool will examine your copy and colour-code your sentences for review. You can then make changes and see how the sentences improve. Using this regularly helps you avoid your common mistakes.
Having got our spelling right, our grammar fixed and using simple words one final thing we might look at is pacing. A tool like Hemingway takes our writing and then imagines if the author Ernest Hemingway has written it. This can often improve the pacing.
Alternative tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI) like Chat GPT, Claude are developing fast. Often these tools are being built into software we already use such as Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word, Google Gemini and Apple's forthcoming AI.
Development makes these tools better but please always check the Privacy Policy of the application before you use them for editing any of your documents.
They can certainly help tidy up your writing, but you will need to be very careful what you share because unfortunately hackers and scammers currently are abusing these innovative tools.
Keep in mind that you will still need to practice your written communication and focus on your audience. Learning how to tell your story is at the heart of good writing and these new tools will only assist you but will not do all the work for you.
If you would like to develop your written communication skills in general and also in planning context, you can join us for one of our upcoming online CPD masterclasses I will lead. Please search for the next dates in the RTPI Training Calendar.
- Written communication
- Report writing skills for planners
