3 (More!) Writing Mistakes You’re (Probably!) Making Now

Are your writing habits making your life easier — or getting in your way?

If you’d like to write better, easier and faster, then see whether you’re making these mistakes in your writing process:

1. Do you invest your writing time…

…Where it does you the least good?

To Write Better, Easier and Faster, experts say, break the writing process into these three steps:

• Prewrite: Get ready to write. This is where you develop your theme, organize your message and do your research.
• Write: If you’re writing right, then this part of the process should put you in a state of flow. You’ll feel as if your fingers can’t keep up with the message, which is already fully formed in your head and can’t wait to get onto the page.
• Rewrite: Here’s where you fix the grammar, punctuation and spelling — and make sure your message hits your targeted readability score.

To get the biggest return on your writing investment, spend most of your time and effort prewriting, a medium amount freewriting, and the least amount of time rewriting. Most people do the reverse.

👉 Do you have a writing process that saves you time and energy and puts you in a state of flow? If not, you may need to rethink the way you write.

2. Are you doing AI wrong?

Researchers at Stanford University broke out tasks for 950 occupations. They did not find a single instance where AI could handle a job from beginning to end.

Are you assigning a robot to write your news release? Not only is that bad for your career, but you’ll probably also wind up with an ineffective release.

“Those who use AI to write whole articles have seen mediocre results and some embarrassing flops,” reports Ina Fried in Axios AI+. “Quietly, though, newsrooms have found AI to be adept at more narrow tasks, such as writing headlines or captions.”

So think smaller: Make AI your editorial assistant, handling small tasks like finding a statistic or coming up with a metaphor. And keep your own job as editorial director of your own assignments.

In addition to thinking smaller, you may also want to think bigger. Communications professionals are using AI to predict how their audiences will respond to messaging and when narratives might go awry, according to Muck Rack.

So use AI to get to know your audience better. I spend plenty of time talking to Perplexity about what’s keeping marketing and PR leaders up at night.

👉 Have you outsourced your writing to a robot? If so, then you may want to rethink how you use AI.

3. Have you failed to get a writing reboot…

…since you left undergraduate school?

• Some PR pros still use a news release format that’s 118 years old. Ivy Lee invented the traditional release in 1906. Everything’s changed since then. Are you still using the same tired approach?
• Some communicators still use a writing structure that was invented for the telegraph wire. The inverted pyramid was first used during the Civil War. It’s been proven in the lab, again and again, not to work with humans. Are you still using it?
• Everything’s changing — new communication channels, higher levels of information overload, AI, global pandemics, wars, crazy weather, recessions. Some PR pros have upgraded their hairstyles more often than they’ve upgraded their writing skills.

👉 Are you still doing things the way you’ve always done them? Is it time for a writing reboot?

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Ann Wylie works with communicators who want to reach more readers and with organizations that want to get the word out. Don’t miss a single tip: Sign up for Ann’s email newsletter here. Check out Ann’s last PRsay post, 4 Writing Mistakes You’re (Probably!) Making Now.

Copyright © 2024 Ann Wylie. All rights reserved.

[Illustration credit: andrii symonenko]