Ten Things I Learned After Being a Judge That Can Improve Your Writing

I wrote back in December that I was chosen to be a judge for the 2009-2010 STC Technical Communication Competition. It’s a competition where different organizations and government agencies submit their best work to be judged. There are three different awards: Distinguished, Excellence, and Merit. The pieces of work awarded “Distinguished” usually go on to the International competition.

It was my first time, so I was excited. This past Saturday, I woke up early and headed to the STC Consensus Meeting where the other two judges in my group and I got together to discuss our scores and analysis of the five reports we were judging.

Here are the ten things that I learned that will help improve your (and my) writing:

1. You can always learn more – I learned so much from analyzing the report and the other judges’ comments. There were things, like image clarity and tone that I had not been paying as much attention to. However, after having to analyze and scrutinize someone else’s report, I realized that I need to start.
2. Think about scope, purpose, and audience – One of the problems that all the reports seemed to have was that they never defined the scope, purpose, and/or audience that the report was intended for. This caused confusion from us (the judges) on many other areas due to this lack of defining. Definitely define the scope, purpose, and audience early in the beginning, so that your readers are later on not confused on your intent.
3. Copyediting is vital – Try to edit your piece of work at least a couple of times before you go into production. There were issues with grammar, spelling, pagination, etc. that resulted in issues in readability and usability. It’s better to have a second pair of eyes do the editing instead of yourself. You are so used to how your document looks like that you might miss something.
4. Be consistent – Consistency was something that a couple of the reports were missing. Try to keep a consistent writing style and tone throughout your document.
5. Work on visual design – For a document, such as a report, that is going to be read by many people, visual design is important. You should ensure that all the images are clear, the color scheme works, and that it is pleasing to your readers’ eyes.
6. Learn about typography – Typography is something that people usually miss, but can make a document a success. AllGraphicDesigns has a compilation of different typography guides that can help.
7. Formatting helps – Ensure that your formatting and organization isn’t off. There was one report that had different pages in the Table of the Contents than in the actual report. Big No No. Definitely ensure that these are fine before you print a bunch of them.
8. Acronyms – I am very finicky about acronyms. People usually don’t define them properly, and it leaves me scrambling to figure out what this or that acronym means. If you are only using a term once, then you don’t need to use an acronym. Just spell it out. If you are, define it the first time you are using it, and then use the acronym afterwards. An acronym list is always a great thing to add to a document because if you have tons of acronyms, this can be a handy guide to readers.
9. Personal preference – I realized that there are things that I preferred to see, but that it wasn’t set in stone that you had to do. Therefore, you should always have an open mind.
10. Achieve what you want to convey – The question you should always ask yourself before publishing your document is if it achieved the message that you wanted to convey. If you have to ask yourself that question throughout the document, you might want to revise it.

Five Tips On How to Handle Rude Comments On Your Blog Posts

You spend all of your time researching and writing a blog post. After it’s posted, you smile because it’s just as you had envisioned it. All of a sudden, someone posts some rude comment that makes you second guess what you wrote or even your credibility. If he/she disagreed with you, then you wouldn’t be so taken aback. However, he/she decides to insult you to get his/her point across. If you have ever seen “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back,” you will remember when they traveled all over the country to pay a nice visit to everyone who posted some not-so-nice things about them on different web forums.

When you see that comment staring you in the face, that is how you want to react. You want to turn into the Hulk and go vigilante on these hecklers. In reality, you can’t behave that way. Here are some tips to rise above the negativity:

1. Take a deep breath and step away from the computer - Your gut reaction is to say some smart remark back to the commentater. However, nothing will be accomplished except giving the impression of immaturity and unprofessionalism. When you read the comment, turn off the computer and calm down before returning to it.

2. Realize that not everyone will love you or your post – We are not pod people, so we will not all like the same things. Even if the person is overly rude, just accept that you can agree to disagree, and that not everyone will feel the same about your post.

3. If you can, send a copy of your response to a friend – Sometimes it’s better to have an outsider read your response before you hit the Submit button. When I have done that, people have seen things that I didn’t think about because I was wrapped in my emotion. It will also calm you down because you will usually take a step back.

4. Don’t feel like you have to defend yourself but to an extent – You may want to defend yourself, but usually the person will already be set in his/her ways, so anything you say will not change his/her mind. Just keep to the facts.

5. Acknowledge the commentator’s feelings and move on - Sometimes it’s better to acknowledge what they wrote without spouting any negative comment and leaving it at that. You might feel like it’s a copout, but then you will feel better because you didn’t get down to that person’s level.

It’s hard, but after awhile, you will not even be as affected with the rude comments as before.

Photo Detail: Jay and Slient Bob, originally uploaded by theleetgeeks.