Successful business writing goes far beyond technology - front lines

In our high-tech world, it's hard to remember when business writing was for many of us mostly a process of hunting and pecking on a manual typewriter, with carbons to provide archival copies and frequent use of correction fluid to cover mistakes.

Those days are long gone, of course, but as Edwin Powell notes in his article on business writing, the advent of increasingly powerful word processors, complete with spell-checkers and built-in style guides, has not made effective business writing any less of a challenge.

The old cliche of "garbage in, garbage out" applies particularly well to business writing-today's technology may make it vastly easier to put together a proposal or draft a memo, but that's no guarantee the content or format will be any better than it might have been in pre-computer days.

When it comes to business writing, not too surprisingly, getting it right has far more to do with the old-fashioned virtues of hard work and practice, professional knowledge and experience, and common sense than anything else.

Certainly, word processing software has helped cut down the time most of us spend on business writing these days, and the Internet has made valuable writing resources more easily accessible than they used to be. But making the most of those resources to improve the overall quality of your writing calls for skills far beyond the capabilities of even the most powerful computer.

Those skills are a large part of what make office professionals professional. And so far, at least, we've seen no evidence that technology is able to replicate these writing skills in any meaningful way. That's good news for most of our readers from a job security standpoint, but more importantly it underscores a key element of office life today--no matter how powerful or cost-effective equipment may be, the most important factor determining the overall productivity of any office depends on the professionals tutoring it.

At OfficeSOLUTIONS, we see our primary mission as offering you guidance and advice to help you keep your office running smoothly, and we hope you'll find our magazine a valuable resource in this regard.

On a related note, we're delighted to welcome Scott Cullen back to the OfficeSOLUTIONS team as managing editor. Scott is a veteran business journalist who has covered "all things office" for more than 15 years and worked in several editorial capacities on our magazine during that time.

Scott brings to his new role an extensive knowledge base on the industry, particularly on office technology and office equipment issues, and we're looking forward to seeing both his industry expertise and considerable skills as a business journalist reflected in our pages going forward. We know you'll find what Scott has to say and how he says it both entertaining and informative. If you've any suggestions on ways to make OfficeSOLUTIONS an even more valuable resource for today's office professional, we'd love to hear them. just drop Scott a note at scullen@os-od.com.

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