A Very Short History of Professional Writing

Some of the oldest examples of writing, such as that found in the above clay tablet, is professional writing. Ancient Sumerians used these tablets to record inventories of produce and grains and client accounts. Since then, professional writing has evolved technologically even while the core functions – accounting, correspondence, and communicating information – have largely remained unchanged. The printing press, for example, allowed writers to distribute information to a wider audience which led to advertising as well as copyright laws (Osei-Hwere & Osei-Hwere).

Computational technologies have had seismic impacts on the craft of professional writing. Desktop publishing and word processing software promoted new skills in design and layout. The commercialization of the internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s created a need for writers versed in “search engine optimization” and HTML to populate the rapidly expanding digital landscape of the web. Harnessing the “World Wide Web” to achieve almost immediate delivery and reception, “electronic mail” quickly became the primary mode of professional communication.

It wasn’t long before the smartphone, a powerful pocket-sized computer with similar multimedia capabilities, became the preferred computational device for many. Mobile devices and “short message service” (SMS) functions further increased the speed with which people may communicate. Social media benefited from the widespread adoption of mobile devices, empowering users to compose, create, and publish to the world with a few finger flicks.

Cloud-based services such as Microsoft’s Office 365 and Google Workplace have also improved collaboration. These productivity platforms include all the tools needed to create slide decks, spreadsheets, and documents, as well as share them with coworkers without ever leaving your desk.

In the autumn of 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a tool that automatically creates human-quality writing using simple requests. Since then, many platforms we already use, such as Google and Microsoft, have added generative text tools as functions. With minimal effort, a user can compose a professional-looking email response, report, and presentation slides.

Throughout this remarkable period of human innovation, professional writing has not only remained important but has emerged as one of the most high-demand skills by employers of all fields: even with the automation of everyday writing tasks, writers are still needed to review, edit, and “humanize” written content. Intrapersonal communications in the workplace still rely on archaic genres like memos and emails to function yet today’s professionals must also be comfortable with basic programming concepts, information visualization, social media, and other concepts that were once the domain of others.

Today’s reality is that those “others” will likely be YOU. According to a recent report published by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (2019), there are very few in-house professional writers. This means that accountants are now writing their own disengagement letters, wealth managers are responsible for writing out plans for clients, and managers write supply chain policies. Human resources personnel must demonstrate sharp writing skills and apply those to presentations, reports, and many other formats for various audiences. For marketers, stylistic writing is a crucial component in a skillset that includes multimedia asset management and analytical skills.

The business professional is – more than anything else – a professional writer.

It is precisely because writing is such a crucial skill that global corporations like Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others have poured billions into developing writing tools that help professionals write better. Spell-checkers and auto-complete functions, now built into writing services like Microsoft Word and Google Docs, have eliminated much (though not all!) of our worry over spelling and grammar. Other tools like Grammarly help us polish our writing to be as clear as possible. At the time of this writing, ChatGPT still has an uncertain impact on the professional realms.

Yet writing consistently remains the professional skill employers cite as one of the most sorely lacking workplace skills. In their 2022 report, “The State of Business Communication,” Grammarly reported that a staggering $1.2 trillion is lost each year by American businesses because of poor communication ( p. 4). Although we would be wise to dig deeper into these numbers (poor writing is Grammarly’s bread and butter!), we would be hard-pressed to find a professional that doesn’t agree with the sentiment. A survey conducted by business writer Josh Bernoff (2016) revealed that over 80% of respondents implicated poor writing as a key inefficiency (p. 18). According to Bernoff, the reasons for this could be boiled down to poor training, the elimination of professional editors from most workplaces, and the distractions that come with reading on screens.

Although we can’t do away with screen-reading (this is a digital resource after all), we can certainly do our best to develop our writing and editing skills. Our focus here is on clear, concise, and precise writing that clearly communicates your message to the reader. Although writing for marketing can be more evocative and compelling, the principles are the same.