College writing courses offer more practical guidance than ever, but they still fall short of business-and-industry needs. Missing in the main are writing mechanics tailored for communicating the who, whats, and whys involved in running an organization. A writing course aimed at reducing, if not closing, that gap has been in existance for some time now. Dealing with writing to prescribe, persuade or report, it is structured around the proper selection and arrangement of both what must be stated and the words with which to state it, and then stating it with reader ease. This article details the components within that structure.

Business and industry spends a great deal of time and money in standardizing office and shop methods, all to promote efficient operations. Yet they give little—if any—thought to one pervasive operation that wastes an unfathomable amount of time and money: written communication. They allow almost any writing approach, as long as something is written. Why? … because they believe that to know how to write an English essay is to know how to communicate on the job. Nothing is further from the truth. Writing in business and industry requires a particular philosophy as well as special writing mechanics that, when combined and standardized, promote efficient communication. This article advances such a philosophy—and some basic writing mechanics—for that standardization.

People programming, the design and documentation of administrative systems for use as a management tool, has been on the rise for some time now, but not so the quality. That seems to remain at a low level. Not only do systems designers still take too much time to design, but the document that they finally do publish is barely communicative. Quality in this case is paradoxical: it is sorely needed, yet it cannot be measured. Grumman, however, solved the problem by taking the approach of building quality into the design effort, providing writing mechanics to do so. Neither the approach nor the mechanics were easy to specify. A philosophy to establish the basics and define the terms was first in order. The mechanics were developed from that philosophy. The results were more than anticipated because, in three years' use, the mechanics have not yet failed to cope with the many systems writing requirements.