Abstract
Writing a review of a book which aims to get the reader to write effectively is a little intimidating. After all, you're going judge the book I'm reviewing both on my opinion, and also on the quality of my writing. After all, I should now be expert, shouldn't I? So, here goes.
This is a great book. What I've done here is, in proper journalistic style, started with the main point of the paragraph. Then, I go on to detail some of the reasons I think it is a great book. So, if you're involved in writing – by which, here, Albert means any sort of writing you might do as part of your medical role – you are likely to find it helpful. You will find it particularly helpful if you actually don't much like writing, or if you don't think you write very well. However, you will also find it helpful if you enjoy furtling around under the bonnet of writing, trying to figure out how one bit fits onto another, and why it is that two people can present almost identical information in such incredibly different ways. If you've ever marvelled at Orwell's masterly 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ this book might take you a few sentences closer.
The sad fact is that many of us do write very badly, or at least not very well. However, when you consider the multiple tasks of being a doctor, good written communication is central to many of them: from patient letters to court reports, from business cases to journal papers, even the humble but ubiquitous email. There are so many ways in which we need to get our message across. And anyone reading this can think of a dozen times in the past week when they've read something and thought: Well, that was a lot of hot air. Or worse: I have no idea what they were saying. Perhaps you should get them a copy of this book.
Write Effectively has a simple structure of a series of exercises, plus a set of appendices. Although Albert encourages you to write in the text, I suspect that most readers will scribble separately in order to preserve the book for the next person. The exercises take you right through a writing project. As with many workbooks you'll find aspects you like and aspects you don't. For example, personally I wouldn't enjoy the ‘mind map’ sort of structure that Albert uses to capture the details of a writing task, but I know colleagues it will suit very well. By contrast, I'm very taken by his ideas on the inverted pyramid style of writing – which I've used particularly in the second paragraph of this review – while I know that some colleagues would regard writing a clinical letter in this sort of style some sort of heresy.
The appendices are a little idiocyncratic, but then so is writing. The areas on common pitfalls in written English are covered, but with different emphasis, in other texts like The Guardian Stylebook – available as a fun read, but also fully free online. But then I suspect that you don't buy this book to learn the difference between ‘principle’ and ‘principal’. You'll find some very simple guidance on punctuation; the sorts of things that you may have been too afraid to ask at school or since, and even a page you'd like to copy and hand to that manager whose email is scattered with near random apostrophes.
In summary, a good book, reasonably priced, well written, and no reason it shouldn't be a welcome gift for any new consultant colleague or other member of the medical team.
Write Effectively: A Quick Course for Busy Health Workers
Tim Albert
Radcliffe Publishing Limited, August 2008
ISBN-13: 978-1846191350
Price: £21.95 (Paperback)