Today’s #FridayFact explains the impact that good writing skills can have on your salary. Obviously, the situation will vary from job to job and company to company, but overall, if you are a good writer, you have a good chance to earn more than someone who doesn’t write well.
Note: This infographic needs a text-based transcript. See the Optional Accessibility Transcript Activity for more details.
29 Comments
I think that some of the information from the infographic was something I’d consider common sense–like writers make the fewest mistakes per 100 words. Their entire job is writing, so no one will hire a freelancer that makes lots of mistakes. I did find it interesting that there were two jobs, finance and legal, that didn’t calculate the pay for making 30+ mistakes. I wonder if that means that their sample size was too small to have anyone fitting that description, or if it’s simply not possible to make a living in those fields with so many writing errors in your work? Something else that caught my eye was in sales & marketing, the people who make 21-30 errors per 100 words still make over 80% of the salary of the people who make fewer than ten errors! There is a steep drop-off in pay after 30+ errors, but if you worked in legal and made 21-30 errors, you’d only make 53% of the 0-10 error salary. Does anyone have an idea as to why that is?
I agree with you, it does seem a little strange that there was no data at all for those two sections that you mentioned. I would imagine that the amount of people in legal and finance/management who actually make more than 30 mistakes are very few; they probably don’t last very long since mistakes would make them see less credible. It’s also possible that the sample size was very small but we can’t make any assumptions about that since know survey details are included.
I definitely agree with you that it’s almost common sense writers would have fewer mistakes than other professionals, simply because their entire education and career is focused on writing. To me, it kind of seems like adding this piece of data doesn’t convince me to believe the point they are trying to present. I’d like to think that if IT and programming professionals had a more writing focused education, they would have fewer errors as well.
On your point about the salary difference between sales and legal (for 21-30 errors), my guess is that maybe errors in sales just aren’t as detrimental as they are in legal. Maybe the audience/client doesn’t care about or notice the errors in sales as much as they do in legal.
Some really insightful analysis. One thing that really interested me is the sheer percentage of mistakes that are made on average. Even writers make mistakes in their writing 10% of the time. However, I was definitely expecting programmers to make the most writing mistakes. I know all too well about the quality of writing from my peers and colleagues (*scoot scoot*). As someone who tenaciously studies languages, I aim to write better documentation and reports than my peers.
I think in your last question, the reason why people make significantly less for poorer writing in legal is because they often work with a contingency fee (typically 40%)–that is, they make money if you make money on the case. It makes sense–if they’re poor writers and speakers, they win less cases in court and therefore make less money.
After looking at this infographic I wasn’t surprised that people who make fewer writing mistakes get paid better. This is because people who do not make as many writing mistakes, their work is usually better quality and it does not need at much editing as people who make lots of mistakes. Like Katie said, I am not surprised that people with a job that is writing and translation, have fewer errors per 100 words than other jobs. I also was not surprised that out fo the jobs listed, that programming had the most errors. This is because I have taken a programming class at Virginia Tech and I know there are many ways to make a writing error on accident that will cause your code to not work. The one thing I found interesting is the difference though in how much people get paid if they make less writing mistakes. For example, for engineering and manufacturing the difference between 10 words of error is over $200 difference in pay.
I’ve always believed that writing effectively could be either a transferable skill or a self-management skill, meaning that it could be carried on to your job or just be one of your many traits. That being said, I can understand why people who tend to make more errors while writing are paid relatively less because they just showcased the weakness in a very obvious way, which lead to these consequences. Freelancers should take advantage of the available resources online that help with their grammar, spelling and other mistakes more often to avoid getting paid less amounts that they potentially deserve. I can also relate this situation to my English 1105 class where our professor literally told us the better we become at writing, the better chance we’ll be getting As and Bs (being rewarded with letter grades instead of money). It really just depends on what you’re industry you’re working in which allows you to be a good writer because after looking at the statistics, being the creative one pays off more than being the technical one.
I agree with the Friday Fact. Having good writing skills correlates to a higher pay. Especially in jobs where the employees focus on math and science. For example, engineers are known to have poor communication/writing skills. If you are an engineer that also excels in these areas, you will most definitely have a higher pay and be more respected in your field. A good writer makes fewer mistakes, as this post suggests, being an employee that is rarely wrong will increase your chances for a raise.
I think when the article talked about people who make fewer writing mistakes earn more money, one possible reasoning for that is that they have a higher level of school aka a PhD or even a Masters Degree where there is a lot of writing in your specified field. However, I do think it’s pretty common sense to say that people who are “better at their job” by being good writers would earn more money.
I actually just finished proofreading my friend’s personal essay to get into architecture school. The vernacular she uses as well as the way she tells a story with explanations as to why she wants to get into architecture school is part of the reason why I think she’ll get in. The way you can promote yourself with words can help get you many places in life, so I think writing is something that should definitely be emphasized in schools.
It’s interesting that for both Engineering and Legal, people making 11-20 mistakes per 100 words tend to make less than those who make 21-30 mistakes. I wonder what the explanation for that is? That aside, it seems that errors in writing are more prevalent than I would have expected. The average writer makes a mistake 10% of the time, which seems rather high. I wonder what metric they use to determine what a mistake was.
I found this article very interesting. I can totally see why writers make the fewest errors, that just makes sense given the fact that they focus on writing for a living. One question I have about the data they have is if it included tenured employees. For instance, usually people who have worked at a company for a long time make more money. So typically these older employees have been around the block, they know how to write better than someone fresh into the workforce. So it makes sense for people who make less errors to get paid more. But I definitely feel that there is a little bias in that, older employees might care more about what/how they write versus a newer employee. But overall, I liked the article and it a lot of seemed like common sense, but nonetheless I enjoyed it.
I do not find it hard to believe those that write clearly, precisely, and with less error, would make more money. For the most part, those who produce higher quality work are rewarded for it in society. If you produce lower quality, it would result in lower pay. This is a common theme across most careers. Now the difference in pay from career to career is just a societal impact. Society has deemed certain careers make more money based on a multitude of factors. Although this is true, the writing skills compared to salary has the same trend in all careers. Analyzing this infographic definitely allows me to appreciate this course and ultimately, apply some technical writing skills in all my work.
After reading this post I began to think about how this relates to the construction industry. While I think that technical and verbal communication skills are more sought after in terms of those individuals working in the field, I think that this information would most definitely apply to those individuals in project management and office roles. In the field, individuals must be able to communicate in written format, but on a less formal basis. More importantly though, these individuals must possess better verbal communication skill. However, on the project management side it is certainly necessary to possess exceptional written and verbal communication skills. This is especially important for these individuals because they are interacting with owners and stakeholders much more frequently. With this in mind, I believe that this information definitely holds true for project managers and executives.
I actually think it’s amazing that professionals in writing and translation makes 10.1 errors per 100 words. Depending on this test was done might make a difference but I would think that many mistakes for someone who has trained to write, and trained to translate for their career is high. But then again, maybe I make many more mistakes in my writing than I think I do. It does make sense that the better writing skills you have, the more you will get paid. It’s like with any skill set, the more/better skill sets you have the more valuable you should be to a company. Especially with writing, because writing is involved in every career field.
Personally, I have never had a passion for English, and never tried to work on my grammar, and spelling because I figured the basics I have can get me through. But when I have had to write cover letters, or essays for internships, research positions, REUs, etc. I have found it to be difficult because my writing skills are not as good as they could be. Being more cognitive, and open to learning, and attempting to improve on writing skills, will help me have more opportunities for work. Additionally, it will save time from having to go back and edit my papers, because there will be less mistakes.
This article does make sense, but it has some considerations that come with it. In some jobs or fields of work, writing is not of important relevance to getting your task done. Obviously, not knowing how to write or construct a basic report/presentation is terrible, but with respect to knowing the fine points of writing and how those affect your pay rate nowadays, I think this would’ve been more applicable 20-30 years ago. I think nowadays there is more the sense that if your writing is bad you will lose your job, instead of if your writing is exquisite, you will get a pay raise.
I think that while writing skills may influence how much a person gets paid, it is a bit simplistic to assume causation between proficient technical writing skills and higher pay. I think the correlation between the two, specifically in engineering, is that professionals who do most of the project writing and proposals are in higher positions, specifically in management. This may explain the correlation in the engineering profession.
I was thinking along the same lines! However, if the higher level professionals have more chances to write, than they also have more chances to make mistakes. In the end, I think it is all relative – if you make a lot of mistakes over a many writings or if you make little mistakes in few writings.
I must say that the relationship with good writing skills and salaries does not surprised me. As an ESL(English Second Language) student, I am very much aware the importance of good writing skills. There were some moments that I realize that even though the content of the paper is great, the way it presented in paper or wording can actually effect the value of the paper. Not only the preventative way, but also in readability way. There are some people saying engineering majors does not have to write good or eloquently, but professional and technical writing is very important for technological majors since they have to explain new concept/idea through papers.
Even though the engineers might make more errors in terms of writing, I thought it was not going to make huge difference in salary. After I read the article, I saw that the salary from one who makes 10 mistakes per 100 words almost doubles the salary from the one who makes 30 mistakes per 100 words. Writing is also a skill so being good at writing deserves more money I think. The thing I was surprised at was that the infographic mentioned that the professional writers make few mistakes. That’s totally expected.
Communication is key when it comes to the work place. Although I hadn’t realized that it correlated so strongly with pay-level, I’m not surprised at all. Especially in the engineering field, skilled writers are valued more than poor writers. I found it very interesting that the engineering and legal fields had a much larger pay discrepancy between 0-10 errors and 11-20 errors compared to the financial and sales & marketing. I would have assumed that sales & marketing especially would value good writing more than any other field, since communication is such a large part of the field.
I also found the numbers within the infographic to be a little alarming. Indeed, one would think that the Sales and Management work field, as well as the finance and management career field would not be so high up on the list for the amount of writing errors their workers make. Both of these career fields require a substantial amount of developing and preparing documents for others to review and fill out. The correlation between having good writing skills and one’s career pay grade is very important. The level of writing skills that one has can impact the differentiation between two applicants applying for the same job.
This is a cool article, but I don’t think we can determine a causation just from the information found in this article. There is certainly a correlation between good writing and higher pay, but I don’t think we can definitively say that good writing is the cause of that higher pay. For example, education could lead to higher pay and better writing, but in that scenario education is the cause of higher pay, not better writing. Even though we are unable to prove this causation between good writing and higher pay, I still believe that good writing is extremely important for almost any job.
I definitely like the message of this Friday Fact! I have always been stingy when it came to my writing in a professional setting, and I have always (secretly) judged those who weren’t (yes, I’m THAT guy — you do it, too). The correlation here is interesting, but I think it’s important to remember that it is simply that: a correlation. There is little cause-and-effect here. The fact of the matter is that someone who doesn’t write well and makes a lot of grammar mistakes may be that way only in that environment because they have no vested interest. Put another way, employees that don’t care about their jobs are paid less than the ones who do, regardless of the fact that they don’t write well. Sure, not writing well is an obvious symptom of that lack of interest, but I would bet that there is much more going on than that. In short, the bad writing is a result of the problem, it is not the problem itself. However, it is a clear indication that you are dedicated employee when you put your best effort into everything, including your writing! So the message here is definitely a good one.
Having worked a long time in the software industry, I can’t confirm that good writers make more money, but I can say for sure that good writers are enormously more pleasant to work with. Far and away, the primary job of a software engineer is managing complexity. It’s artistic. It requires that you communicate precisely, concisely, and completely. And it’s not possible for one person to solo most of the software that’s being produced today. A superstar developer who can produce incredible solutions to hard problems isn’t very useful if they’re the only person who is able to understand and maintain those solutions.
However, I’m certain that the methodology behind this research involved only mechanical errors that are detectable by a machine. Such errors don’t by any means imply that the communication is ineffective. On the contrary, bending and breaking grammar rules can sometimes result in much more concise communication that’s still good enough at completely and precisely conveying what it needs to. A developer who perfectly follows prescriptivist grammar rules when writing the internal documentation of a class is going to end up causing everyone who reads that documentation for the rest of history to waste several extra minutes reading through unnecessary mechanical stuff.
My point is that even when we talk about “errors” we must consider the purpose and audience of the writing, and take a more descriptivist and flexible stance towards grammar if appropriate for the situation.
I feel like this article and the infographic that goes with it is just an embodiment of common sense. Most of the information present only confirms what we have been taught all our lives- that writing and getting an education is important to your career and, therefore, your life. Additionally, I feel like I didn’t really gain any helpful knowledge from this article. First of all, it’s obvious that writers and translators would have the least amount of errors. As Katie Cox said, “Their entire job is writing, so no one will hire a freelancer that makes lots of mistakes.” I entirely agree with this statement, and, in my opinion, 10.1 errors per 100 words is too high for someone who writes for a living. Moreover, The result of the research that points to those who make fewer mistakes get paid more also coincides with common sense. It is only logical that those with a higher education will make less writing errors. To further reinforce my point, those with the higher education typically are employed in higher paying jobs. A clear example of this is the role of administrator or manager. While it is possible to be promoted into an administrative role from a lower position, it is not uncommon for such positions to be filled by more qualified people who usually have a higher education (in the form of a degree or something similar). Even if this were not the case, by the time a person is promoted into such an administrative role, they should have gleaned the necessary knowledge to succeed in their new position. This usually includes furthering their education (this can occur in multiple different ways, of course) and thus still holds true to the logic I discussed beforehand. Finally, I think it is important to take note of where this article came from – Grammarly. This article comes from a clearly biased source. Grammarly has plenty to gain from people reading their article. By instilling this idea of “better writing equals higher pay” into its readers, Grammarly can make their following advertisements really pop. The following quote was taken from the advertisement I found at the bottom of the article:
“Grammarly is a must-have
writing app that makes sure everything you type
is clear, effective, and mistake-free.”
Seems awfully convenient doesn’t it? Almost as if it goes hand in hand with the article right above it. While I do applaud Grammarly for a clever marketing plan, it is important to take everything you read with a grain of salt. Although everything present in the article lines up with one’s own sense of common sense, I believe it is important to look deeper into the matter and draw one’s own conclusions.
This article pointed out interesting demographics, however I believe most of what the article states is variable among the different groups. For example, being a engineering student writing is not the most looked at fundamental since everything is visual to a certain extent. Depending on what you do for a company as an engineer I doubt there’s a significant salary increase due to the fact that you write better than another employee. In terms of the bigger picture it offers simplicity to those you work with, as opposed to personal reward. In other cases such as a career in journalism, multimedia design, or even a freelance writer, the significance of having less mistakes is heavily emphasized since that’s their day to day job. They get paid to write for a living and if they make too many mistakes then a company may not wish to pay them a substantial amount of money. In summary I believe that while better writing may not be the cause of a salary increase in certain job fields, I think it offers simplicity in communicating your ideas to others.
In a class of mine, we recently talked about the correlation between education and income. Income is positively associated with education achievement. As a result, the less educated are more likely excluded from employment and a better quality of life. Thus, I think it makes sense for better writers to make more money as their writing skills are most likely a byproduct of their higher education.
Additionally, I know in the science profession good writing means more money. Research papers go through an intense peer review process. If you have poor writing skills, your papers will not be approved, you wont be published, you want receive grant money, and you’re less likely to move up in the industry.
It’s clearly to see that writing skills are very important because almost in all companies’ hire information have a common sentence which is “strong technical writing skills.” In my opinions, I think the mistakes in the paper is related to your thinking. Students who are in legal science or in law major, they are not allowed to have mistakes in their writings. Because they have to be precise about the using of words. If they made mistakes, the judgement may cause series differences. So basically i think the more preciseness of your writing is showing the more deliberately you are. No company wants to hire someone with a face of “careless.”
So by the explanations I gave above, it’s clear to see that why people who have good writing would have a higher salary. Writing is the showing of one’s ability.
I like the last part of this infographic where the correlation between salary and mistakes is drawn within each field that the study was conducted and several careers were presented parallel to leave a stronger impression of conclusion. However, I think this infographic should remove the middle part where “writers make fewer mistakes”. Even though the data were very attractive, it shouldn’t be placed in this infographic. At first, it misled me to draw a conclusion that writers make more money than IT programmers.
This is actually an obvious statement as we know most of the professional field of work nowadays needs the writing skills to achieve a certain quality. It always relate to the fact that regardless what kind of career we pursue we cannot run from the the fact that writing is the greatest form for us in showcasing our work which is usually in form of reports. After doing any practical stuff in our field we would definitely need to present it in such a way to our supervisors so that is where this writing skill comes into the picture. So I would say that the topic above is not that surprising for me but it is still nice to know some of the statistics for it.