Getting Down to Business With Accent on Writing

SAN DIEGO —  “Writing isn’t mystical,” Patricia Westheimer tells business people.

“I’ve always believed that if I could boil writing down to some formulas, like math, I could take it out of the realm of mystery and make it simple, fun and applicable . . . for anyone,” said Westheimer, president of Westroots, a La Jolla-based consulting firm specializing in business writing seminars.

With her distinctive throaty voice, profusion of wavy blond hair and staccato style, Patricia Westheimer is about as subdued as a florescent yellow Porsche in a bevy of beige Buicks.

“I’ve thought big since Day 1,” said Westheimer, a Phi Beta Kappa fireball whose power effervesces from an agile under-5-foot frame. “I always told my parents that someday I wanted to invent something from nothing and make it big.”

That something, the Speakwrite system, combines her two loves--business and teaching people how to write.

Westheimer maintains that anyone in business can and should learn to write clearly. Through Westroots, her mushrooming company, she conducts seminars in writing skills for banks, airlines, school districts, hospitals and the Marine Corps in San Diego and elsewhere.

Two years ago, Westheimer, a former English teacher, created Speakwrite, a training method designed to help people write with the ease and flow of natural speech. Through seminars, tapes and software, she now works with corporations such as Pacific Southwest Airlines, General Atomic Technologies and Ernest W. Hahn. Chevrolet recently sent her on a five-city tour as part of its “Strategies for Success ‘86” conferences.

“I love business. It’s wonderful,” said Westheimer, who gravitates to publications like Inc. and Forbes. “When I wake up at 6:30 a.m., I’m so excited, because I know the East Coast is already doing business.”

After a swim or jog, she tackles the phones to do business with moguls back East who’ve been working while Californians slept.

Statistics back Westheimer’s focus on business writing. In a survey of 218 executives done by Communispond and published in 1984, 79% of the respondents listed the ability to write as the most neglected skill in business, and 89% said clear writing demonstrates clear thinking.

Westheimer cites cases where muddled writing almost sabotaged business deals. One of her clients, an engineering company, sent a proposal for a remodeling job to a Bay Area shipping company. The shipping company returned a complete rewrite of the original proposal, explaining, “We’d like you to do work for us, if this is what you mean.” Chagrined, the engineering company promptly hired Westheimer to improve the quality of its employees’ writing.

“Most people dictate like William Faulkner, stream of consciousness style, then moan and groan when letters and proposals don’t come out perfectly formulated,” said Westheimer, suggesting that executives organize first, then dictate.

Common mistakes cause miscommunication. Westheimer contends that many business writers bury the most important points, fail to ask for what they want, write overly long sentences, use language inappropriate for the audience and neglect proofreading.

Speakwrite seminars frequently include custom-designed packets. Writing samples pulled from company files form the basis for teaching her Westroots rules of writing--decrease sentence length, omit needless words, avoid stuffy language, use strong verbs, punctuate correctly, organize carefully, proofread thoroughly.

Recently, as Westheimer ticked off tips on a local TV appearance, her rules of writing scrolled by on the screen. A typesetting snafu made the last rule read, “Proofread Throughly,” causing a flood of wry messages on her answering machine.

The 16 seminar topics include “Punctuation and Grammar,” “Persuasive Writing,” “Memo Writing” and “Applications and Forms.” She squelches redundancies, pompous words, windy phrases, qualifiers and jargon. Gone are “at this point in time,” “an example of this is the fact that,” “on the whole” and “prioritize.”

Westheimer’s entrepreneurial savvy builds on a strong academic background: “The business world wants you to have the academic background and the ability to teach.”

Phi Beta Kappa or Bust

As a child, she studied her father’s “avocado key” (his Phi Beta Kappa key) and resolved to “graduate Phi Beta Kappa or not graduate,” said Westheimer, with a face-crinkling grin.

Westheimer’s father, financial columnist Julius Westheimer, is a frequent panelist on PBS’s “Wall Street Week.” He set the pattern for his energetic daughter. “In junior high, my father would wake up with me at 6:30 a.m., read my school papers and make sure they were written well,” she said. “I had this model growing up of a man who did enough for six people in one day.”

Westheimer went on to earn her own “avocado” at Maryland’s Goucher College, then taught English at prestigious private schools across the country, including La Jolla Country Day when she settled in San Diego.

“This is one field you can’t fake,” she said. “When people want a clear explanation of why a passive voice is used, where a period belongs, why a semicolon is appropriate, you can’t make it up.”

Although Westheimer’s credentials open business doors, it is her performance that sells her Speakwrite method.

“Teaching is sales, anyway. If I can sell a verb, I can sell a seminar,” said Westheimer, who acknowledges that some business writers feel as insecure about writing as the seventh-graders she used to teach.

“Within a half-hour, people see I’m not there to put them down, nor am I there to change the structure, but rather to simplify their job,” said Westheimer, who works toward a relaxed, non-threatening teaching style.

“I put the creativity, enjoyment and confidence back into writing. Writing is a confidence issue. Once people get the confidence to write, they can and they do.”

“People feel relieved when they know they are not the only person who struggles with their writing. Most people have had very negative experiences with writing,” said Westheimer, citing poor writing habits like using the passive voice and weak verbs, opting for Thesaurus-complex words and verbosity.

“We’ve turned out a generation of people who fill up the pages. That’s not how the business world works.”

San Diego Educators Pleased

Participants in her first San Diego city schools workshop were “highly motivated,” according to Baker School Vice Principal Vivian Brown, who called Westheimer’s presentation “dynamic and professional.” Several Westroots workshops for city schools personnel followed.

At a recent seminar for the Institute of Financial Education, board member Mary Harrington noted Westheimer’s fast-paced approach: “I could hear her voice through the closed doors. She never sits or stands still through the whole presentation. I heard no negatives about her--I wouldn’t hesitate to have her again.”

Each new client requires Westheimer’s immersion in a different language. Through reading reports, letters, proposals and talking with employees, she darts from real estate jargon to “hospitalese” to financial shop talk.

“I get to learn every business in the country. I adore it!”

The reader is the bottom line in business. “Audience analysis is everything,” said Westheimer, who stresses that a company’s in-house language may not be appropriate for a reader who is not versed in the jargon.

“Good writing is good writing. Clear writing is clear writing. However, when you’re writing an NIH (National Institutes of Health) grant or for a given boss, you must analyze the medium, be aware of stylistic preferences, and then, inside of them, write well.”

As for the mish-mash of advertising language, Westheimer noted, “I never did think a sentence fragment would get anyone anywhere. I believe you can have flair and style, but still hold to good writing practices.”

Westheimer’s indispensable tools are Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, and the old grammar standard, Harbrace’s College Handbook. A less traditional ally is Webster’s New World Misspeller’s Dictionary.

“Most people define themselves as poor writers because they don’t know how to spell. That’s as absurd as saying, ‘I don’t know how to ski, so I don’t know how to walk.’ If you don’t know how to spell ‘colleague,’ you could spend all day looking for it in a regular dictionary.”

Westheimer’s appointment-dotted days often stretch to 18 hours and more. But a single-handed operation Westroots is not.

“If this were a one-person show, I’d be in a mental institution,” she said, crediting her staff with computer work, marketing, logistics, materials design and office systems.

Westheimer plans to go international.

“I love airports!” said Westheimer, fluent in French and an aficionado of France--Paris in particular.

“I am fearless. For every turndown, I make two new calls.

“I love the challenge of walking into a totally strange group and hoping that by the end of the four hours or four days, we’ll be good friends.”