The adage “The pen is mightier than the sword.” is hackneyed, accurate and profound. I’ve done several pieces on the influence of words. The simple fact is that how we say something often matters as much as what we’re saying. It’s a wondrous phenomenon, one that is too often taken for granted.

The virtual infrastructure supporting a well-defined quality management system (QMS) is its documentation. That’s how we define requirements and communicate them. We use documents for instruction, guidance, warning alerts, acknowledgments and validation. What goes into our documents is, therefore, a big deal.

The precision with which we select the words we use isn’t unlike the care we apply to choosing the right tool for the right job. In regard to documentation, carelessness or simple inattention can result in ambiguous instructions, inappropriate expression of urgency, inaccurate specifications or misleading directions. The receiver gets the wrong message and consequently cannot respond correctly.

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