Putting It In Writing

Writing well is probably the most technically difficult form of communication. It requires skill, understanding and a good deal of creativity. And we are judged on the quality of our writing. It has to act as our ambassador in our absence.

We all know effective writing when we see it. It does its job clearly and quickly. It says what the writer wants to say; nothing gets in the way. Above all, effective writing gets results.

Writing for Results

Whenever we write a business document, we are seeking a result. That’s why I prefer the term ‘functional writing’ to ‘business writing’. Functional writing has a job to do. It has a practical purpose.

Writing well starts with choosing to write. You don’t need to achieve your purpose by writing. Writing is slow and expensive; even writing an e-mail can take time. A telephone call may do the job more quickly. Writing is useful when:

• you want a permanent record;

• the information is complicated; or

• you want to copy the same material to many readers.

It may be useful to write to someone who is never available to talk to, though there is no guarantee that they will read your message among the dozens or hundreds they receive that day. Writing also carries a certain authority that a conversation may lack. A letter may get action more easily than a phone call because it looks more serious or official.

Making Reading Easier

Most of the advantages of conversation disappear when we write. Compared to talking and listening, writing and reading are slow and inefficient. A document isn’t dynamic; it’s static. Misunderstandings can easily arise. If the reader gets something wrong, you aren’t there to help out. Worst of all, you can’t even be sure that the reader will read the document.

Good writers try to make reading as easy as possible. Reading, after all, is hard work. We read on three levels:

• working out what the writer has to say;

• scanning sentences for complete ideas;

• reading individual words for their meaning.

To make reading easier, you must help the reader on all three levels.

Generally, short words are easier to understand than long ones. But your reader will understand best the words that are familiar to them. If they know the jargon or the long abstract words, use them. If in doubt, use short words.

Similarly, shorter sentences are clearer than longer ones. But a page full of short sentences will have a ‘scatter-gun’ effect: lots of points but no connections. Sentences also work best when they are well constructed and grouped together in paragraphs.

The final golden rule is the most important. Many of us write in a kind of ‘stream of consciousness’, putting one idea after another until we reach our conclusion. This gives our writing flow. But we should also be distinct, making sure that our ideas leap out at the reader and hook their attention. If you have something to say, always aim to say it as soon as possible. Then deliver the evidence that supports your idea.

Writing Step by Step

Writing is best tackled systematically. We all face the temptation to do everything at once: working out what to say, in what order, and how to say it. This is a recipe for disaster: we get confused and frustrated and the writing that emerges is a garbled mess. Like cooking, writing is best done step by step.

Think in terms of constructing a document rather than merely writing it. This letter or document has a job to do; you must design and build it to do the job. The construction process has three steps:

• designing the document;

• writing a first draft;

• editing the draft.

Try to keep the stages separate. If you can take breaks between them, so much the better. It can also be useful to ask a colleague for help at each stage.

In this chapter, we look at these three stages and explore the key issues in each. Many of the techniques will already be familiar to you. The idea of delivering a single message, SPQR (situation–problem–question–response) and using a pyramid structure for organizing information, all have a place in writing well.

Designing the Document

We can break planning a document into five stages:

• goal orientation;

• readership analysis;

• creating a message;

• organizing information;

• constructing an outline.

Goal Orientation

Start by identifying the purpose of your document. Distinguish between the document’s purpose and its subject. Whatever you are writing about, you must be clear what you want to achieve.

Make your purpose as specific as possible. Take care not to create a purpose that is inappropriate. For example, documents cannot analyze or evaluate. These are thinking processes. The document will display the product of your thinking. It can’t do the thinking!

What do you want the reader to do as a result of reading the document? Functional documents demand action and deliver information to help achieve it. Identify the action you want the reader to take and you will be better placed to provide the information that will help them take it.

Formalize your objective into a function statement. If necessary, agree this with the document’s ‘client’, the person who has asked for it. By agreeing the document’s functions, you will know exactly what is required of you.

Readership Analysis

Your document may circulate to a wide readership. Different readers will have different expectations, priorities and levels of knowledge. Analyze the readership so that you can organize information in the document more effectively.

Managing Readership Expectations

Categorize your readership into primary, secondary and tertiary readers. The primary readership must read the document. The document is designed for them. The secondary readership may look at only part of the document. It may include your manager, who may need to authorize it before circulation but who will not act on it. The tertiary readership may include people you will never meet but who may use the document in some unforeseen way. You will need to satisfy all of these readers. But you must design the document for the primary readership alone.

Identifying the Key Persuasive Factors

The key persuasive factors are the most important elements in your reader’s decision to believe you. They may arise from the reader’s:

• background;

• priorities;

• needs or concerns;

• place in the corporate culture;

• relationship to the external environment.

Put yourself in the primary reader’s position and ask: ‘What would most convince me about this idea?’

Creating a Message

Your document must deliver a single message.

The message is the most important element of the document. Everything else in it – the material, how it is ordered, how you present it – depends on the message.

The message is the single most important point you want to make to the reader to express your objective. It is not a heading or title. Neither is it a description of what you are doing in the document. The message expresses your purpose. Your document’s message should be:

• a sentence;

• expressing a single idea;

• no longer than 15 words long; that is

• self-explanatory to the reader;

• action-centred.

It is critically important to check that your document’s message is appropriate: to you, to the reader, and to your material. In a conversation, interview or presentation, we can check that we are addressing the other person’s needs, or the audience’s expectations, on the spot. When we write, that interaction disappears. Many documents fail to give their readers what they want. SPQR is the only way you can check that you are producing the document that the reader will find useful.

Look back at Chapter 5 for more details about SPQR. The SPQR sequence can:

• help you validate your message;

• facilitate a conversation between writer and reader to clarify the document’s message;

• form the core of an Introduction in the document.

Organizing Information

In writing, more than anywhere else, communicating well is a matter of displaying the shape of your thinking. That shape is made up of ideas: the sentences you write. You must arrange those ideas into a coherent shape that the reader can see clearly.

Your reader can understand only one piece of information clearly at a time. To understand your message in more detail, they must first break it into pieces, then understand each piece in order. You must organize information, therefore, in two dimensions:

• vertically (breaking the message into pieces, grouping smaller pieces into larger ones);

• horizontally (organizing each group of pieces into an order).

Organizing information like this creates a shape that allows the reader’s mind to understand complexity in the most natural way. The shape you create is a pyramid.

First- and Second-Stage Thinking

We can imagine the process of creating the document’s structure as a thinking process in two stages. We have looked at the two stages of thinking already as a way of structuring our conversations (Chapter 3). Now we can use them to help us organize material for a document:

• first-stage thinking: gathering information; 

• second-stage thinking: organizing the information.

Use mind maps to help you gather information, and the pyramid principle to help you organize it into a coherent structure.

Summarizing and Grouping

Imagine speaking your message to the reader. What question will it provoke in their mind? The question should be one of three:

• ‘Why?’

• ‘How?’

• ‘Which ones?’

You must have at least two answers to the question. Try to have no more than six. Write your answers to that question as key points. All your key points must be sentences. You should be able to align each key point to a group of ideas on your mind map.

For each key point, ask what question it provokes: ‘Why?’, ‘How?’ or ‘Which ones?’ Identify the answers to that question and write these as sub-points. Repeat if necessary for each sub-point to create minor points. For every question, you must have more than one answer.

Building the Pyramid

The result of this question-and-answer process is a pyramid structure (Figure 8.1).

Managing Detail

Building a pyramid creates a discipline that allows you to work out how much information to include in your document and how to order it.

Pyramid building always proceeds by division. Each idea provokes a question to which you must have at least two answers – and preferably not more than six. This process of division by question and answer continues until an idea fails to provoke a question with multiple answers. It can stop if:

• an idea does not provoke a question from the reader;

• an idea provokes a question that has only one answer.

It should never be necessary to create a pyramid containing more than four levels: message, key point, sub-point, minor point.

You must decide how to order ideas in each group. You can order ideas in terms of: 

• rank (size, importance, priority, relevance);

• process steps;

• chronology;

• logical reasoning.

Sometimes the order of ideas is not critical.

Constructing an Outline

The final stage of planning your document is constructing an outline. This transforms your pyramid into text that you can expand into a first draft.

An outline is the design of your document. It gives an overview of the entire document in miniature. Here’s how to write an outline.

• At the top of a page, write your message sentence, headed Message.

• Follow this with a headed Introduction: SPQR, briefly stated (three or four lines at most).

• Write each key point sentence, numbered, in order, with each sub-point and minor point numbered beneath each key point. Use a decimal numbering system for maximum clarity: – 1. – 1.1 – 1.1.1 and so on.

• Add a title for the whole outline, and headings for each key point, if necessary.

Once you understand this principle of creating an outline, you can adapt it to any kind of document. We’ll look here at three basic formats: e-mail or memo, letter and report. You’ll see that the pyramid remains the same in each case, with only slight variations.

Outlining an E-Mail or Memo

This is the simplest kind of pyramid.

Simply place your message at the top, immediately after your salutation. Create a short paragraph – or even a simple bullet point – for each key point and end, if necessary, with a call to action: the next step you want the reader to take.

It’s an excellent idea to compress your message into the subject line of the e-mail so that it appears on the reader’s inbox menu.

E-mail has become a standard mode of communicating in organizations. It’s fast, cheap and easy to use. But in many organizations, e-mail is rapidly becoming the problem rather than the solution. Four factors seem to be contributing to this impending crisis:

• Information overload. A recent survey suggested that managers receive an average of 178 e-mails a day. Getting yours noticed may be the biggest problem in getting it read.

• Death of the conversation. Many of us now hardly talk to each other; we send e-mails instead. As a result, e-mail is becoming infected with substitutes for social contact. Lonely cubicle workers spread gossip in private jargon, spiced with ‘emoticons’ and cryptic symbols.

• More haste, less understanding. The style of writing in e-mail is becoming relaxed to the point of garbled.

• Overflowing inboxes. When was the last time you weeded your inbox?

E-mail is writing. Treat it as you would any other kind of writing. Plan, write, edit. Here are 10 more tips to help e-mail work better for you:

1. Make your message clear.

2. Minimize information. Don’t make the reader scroll down.

3. Put the message in the subject line. It’s much more useful to have a headline-style message in this line than a heading.

4. Don’t shout. Avoid capital letters, underlining and bold. Above all, avoid facetious or all-purpose headings such as ‘Urgent’ or ‘Read this now!’

5. Don’t fan ‘flames’. Don’t write anything in an e-mail that you wouldn’t say face to face.

6. Avoid emoticons. Don’t use symbols or silly abbreviations. Use English.

7. Edit before sending. E-mail is so fast that you can easily spend a few moments checking sense, spelling and punctuation.

8. Remember that e-mail is public. Most e-mail can be accessed on central servers. Never write anything that a lawyer might use against you.

9. Don’t spam. Send only messages that you must send, to the individuals who need to read them. Avoid blanket copies.

10. Clear your inbox regularly. You’ll make the system – and yourself – work much more efficiently.

Outlining a Letter

The pyramid here is framed by handshakes: one at the start, and possibly one at the end. The style of a letter may differ slightly from that of an e-mail (more on style later), but apart from that, and a few other formalities of layout, the two are similar.

Outlining a Report

Reports tend to need the fullest kind of outline, complete with summary, introduction, numbered points and an array of sub-points and minor points.

Creating the outline is a really useful stage in constructing a report. You can use the outline to check with the report’s ‘client’ that it is developing as they would wish, to make changes to your report without having to rewrite lots of text, and to establish that you know exactly what your key ideas are for each section. The outline can itself form the summary of the report. It will also be invaluable for those readers who only want reports that cover a single sheet of A4. For them, the outline is the report.

Writing a First Draft

Writing the document should be considerably easier now that the outline is complete. Essentially, you need to expand the outline by adding text, headings, and – for reports in particular – numbering and graphics. The plan of the outline is in place, and the sentences in the outline give you a clear idea of what you want to say in each paragraph and section.

Think of writing the first draft of your document as a separate activity from either planning or editing.

• Write quickly. Don’t ponder over words. Keep going. Leave gaps if necessary. Aim for a natural flow.

• Write in your own voice. Expressing yourself in your own way will help you to say what you mean more exactly. If your reader can ‘hear’ your voice, reading will be easier.

• Write without interruption. Try to find a time and place where you can think and write without distractions.

• Write without editing. Don’t try to get it right first time. Resist the temptation to edit as you go. You will tend to get stuck and waste time.

• Keep to the plan of your outline. Use the sentences from your outline to focus what you want to say. If you find yourself wandering from the point, stop and move on to the next sentence in the outline.

Navigation Aids

Effective documents contain navigation aids to help the reader find their way around. The most important of these are:

• summaries;

• introductions;

• headings;

• bullet points.

All of these elements will help you ‘sell’ the document to your reader.

Summaries and Introductions

Don’t confuse these two essential items.

The summary is the document in miniature. At its heart is your message. Place the summary at the very start of the document – immediately following the title page. Your outline is a ready-made summary.

An introduction explains how the document came into being. At its heart is SPQR: background information including the problem addressed by the document and the question it answers. Introductions might expand to include:

• methodology;

• acknowledgements;

• a short guide to the document, section by section.

Use summaries elsewhere in the document to deliver the shape of the material – most importantly, at the start of each section.

Headings

Pay close attention to the title and other headings in your document. They should have high scanning value: the reader should be able to glean a lot of information from relatively few words. ‘Financial review’, for example, has low scanning value. ‘Breakdown of operating costs 2006’ works rather better.

Headings should be informative without being too detailed. In a report, you might assemble your headings into a contents list. Check it to see that the headings give a fair idea of content and are not too repetitious.

Bullet Points

Bullet points are visually very powerful. There is a danger, therefore, that you can use them too much. Don’t overuse them.

• Construct the points in parallel. All items should be grammatically of the same kind.

• Make the points consistent with the ‘platform’: the text that introduces the list.

• Improve the ‘platform’ so that repeated elements in the list need be expressed only once.

Effective Editing

The aim of editing is to make the first draft easier to read.

Editing is about making choices. It is potentially endless because there is never only one way to say what you mean. It’s especially difficult to edit your own work. Ask a colleague to help you if you can. Try to cultivate an innocent eye. Take a break before editing so that you are better prepared to look at the text afresh.

Edit systematically. Editing word by word is time-consuming and may be counterproductive. To edit efficiently, work on three separate levels in this order:

• paragraphs;

• sentences;

• words.

It’s probably best to edit hard copy, rather than on screen.

Creating Effective Paragraphs

Paragraphs display the shape of your thinking. They show the individual main ideas and the relationships between them. Every time you take a step, alter your point of view or change direction, you should start a new paragraph.

Use a topic sentence at the start of each paragraph to summarize it. Topic sentences help you to decide what to include in each paragraph. You can think of a topic sentence as the paragraph’s message. It should:

• be a fully grammatical sentence;

• make a single point;

• contain no more than 15 words;

• say something new.

An outline, of course, is a ready source of topic sentences. Another place to look for potential topic sentences is at the end of a paragraph. Very often we put the most important idea as the paragraph’s conclusion. Try flipping that conclusion to the start of the paragraph as a topic sentence. Topic sentences should make sense in order. You should be able to read all the topic sentences and understand a section in summary.

Sentence Construction

Sentences express ideas. They will express your ideas more strongly if they are constructed sturdily. Sentences are weaker when they are too long or poorly built. Aim always in your sentences to say what you mean and no more.

Follow the ‘15–25’ rule. Message sentences, topic sentences and other sentences expressing big ideas should never exceed 15 words. All other sentences should remain within 25 words long.

Strengthen sentences by:

• cutting long sentences into separate sentences;

• separating multiple sentences;

• rebuilding complicated sentences;

• making non-sentences grammatically correct;

• finding strong subjects and verbs.

Editing Words

English has a huge vocabulary. One of the main reasons is that the language is a hybrid; many ideas can be expressed with two or three words. Maybe for this reason more than any other, plain English has grown up as a way of helping us to choose the best words for our needs.

Plain English helps any reader to understand at first reading. It tells the truth without embellishment. It is a code of practice, not a set of rigid rules.

Managing Vocabulary

Certain words cause particular problems with readability. Pay attention in particular to:

• passive verbs;

• abstract nouns;

• unnecessary words.

Passive Verbs

Verbs can be either active or passive. An active verb expresses what its subject does; a passive verb expresses what its subject suffers. Sentences with active verbs are shorter, stronger and more dynamic than those with passive ones.

It is anticipated that additional disk space may be needed.

We anticipate that the system will need additional disk space. 

Abstract Nouns

Nouns name things, people, times, places or qualities. Concrete nouns name things physically present in the world (table, woman, pen, car, tree); abstract nouns name ideas, concepts or qualities that cannot be sensed physically (growth, awareness, training, marketing, possibility).

Try to cut down your use of abstract nouns. Replace them, if you can, with verbs or adjectives. If you can replace an abstract noun only with a group of shorter, more concrete words, consider keeping it.

There were some differences in configuration between the two machines which added a degree of complexity to the exercise. 

The two machines were configured differently, making the exercise more complex.  

Unnecessary Words

Some words contribute nothing to meaning. You might use them because they sound good, or because you don’t know what to say next. Remove them.

The benefits of this arrangement are a saving in consultancy costs and the opportunity for new users to learn the system in a meaningful situation at the same time as they learn their jobs.

This arrangement saves consultancy costs and allows new users to learn the system as part of on-the-job learning. 

Developing a Readable Style

Good writing comes alive in your mind. Nothing comes between the writer and your understanding. Effective writing is transparent.

Bringing your own writing to life is a long-term project. Here are some guidelines to point you in the right direction:

• say what you mean;

• be specific;

• be positive;

• remove blockages.

Style is personal. Choosing how to write is like choosing how to dress. Improving your style is not unlike improving your dress sense. Look around; imitate what you admire; aim for functional elegance rather than excessive flamboyance.

Say What You Mean

Concentrate on what you want to say, not how to say it. Imagine the reader’s response. If you only had a few seconds to get your point across, what would you say? Be sincere, and avoid ‘scaffolding’: any writing that refers to the fact that you are writing (‘In this report, I shall…’).

Be Specific

Aim to be precise rather than vague. Avoid generalizing. Use numbers, and names, so that your writing becomes more personal. Use verbs with a specific meaning and avoid verbs that don’t mean much (get, carry out, perform, give, conduct, implement, move, do). Make it concrete. Give real examples. And use jargon carefully.

Be Positive

The best functional writing is forward-looking and action-centred. Avoid writing too much about what has happened, what hasn’t happened, what should have happened or what is wrong. Instead, write about proposals, future action and what you are doing. Make definite promises and avoid emotive language.

Remove Blockages

Good writing flows like water in a pipe. The words should be under pressure. Remove blockages so that the meaning flows freely. Wherever you can, transform passive verbs into active ones, and abstract nouns into concrete ones. Remove unnecessary words and exterminate clichés. Punctuate inflated language and connect your sentences together carefully.

Writing for The Web

Writing for the web is in many ways like writing for any other medium. A number of key features, however, make reading on screen a different experience from reading on paper. Understanding those features will help you produce more usable text for websites and web-based documents.

Key Qualities of Web Text

Research suggests that web users feel happiest when web text is concise, scannable and objective. ‘Concise’ means that the text says what it needs to say and no more. ‘Scannable’ means that big ideas are prominent; that paragraphs are not too long; and that key words are easy to pick out. ‘Objective’ means that the writer tends to remove their own feelings from the text. Readers want information when they are using the web; opinions and feelings tend to get in the way.

Additionally, readers have voted for:

• clear navigation aids;

• evidence of the writer’s credibility; and

• an informal style.

You May Also Need to Check:

1. What is Communication? Basic Rules of Communication
2. How Conversations Work? How to Improve Your Communication Skills
3. The Skills of Persuasion in Communication

Thinking about Your Readers

The key to effective web-writing is to think of your reader as a visitor, rather than a long-term associate. Reading a book or a report requires a level of commitment from your reader that web reading simply doesn’t demand.

Different types of visitors want different things from the web pages they visit.  

• Viewers stay on the page for no more than a few seconds.

• Users want to do something (such as buying a product or registering for a web community) or find practical information.

• Readers are willing to browse – and actually read what they find.

Designing and writing web pages is a matter of satisfying as many of these types of visitor as you can. It’s worth remembering a slogan invented by one enterprising web-writer: ‘shut the door, they’re coming over the fence’. In other words, visitors to your page could be coming from anywhere: a home page, a search engine, or a link from another page in a completely different part of cyberspace.

Chunking and Stacking

Chunk and stack your material to satisfy the needs of viewers, users and readers. Chunking and stacking is a variation on summarizing and grouping, the structural technique discussed earlier in this chapter.

• Chunking means breaking information into manageable, screen-sized pieces.

• Stacking means grouping the chunks into categories.

Chunking and stacking effectively layers the material so that readers can see everything that is on the site easily and also go into as much detail as they want.

Additionally, most web pages will benefit from these features.

• Create a heading that tells you where you are at once.

• Write a message sentence. We’ve met messages before – and this message is just like the messages you can create in any other document.

• Provide supporting information in fewer than 100 words per paragraph.

• Create hyperlinks to other pages. No page should be without a hyperlink to take you somewhere else – even if it’s only back to the front page or home page.

Cues for Action

Cues for action keep viewers from running away, help users to do what they want to do, and encourage readers to explore the page further.

There are various actions you might want your reader to take. For example, you might want them to:

• search for information;

• contribute to a discussion forum;

• buy something;

• contact someone;

• move to another page.

Explain explicitly what action readers can take. Whatever you want them to do, make sure that you keep the action simple: as few clicks as possible, with the most basic instructions.

Always write as if you are talking directly to readers, using the word ‘you’. And provide an incentive for taking the action. The incentive doesn’t have to be financial! Simply telling readers what information they can expect to find by taking the action may be enough.

Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are a powerful innovation in web writing. Unlike conventional headings, they perform two functions: helping the reader to find their way around and acting as the transport to get them there. Hyperlinks might be:

• keywords in the text;

• names in the text; or

• instructions: ‘Go to the semi-tropical zone’.

Headings are the most important candidates for hyperlinks. They should act like departure and arrival signs in an airport – telling readers where to go and announcing when they have arrived.

Hyperlinks can often use blurb to give just a little detail of what the heading is promising – and encouraging the reader to go there.

Making it Brief

Once you have made your web pages scannable and objective, you need to make them brief. Work at three levels: paragraph, sentence and word.

Keep a complete piece of text within one screen. Summarize, create short paragraphs of no more than about 100 words, and use topic sentences – maybe in bold – at the start of each paragraph, to act as scannable summaries.

Use lists wherever you can. They can of course be lists of hyperlinks to help readers navigate more easily.

Sentence construction is as important as sentence length. Make sure that your sentences are as simple as you can make them: avoid complicated clusters of ideas, passive verbs, and redundant expressions. Generally, try to keep your sentence length to no more than 25 words or about two lines of text.

Always write in standard plain English. You’re writing for a global audience. Avoid marketing hype, promotional jargon and the language of advertising.

Making it look Good

Keep the visual elements of your document simple. Use a designer if you can.

Make your print readable. Sans serif fonts (such as Arial, Verdana, Tahoma or Univers) are generally easier to read on screen. Use at least 12pt font and higher if possible.

Avoid too much highlighting (and never use underlining except for links). Don’t use too many colors (and never use blue, red or purple except for links). And create columns no more than half a screen width. They are easier to scan than text that spreads the full width of the screen.

Transforming Conventional Documents Into Web Pages

Sometimes, you will want to put traditionally produced documents onto a website as archive documents. Take the opportunity to make them ‘web-friendly’. A few simple design features can make all the difference.

Create a summary at the head of the document – no longer than half a screen long. List the section headings at the head of the document. Create links within the document. Obvious candidates for links are the headings in your list at the top of the document. Another useful link is a permanent link to the top of the document. Make the title and main headings visible within the opening screen – not just on the opening printed page.

You May Also Need to Check:

1. What is Communication? Basic Rules of Communication
2. How Conversations Work? How to Improve Your Communication Skills
3. The Skills of Persuasion in Communication
4. The Skills of Enquiry in Communication Skills
5. Interviews: Holding a Formal Conversation
6. Seven Ways to Improve Your Conversations
7. Making a Presentation Help you to Improve Communication Skills