STEP FIVE

Write with Rhythm to
Hold Your Readers

Like music, dance, and poetry, written words have a rhythm. We prefer songs with a pleasing beat and we prefer text with a pleasing rhythm. The right combination of words and sentences makes your text easier and far more enjoyable to read—and helps keep readers focused on your message.

 

Make Your Sentences Flow Rhythmically

To write with rhythm, create an easy-to-follow pattern from start to finish. That means beginning your sentences in different ways, varying their structure and length, making the components of your sentences and paragraphs balanced and parallel, keeping related ideas together, and using transition words and phrases to connect diverse ideas.

The first thing you have to do to improve the flow of your words is to identify the rhythm that appears naturally in your writing. To become familiar with your personal writing rhythm, read your first draft of any document out loud. Listen to the sounds and feel the beat of your words and sentences to sense how well they flow.

Vary Sentence Openers, Structure, and Length

Here’s an example of a paragraph in which all the sentences begin in the same way:

Boring! Beginning each sentence with the same type of phrase produces an unpleasantly repetitive rhythm.

It’s even more unpleasant when all the sentences begin with the same word—especially with “I”:

Listen to the sounds of your words to help determine how well your text flows.

Varying the sentence openers for that paragraph can improve the flow a great deal:

That revised version covers all the same points that the rough draft included, but the reader isn’t pounded with “I-I-I.” The information flows from sentence to sentence and carries the reader along with it.

Making all your sentences the same length also produces an irritating rhythm that drains your reader’s energy. Here’s a paragraph comprising only short and choppy sentences. Read it out loud to feel its staccato beat:

The budget is due May 1. It needs to include estimated expenses for all divisions. Separate estimates are required for each division. This budget must include accurate training estimates. The last budget had inaccurate training expenses.

That sounds like a 21-gun salute! It needs sentences of varied lengths and different arrangements of words (something other than subject-verb-object), and it needs transition phrases to blend the separate points into a cohesive whole that draws in the reader.

Here’s another example of a paragraph that’s difficult to read because all the sentences are structurally identical—subject followed by verb—and all are short:

An improved version of the paragraph has sentences that differ in structure and flow and that offer the reader a comfortable rhythm:

In the second version, I combined six short and choppy sentences to form three sentences. The first and third sentence use prepositional phrases: at the January 15 annual meeting and because we need to submit feedback on her plan by May 25. Between those sentences is a shorter sentence that varies the tempo.

It’s not only a string of short sentences that’s distracting for the reader. A paragraph composed of same-structure long sentences will be equally difficult to read:

Each of those five sentences begins with a prepositional phrase—yawn. Let’s see what variety will do to improve the readability and interest:

I kept the first sentence, but combined the next two ideas (the two statistics) into one sentence. Then I closed with a specific call to action. Better flow leads the reader to your desired action.

So you may be wondering which sentences are better—short ones or long ones. Some writing instructors believe that shorter sentences are easier to read. In some instances, short sentences are more effective—for example, when you want to convey urgency:

But too many consecutive short sentences can feel choppy and disjointed, as we’ve seen above. Longer sentences let you convey more information right away, and they let you combine data to reveal similarities or differences—but they can lose your reader along the way. Craft your sentences on the basis of your own style, the message you’re conveying, and the tone you want to set. And be sure to use both long and short sentences where possible.

Let’s look at a paragraph that has a varied and pleasantly rhythmic pattern of words and sentences:

That paragraph, taken from a performance review, has long and short sentences, a variety of structures, and transition words and phrases that move the reader smoothly from point to point.

Write Balanced and Parallel Sentences

Some repetition can be effective. For example, using two clauses with similar structure or repeating words creates symmetry and a pleasing rhythm. This balance makes a sentence more readable. Consider these examples:

• We prefer songs with a pleasing beat, and we prefer text with a pleasing rhythm.
• Our firm won’t achieve its sales goals without investing $2 million in marketing, and it won’t invest in marketing without clarifying the objectives.

You also can use a balanced, consistent structure with two consecutive sentences, again creating that natural bridge from one thought to the next:

The components of a sentence are considered parallel when the same word forms are used or when certain words or phrases are repeated, usually in a sequence. Here’s an example:

• Not parallel: All division heads must pay more attention to improving productivity, expense reduction, and addressing customers’ needs.

In that example, the three things to which the division heads must pay more attention are not stated in a parallel manner: improving and addressing are special word forms called “present participles”—they’re words formed by adding “-ing” to verbs. The second item in the list (expense reduction) isn’t a present participle word form, so the list is not parallel. When you see the error, it’s an easy problem to fix:

• Parallel: All division heads must pay more attention to improving productivity, reducing expenses, and addressing customers’ needs.

Changing the noun phrase expense reduction to the present participle reducing expenses makes all three items parallel.

Don’t Interrupt Sentence Flow

If the main idea of your sentence is interrupted by a divergent thought, readers may get confused. In the first sentence below, the prepositional phrase at yesterday’s meeting knocks the reader’s attention off the writer’s point:

The writer wants to tell the reader when the discrepancies were discovered, but putting that information in the middle of the sentence may derail the reader. If that information is placed at the start of the sentence to give the message context, however, the reader’s attention remains on the writer’s key point—discrepancies exist that could disrupt the project:

When you’ve written the first draft of a message, or when you’re organizing your thoughts before writing, decide what is primary and what is secondary information. Then craft your sentences in a way that presents the information smoothly.

Don’t Put Unrelated Ideas in the Same Sentence

This guideline needs no explanation. See how the unrelated ideas (set in boldface) take the reader off track in the following examples:

• We need to recruit more experienced customer service specialists for the northwest division, which just celebrated its fifth year at the new building.
• The creative team, which has moved three floors up to a more quiet location, doesn’t understand the subtleties of our new product.
• XYZ Enterprises, founded in 1935 at a Chicago warehouse, complained about our technical support four times this month.

Use transition words and phrases to unify the sentences, paragraphs, and sections of your document.

If the unrelated information is significant enough to include in your message, give it its own sentence, bullet point, or paragraph. Don’t risk losing your readers’ attention or confusing them.

Use Transitions to Unify Sentences, Paragraphs, and Sections of Your Document

To unify your text, use transitions to link sentences, paragraphs, and sections. Transition words and phrases—”connectors”—bring logic to your text, bridging one sentence with the next and one paragraph with the next. They include words and phrases that typically are used to connect thoughts (see tool 5.1) and words and phrases that provide natural connections when they’re repeated throughout the document.

First, let’s try some of the typical transition terms to see how they improve a choppy paragraph that’s trying to convey one idea but doing it with unconnected sentences:

• Choppy: You should try writing like you speak to write better. You can do it when you start your next document. You should imagine that your boss is phoning from the airport and has only one minute to find out what you’re about to write. This type of demand would force you to be concise and immediately state the most important point. This is how you should approach every document. It’s true that most people who read your text don’t have to board planes in 60 seconds. They’re just impatient.
• Unified and flowing: If you’d like to write as well as you speak, try this: Before starting your next document, imagine that your boss is phoning from the airport with only one minute to find out what you’re about to write. With this type of demand, you’re forced to be concise and immediately state the most important point—and that’s how you should approach every document. Although most people who read

TOOL 5.1

Words and Phrases Commonly Used as Transitions

By repeating certain words and phrases—”hook words”—you keep readers focused and remind them of your key messages. In the following paragraphs, taken from a service proposal, three key points recur throughout (they’re set in bold type and accompanied by a bracketed number to help you connect them from paragraph to paragraph). Although these phrases aren’t identical in each paragraph, they make the same points.

Separate Items by Numbering or Bulleting Them

Most readers find it easier to understand enumerated information— for example, the three marketing objectives, the five keys to earning a promotion, the four action items. Here’s a sample of text in which the writer has enumerated his points in paragraph form:

Here’s the same text with the enumerated points broken out into numbered items:

Be sure to use numbers when the sentence that introduces a list cites the number of items in the list (as above) or when you want to present items in priority or performance order, as in the following action plan:

When the number or order of items is not an issue, it’s fine to use bullets:

One caveat on the use of numbers and bullets: use them sparingly. As is true for exclamation points and for the use of italic, boldface, and underlined type, overuse of numbered and bulleted lists blunts their effectiveness and ruins the text. Choose wisely for greatest impact.

Your Turn

To develop your own writing rhythm, spend more time reading your words out loud to hear how well they flow. Pay more attention to documents written by others, including those of co-workers, journalists, and authors, to see how well the rhythm of their words is working. Try these exercises:

1. In a business document, newspaper, or magazine, find a paragraph in which you believe the text flows naturally. Analyze what the author has done to produce that flow and consider adopting some of that style in your own writing.
2. Revise the order of ideas in this paragraph so the flow isn’t interrupted by nonessential information:

   We can double production in our European division, as Stan explained during the flight home yesterday, by shifting our marketing strategy and hiring a sales manager for our London office.

3. To create a more balanced sentence, rewrite the bold-type clause to match the style of the first clause:

   Our shipping department needs to improve its efficiency, and the high absenteeism rate in our production department needs to be reduced.

4. Rewrite this paragraph to vary its boring sentence structure:

   Laura Stark is the new vice president of the Asian division. She discussed her marketing plan at the January 20 annual meeting. Laura also outlined several innovative strategies. She mentioned the cost and expected return-on-investment. I would like to meet with you before February 15. We can analyze Laura’s plan and come up with additional suggestions.

The Next Step

Writing sentences that flow with a pleasing rhythm makes it easier for readers to move through your document and understand what you’re saying. To further help readers grasp information quickly in documents of varied length, you need to organize the content so it flows logically from start to finish. That’s what I’ll help you do in Step 6: Organize to Help Your Readers Understand.

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