Chapter 2
IN THIS CHAPTER
Tailoring your writing for today’s readers
Injecting energy into your language
Implementing elements of good design
Your writing style probably took shape in school, where literary traditions and formal essays dominate. This experience may have led you to believe that subtle thoughts require complex sentences, sophisticated vocabulary, and dense presentation. Perhaps you learned to write that way — or maybe you didn’t. Either way: The rules of academic writing don’t apply to the business world.
Real-world business writing is more natural, reader-friendly, and easier to do than academic writing — especially after you know the basics covered in this chapter.
All these indicators of successful business communication come into play in everything you write. The following sections break down the various components of style into separate bits you can examine and adjust in your own writing.
Clarity and simplicity go hand in hand: Your messages communicate what you intend with no room for misunderstanding or misinterpretation. This requires the following:
Creating an easy reading experience is hard on the writer. When you write well, you do all the readers’ work for them. They don’t need to figure out anything because you’ve already done it for them. Make the effort because that’s how you win what you want.
Guidelines for business writing are not theoretical. They’re practical and supported by research studies on how people respond to the written word. Fortunately, you don’t have to read the research. Most word-processing software, including Microsoft Word, and several websites have digested all the data and offer easy-to-use tools to help you quickly gauge the readability of your writing.
Several readability indexes exist (see the sidebar “Readability research: What it tells us”). In this section, we focus on the Flesch Readability Index because it’s the index that Microsoft Word uses. The Flesch Readability Index predicts the percentage of people likely to understand a piece of writing and assigns it a grade level of reading comprehension. The grade level scores are based on average reading ability of students in the US public school system. The algorithm for the Flesch Readability Index is primarily based on the length of words, sentences, and paragraphs.
Highly educated readers can obviously comprehend difficult material, which may lead you to strive for text written at a high educational level for scientists or MBAs. But generally this isn’t necessarily a good idea. For most business communication — email, letters, proposals, websites — most readers (yourself included) are lazy and prefer easy material.
At the same time, usually you don’t want to gear your use of language to the least literate members of your audience. So take any calculations with many grains of salt and adapt them to your audience and purpose. (The average reader in the US is pegged at a 7th- to 9th-grade reading level, depending on which study you look at.)
If you’re writing in Microsoft Word 2016, to find the Readability Index choose File ⇒ Options ⇒ Proofing. (In Office 365, go to Word ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Spelling & Grammar.) In the When Correcting Spelling and Grammar in Word section, select the Check Grammar with Spelling and Show Readability Statistics options. Thereafter, whenever you complete a spelling and grammar check, you see a box with readability scores.
Several readability tests are available free online, including www.readability-score.com
. On most sites, you simply paste a chunk of your text into a box and have the site gauge readability.
Example print media targets for general audiences follow:
For online media, the targets are tighter. Reading from a screen — even a big one — is physically harder for people, so they are even less patient than with printed material. Sentences work best when they average 8 to 12 words. Paragraphs should contain one to three sentences.
Select a section or an entire document of something you wrote recently in Word or for a website. Review the Readability Statistics to find out if you need to simplify your writing. If the statistics say that at least a 12th-grade reading level is required (on many Word programs, the index doesn’t show levels above 12) and less than 50 percent of readers will understand your document, consider rewriting. Or do the same if you used more than 10 percent passive sentences.
The next section provides lots of suggestions for rewriting, but for now consider any or all of the following:
Then recheck the statistics. If the figures are still high, repeat the process. See if you can get the grade level down to 10, then 8. Try for less than 10 percent passive. Compare the different versions.
You may wonder whether basing your writing on short simple sentences produces choppy and boring material reminiscent of a grade school textbook. Aiming for clear and simple definitely should not mean dull reading.
Becoming aware of rhythm in what you read, and what you write, can improve your writing dramatically. Like all language, English was used to communicate orally long before writing was invented, so the sound and rhythm patterns are critical to how written forms as well as spoken ones are received.
Think of the worst public speakers you know. They probably speak in a series of long, complex sentences in an even tone that quickly numbs the ear. Good speakers, by contrast, vary the length of sentences and their intonation. As a writer, you want to do the same.
Good public speakers vary the lengths of their sentences to keep listeners’ ears engaged. They avoid long, complex sentences, and they know that short punchy words and phrases need to be doled out carefully for maximum effect. As a writer, you want readers to have a similar experience.
Even a short message benefits from attention to sentence rhythm. Consider this paragraph:
John: Our screw supply is low. It takes three weeks for orders to be filled. We should place the order now. Then we won’t have an emergency situation later. Please sign this form to authorize this purchase. Thank you. — Ted
And an alternate version:
John: Our screw supply is low. It takes three weeks for orders to be filled, so we should place the order now to avoid an emergency later. Please sign the attached form to authorize the purchase. Thanks. — Ted
Notice too that when you combine some short sentences to alternate the rhythm, easy ways emerge to improve the wording and edit out unneeded repetition. You may choose to go a step further and write a third version of the same message:
John: I notice that our screw supply is getting low. Since an order will take three weeks to reach us, let’s take care of it now to avoid an emergency down the line. Just sign the attached authorization and we’re all set. — Ted
Leaving aside how this was edited, which is discussed in the next chapter, notice how much more connected the thoughts seem, and how much more authoritative the overall message feels. With little rewriting, the writer comes across as a more take-charge, efficient professional — someone who is reliable and cares about the entire operation, rather than just a cog going through the motions.
Many people have a problem opposite to creating short, disconnected sentences. Maybe you tend to write lengthy complicated ones that end up with the same result: dead writing.
A number of basically good writers don’t succeed as well as they might because they fall into a pattern that repeats the same rhythm, over and over again. An example taken from an opinion piece written for a workshop:
I strongly support efforts to improve the global economy, and naturally may be biased toward the author’s position. While this bias may be the reason I responded well to the piece in the first place, it is not the reason why I consider it an exceptional piece of writing. Not only is this article extremely well researched, its use of cost-benefit analysis is an effective way to think about the challenges.
The monotonous pattern and unending sentences serve the ideas poorly. One way to rewrite the material:
I strongly support efforts to improve the global economy and this probably inclined me to a positive response. But it’s not why I see it as an exceptional piece of writing. The article is extremely well researched. Further, its cost-benefit analysis is an effective way to think about the challenge.
Again, simply varying the sentence length and structure quickly improves the overall wording and flow. Notice that you can take liberties with the recommended short-long-short sentence pattern and use two short sentences, then two more complex ones, for example.
Spend ten minutes with a recent piece of your writing that’s at least half a page long. Scan it for rhythmic patterns. You may find a balanced flow with varying types of sentences. Or you may see sets of short, choppy sentences. Experiment with recombining some of them into longer ones. If you find too many long, convoluted sentences, break some of them up so short, terse ones are interspersed. Read the reworked text in its entirety and see whether it reads better.
New business writers are often told to adopt a conversational tone, but what does that mean? Business correspondence written during the nineteenth century and even most of the twentieth seems slow, formal, and ponderous when you read it now. Today’s faster pace of life results in a desire for faster communication, both in terms of how you deliver messages and how quickly you’re able to read and deal with them.
Rhythm, described in the preceding section, is a basic technique that gives your copy forward momentum and promotes a conversational feeling. Sentence variety engages readers while unrelieved choppy sentences or complicated ones kill interest.
Additional techniques for achieving conversational tone include the following:
If you ignore the preceding guidelines — and want to look hopelessly outdated — you can write a long-winded and lifeless message like the following:
Yawn — and also a bit confusing. Or you can write a clear, quick, crisp version like this:
Hi. How are you? Listen, we got a problem. The project numbers are running way late. I won’t have them till Wednesday. Yeah. So no point meeting Tuesday. How’s Thursday look?
Online copy often works best when it carries the conversational illusion to an extreme. Pay attention to the jazzy, spontaneous-style copy on websites you love. The words may read like they sprang ready-made out of some genie’s lamp, but more than likely a team of copywriters agonized over every line for weeks. Spontaneous-reading copy doesn’t come easy: It’s hard work. Some people — frequent bloggers, for example — are better at writing conversationally because they practice this skill consciously.
The next time you encounter bloggers or online writers whose voices you like, copy some text and paste it into a blank word-processing document (to separate the words from all the online bells and whistles). Read through the words carefully and analyze what you like in terms of words, phrases, and sentences. See if you can identify how the writers pull off their appealing breezy style.
The most important guideline for selecting the best words for business writing may seem counterintuitive: Avoid long or subtle words that express nuance. These may serve as the staple for many fiction writers and academics, but you’re not striving to sound evocative, ambiguous, impressive, or super-educated. In fact, you want just the opposite.
The short everyday words you use in ordinary speech are almost always best for business writing. They’re clear, practical, and direct. They’re also powerful enough to express your deepest and widest thoughts. They’re the words that reach people emotionally, too, because they stand for the most basic and concrete things people care about and need to communicate about. For example, home is a whole different story than residence, and quit carries a lot more overtones than resign.
Make a list of basic one- and two-syllable words. Almost certainly, they come from the oldest part of the English language, Anglo-Saxon. Most words with three or more syllables were grafted onto this basic stock by historical invaders: the French-speaking Normans and the Latin-speaking Romans for the most part, both of whom aspired to higher levels of cultural refinement than the Britons.
If you were raised in an English-speaking home, you learned Anglo-Saxon words during earliest childhood and acquired the ones with Latin, French, and other influences later in your education. Scan these previous two paragraphs and you know immediately which words came from which culture set.
This principle holds for long documents such as reports and proposals as much as for emails. And it’s very important for online writing such as websites and blogs. When you read on-screen, you have even less patience with multi-syllable sophisticated words. Reading (and writing) on smartphones and other small devices makes short words the only choice.
The typical business English you see all the time may lure you toward long, educated words. Resist!
Consciously develop your awareness of short-word options. Clearer writing gives you better results. Opt for the first and friendlier word in the following pairs:
Use |
Rather than |
help |
assistance |
often |
frequently |
try |
endeavor |
need |
requirement |
basic |
fundamental |
built |
constructed |
confirm |
validate |
rule |
regulation |
create |
originate |
use |
utilize |
prove |
substantiate |
show |
demonstrate |
study |
analyze |
fake |
artificial |
limits |
parameters |
skill |
proficiency |
need |
necessitate |
The longer words aren’t bad — in fact, they may often be the better choice. But generally, make sure that you have a reason for going long.
Concrete nouns are words that denote something tangible: a person or any number of things, such as cat, apple, dirt, child, boat, balloon, computer, egg, tree, table, and Joseph.
Abstract nouns, on the other hand, typically represent ideas and concepts. They may denote a situation, a condition, a quality or an experience. For example: catastrophe, freedom, efficiency, knowledge, mystery, observation, analysis, research, love, and democracy.
Suppose at a pivotal point of World War II, Winston Churchill had written in the manner of many modern business executives:
We’re operationalizing this initiative to proceed as effectively, efficiently, and proactively as possible in alignment with our responsibilities to existing population centers and our intention to develop a transformative future for mankind. We’ll employ cost-effective, cutting-edge technologies and exercise the highest level of commitment, whatever the obstacles that materialize in various geographic situations.
Instead he wrote, and said:
We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Which statement engages the senses and therefore the heart, even three-quarters of a century after this particular cause was won? Which carries more conviction? Granted, Churchill was writing a speech, but the statement also works amazingly when read.
Using short words goes a long way toward this goal. Note how many words of the mock business-writing piece contain three or more syllables. Churchill’s piece uses only three. And running both passages through readability checks (see the previous section “Applying readability guidelines”) predicts at least a 12th-grade reading level to understand the business-speak with only 2 percent of readers understanding it. By contrast, Churchill’s lines require only a 4th-grade reading level and 91 percent of readers understand them.
Good strong verbs invigorate. Passive verbs, which involve a form of the verb to be, deaden language and thinking, too. Consider some dull sentences and their better alternatives:
Try also to avoid sentences that rely on the phrases there is and there are, which often bury the meaning of a sentence. Compare the following pairs:
You may need to go beyond changing the verb and rethink the entire sentence so it’s simple, clear, and direct. In the process, take responsibility. Passive sentences often evade it. A classic example follows:
Mistakes were made, people were hurt, and opportunities were lost.
Who made the mistakes, hurt the people, and lost the opportunities? The writer? An unidentified CEO? Mystery government officials? This kind of structure is sometimes called the divine passive: Some unknown or unnamable force made it happen.
To help you remember why you generally need to avoid the passive, here’s a favorite mistake. When a group of people were asked to write about their personal writing problems and how they planned to work on them, one person contributed the following:
Many passive verbs are used by me.
The award was created to recognize outstanding sales achievement.
Or you may have a surprise to disclose that leads you to use the passive for emphasis:
This year’s award was won by the newest member of the department: Joe Mann.
Comparisons help your readers understand your message on deeper levels. You can use similes and metaphors, which are both analogies, to make abstract ideas more tangible and generally promote comprehension. These devices don’t need to be elaborate, long, or pretentiously literary. Here are some simple comparisons:
Whatever device you use, effective comparisons do the following:
Good written messages and documents are well thought out, as covered in Chapter 1 in this minibook, and presented clearly and vividly, as shown in the previous sections of this chapter. But there’s one more aspect to highlight. Your writing must not only meet audience needs and read well but also look good.
The following sections show you how to use various graphic techniques to maximize your message’s appeal. And rest assured, you don’t need to purchase special software or other tools to easily implement these good design principles.
To coin a comparison (see the sidebar “Making up fresh comparisons”):
Add white space to your writing for the same reason bakers add yeast to their bread — to leaven the denseness by letting in the light and air.
Always look for opportunities to add that valuable white space to your message. Check for white space in everything you deliver. Factors that affect white space include the size of the typeface, line spacing, margin size, and column width, and graphic devices such as subheads, sidebars, and integrated images.
Type has numerous graphic aspects and effects. Following are some of the most powerful, as well as easiest to adjust.
Using an easy-to-read simple typeface (or font) is critical. For printed text, serif fonts — fonts with feet or squiggles at the end of each letter — are more reader-friendly because they smoothly guide the eye from letter to letter, word to word. However, sans-serif fonts (ones without the little feet) are favored by art directors because they look more modern and classy. The sans-serif face Verdana was specifically designed for screen work and often used for it.
And never type an entire message in capitals or bold face, which gives the impression that you’re shouting. Avoid using italics on more than a word or two because such treatments are hard to read.
Like font choice, the best point size for text depends on the result that you’re trying to achieve. Generally, somewhere between 10 and 12 points works best, but you need to adjust according to your audience and the experience you want to create. Small type may look great, but if you want readers 55 and older to read your annual report, 8-point type will kill it.
Online text suggests a similar 10- to 12-point range for body copy, but calculating the actual onscreen experience for a wide range of monitors and devices is complicated. Online text often looks different on different platforms. Err on the side of a generous point size.
Never resort to reducing the size of your typeface to fit more in. Someone once has to persuade his boss to cut back his “Message from the CEO” because it was longer than the allocated space. He resisted sacrificing more than a few words. Then he was shown what his message would look like in the 6-point type necessary to run the whole thing. He quickly slashed half his copy to create a better presentation.
For both online and print media, avoid making columns of type so wide that the eye becomes discouraged in reading across. If breaking the copy into two columns isn’t suitable, consider making one or both margins wider. Also avoid columns that are only three or four words wide, because they’re hard to read and annoying visually.
Be selective in how you justify text. Left-justified text is almost always your best choice for body copy. Right-justified text is difficult to read because each new line starts in a different spot. Fully justified copy (on both left and right) often visibly distorts words and spacing to make your words fit consistently within a block of text (unless it is professionally typeset, like this book). Worse yet, full justification eliminates a good way to add white space through uneven lines.
Using color to accent your document can work well, but keep it simple. One color, in addition to the black used for the text, is probably plenty. See whether an accent color sparks your message by using it consistently on headlines or subheads or both.
On the whole, if you have good images and they’re appropriate, flaunt them. This doesn’t really apply to an email or letter, but graphics certainly help long documents and anything read online.
Appropriateness of graphics depends on your purpose. A proposal can benefit from charts and graphs to make financials and other variables clear and more easily grasped. A report may include photographs of a project under way. A blog with a fun image related to the subject is more enticing. Additional possibilities for various media include images of successful projects to support credibility, illustrations of something yet to be built, change documentation, and visualizations of abstract ideas.
Your own resources and time may be limited. But when visual effect matters — to attract readers or when you’re competing for a big contract, for example — take time to brainstorm possibilities. Wonderful online resources proliferate, and many are free. With some imagination and research, you can use your computer to produce a good chart or graph.
Print media in the past decade have increasingly used graphic techniques to draw readers in with as many ways as they can come up with. Today’s readers are scanners first. Think of your own behavior when opening up a newspaper or magazine. You most likely scout for what interests you and then read the material, in whole or at least in part, if it appeals to you. When you get bored, you quickly stop reading and start scanning again.
Good headlines and subheads are critical to capture readers’ attention and guide them through a document. But you must also pay major attention to writing:
All these devices serve three important purposes.
18.118.137.67