Chapter 3

Making Your Writing Work: The Basics

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: get over it. 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 I cover in this chapter.

Stepping into 21st Century Writing Style

In business you succeed when you achieve your goals. You need to judge business writing the same way – by whether it accomplishes what you want. What works is:

Clear and simple. Except for technical material directed at specialists, no subject matter or idea is so complex that you cannot express it in clear, simple language. You automatically move forward a step by accepting this basic premise and practicing it.

Conversational. Business writing is reader-friendly and accessible, far closer to spoken language than the more formal and traditional style. It may even come across as casual or spontaneous. This quality, however, doesn’t give you a free pass on grammar, punctuation, and the other technicalities.

Correct. Noticeable mistakes interfere with your reader’s ability to understand you. Further, in today’s competitive world, careless writing deducts points you can’t afford to lose. People judge you by every piece of writing you create, and you need to live up to your best self. However, good contemporary writing allows substantial leeway in observing grammatical niceties.

Persuasive. When you dig beneath the surface, most messages and documents ask something of the reader. This request may be minor (‘Meet me at Restaurant X at 4’to major (‘Please fund this proposal; a million will do’). Even when you’re just asking for or providing information, frame your message to suit your reader’s viewpoint. I cover writing for your audience in depth in Chapter 2 and the elements of persuasive writing as they apply to various media in Part II.

All of 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.

Aiming for a clear, simple style

Clarity and simplicity go hand in hand. It means your messages communicate what you intend with no room for misunderstanding or misinterpretation. This requires:

Words your reader already knows and whose meaning is agreed-upon – no forcing readers to look up words, no trying to impress

Sentence structure that readers can easily follow the first time through

Well-organized, logical, on-point content without anything unnecessary or distracting

Clear connections between sentences, paragraphs, and ultimately ideas, in order to make a cohesive statement

Correct spelling and basically correct grammar

Writing with the preceding characteristics is transparent: nothing stands in the way of the reader absorbing your information, ideas and recommendations. Good business writing for most purposes doesn’t call attention to itself. It’s like a good makeup job. A woman doesn’t want to hear, ‘Great cosmetology!’ She hopes for ‘You look beautiful.’ Similarly you want your audience to admire your thinking, not the way you phrased it.

One result of following these criteria is that people can move through your material very fast. This is good! A fast read is your best shot at pulling people into your message and keeping them from straying off due to boredom. These days people are so overwhelmed and impatient that they don’t bother to invest time in deciphering a message’s meaning. They just stop reading.

Creating an easy reading experience is hard on the writer. When you write well, you do all the reader’s work for them. They don’t need to figure out anything because you’ve already done every bit of it for them. Make the effort because that’s how you win what you want.

Applying readability guidelines

Guidelines for business writing are not theoretical. They’re practical, and moreover, 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 already 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 chapter). In this section, I 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.

Word’s version of the Index also shows you the percentage of passive sentences in a selection, which is a very good indicator of flabby verbs, indirect sentence structure and cut-worthy phrases. See the section ‘Finding action verbs’ later in this chapter for more on activating sentences that contain passive verbs.

Matching reading level to audience

Whatever readability index you use, your target numbers depend on the audience you’re writing to (one more reason to know your readers).

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. (And just so you know, the ‘average reader’ in the US is pegged at a 7th to 9th grade reading level, depending on which study you look at.)

When you want to reach a very diverse group with a message, you can segment your audience, just like marketers, and craft different versions for each. If a company needs to inform employees of a benefits change, for example, it may need different communications for top managers, middle managers, clerical staff, factory workers, and so on. Beyond assuming varying reading comprehension levels, you may need to rethink the content for each as well.

Assessing readability level

If you’re writing in Microsoft Word 2010, to find the Readability Index choose File➭Options➭Proofing. In the section ‘When correcting spelling and grammar in Word’, check the boxes ‘Check grammar with spelling’ and ‘Show readability statistics’. 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.

My personal print media targets for general audiences are as follows:

Flesch reading ease: 50 to 70 per cent

Grade level: 10th to 12th grade

Percentage of passive sentences: 0 to 10 per cent

Words per sentence: 14 to 18, average (some can consist of one word, while others a great many more)

Sentences per paragraph: Average three to five

For online media, my targets are even 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 eight to 12 words. Paragraphs should contain one to three sentences. I talk about adaptions for digital copy in more depth in Part III.

Select a section or a whole 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 per cent of readers will understand your document, consider rewriting. Or do the same if you used more than 10 per cent passive sentences.

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I offer lots of suggestions for rewriting in the next section, but consider any or all of the following:

Substitute short, one or two syllable words for any long ones.

Shorten long sentences by breaking them up or tightening your wording.

Break paragraphs into smaller chunks so that you have fewer sentences in each.

Look for words that are a form of the verbs ‘have’ or ‘to be’ (‘is,’ ‘are,’ ‘will be’, and so on). These verbs are weak and often result in passive verb construction.

Review the rewrite to make sure that your message still means what you intended and hasn’t become even harder to understand

Then re-check the statistics. If the figures are still high, repeat the process. See if you can get the grade level down to 10, then eight. Try for less than 10 per cent passive. Compare the different versions.

Finding the right rhythm

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.

In everything you write, aim to build in a natural cadence. Rhythm is one of the main tools for cajoling people to stay with you and find what you write more interesting. Just begin each sentence differently from the previous one and try alternating short plain sentences with longer ones that have two or three clauses.

Good public speakers vary the lengths of their sentences to keep reader’s ears engaged. They avoid long, complex sentences, and they know that short punchy words and phrases need to be doled out carefully for maximum impact. As a writer, you want readers to have a similar experience.

Fixing the short and choppy

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

For long documents, varying your sentence length and structure is critical. Few people will stay with multiple pages of stilted, mind-numbing prose.

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 I talk about in the next chapter, notice how much more connected the thoughts seem, and how much more authoritative the overall message feels. With very little rewriting, the writer comes across as a more take charge, efficient professional – someone reliable, someone who cares about the whole operation, rather than just a cog going through the motions.

Fixing the long and complicated

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.

The solution to never-ending strings of words is the same – alternate sentence structures. But in this case, break up the long ones. Doing this produces punchier, more enticing copy.

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. For an aspiring advocate of globalism, the article is a great example of using history and data to communicate a message in a non-partisan way.

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 10 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 whole 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.

Everyone has particular ways of writing that leave room for improvement. Strive to recognize your own weaknesses and you’re a giant step closer to better writing because you can apply fix-it techniques as part of your regular self-editing process. I give you a whole bunch of methods to draw on in Chapter 4.

Achieving a conversational tone

New business writers are often told to adopt a ‘conversational’ tone, but what does that actually mean?

Business correspondence written during the 19th century and even most of the 20th, 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.

Conversational tone is something of an illusion. You don’t really write the way you talk, and you shouldn’t. But you can echo natural speech in various ways to more effectively engage your audience.

Rhythm, which I discuss 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:

Infusing messages with warmth. Think of the person as an individual before you write and content that’s appropriate to the relationship and subject will come to you, and the tone will be right.

Choosing short simple words. Rely on the versions you use to talk to someone, rather than the sophisticated ones you use to try and impress. See the later section ‘Choosing reader-friendly words’ for examples.

Using contractions as you do in speech. Go with ‘can’t’ rather than ‘cannot,’ ‘I’m’ rather than ‘I am’.

Minimizing the use of inactive and passive forms. Carefully evaluate every use of the ‘to be’ verbs – is, was, will be, are, and so on – to determine if you can use active, interesting verbs instead.

Taking selective liberties with grammatical correctness. Starting a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’ is OK, for example, but avoid mismatching your nouns and pronouns.

Adopting an interactive spirit. As online media teaches, one-way, top-down communication is ‘so yesterday’. Find ways in all your writing to invite active interest and input from your reader. Part IV covers a range of ways to make online copy interactive and many of the techniques can be adapted to traditional media.

If you ignore the preceding guidelines – and want to look hopelessly outdated – you can write a long-winded and lifeless message like the following:

Dear Elaine:

I regret to communicate that the meeting for which we are scheduled on Tuesday at 2 p.m. must be canceled. Unfortunately the accounting information anticipated for receipt on Friday will not be able to meet the delivery deadline.

I am contemplating an appropriate rescheduling. Please inform my office of your potential availability at 3 p.m. on the 2nd. – Carrie

Yawn – and also a bit confusing. Or you can write a clear, quick, crisp version like this:

Elaine, I’m sorry to say we’re postponing the Tuesday meeting. The accounting info we need won’t be ready till Wednesday. Bummer, I know.

Is Thursday at 3:00 OK for you? – Carrie

Although the second example feels casual and conversational, these aren’t the actual words Carrie would say to Elaine in a real phone conversation. This exchange is more likely:

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 they were produced by a team of copywriters agonizing 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 (in order 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.

Enlivening Your Language

Written communication starts with words, so choose them well. But the most important guideline for selecting the best words for business writing may seem counter-intuitive: 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.

Relying on everyday words and phrasing

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. ‘Home’ is a whole different story than ‘residence,’ ‘quit’ carries a lot more overtones than ‘resign.’

Make a list of basic one- and two-syllable words and 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 last two paragraphs and you know immediately which words came from which culture set.

For this reason and others, readers are programed to respond best to simple, short, low-profile English words. They trigger feelings of trust (an Anglo-Saxon word) and credibility (from the French). Obviously I don’t choose to write entirely with one-syllable words. Variety is the key – just as with sentences. English’s history gives you a remarkable array of words when you want to be precise or produce certain feelings. Even in business English, a sprinkling of longer words contributes to a good pace and can make what you say more specific and interesting. But don’t forget your base word stock.

If you’re writing to a non-native English speaking audience, you have even more reason to write with one- and two-syllable words. People master the same basic words first when learning a new language, no matter what their original tongue, so all new English-speakers understand them. This applies to less educated readers too. Given the diverse and multi-cultural audiences many of your messages must reach, simplicity of language should rule.

This principle holds for long documents like 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 smart phones and other small devices makes short words the only choice.

Choosing reader-friendly words

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

I don’t mean that the longer words are bad – in fact, they may often be the better choice. But generally, make sure that you have a reason for going long.

Focusing on the real and concrete

Concrete nouns are words that denote something tangible: a person or any number of actual things: cat, apple, dirt, child, boat, balloon, computer, egg, tree, table, Joseph, and so on.

Abstract nouns on the other hand typically represent ideas and concepts. They may denote a situation, condition, quality or experience. For example: catastrophe, freedom, efficiency, knowledge, mystery, observation, analysis, research, love, democracy, and many more.

Concrete nouns are objects that exist in real space. You can touch, see, hear, smell or taste them. When you use concrete nouns in your writing, readers bring these physical associations to your words, and this lends reality to your thoughts. Moreover, you can expect most people to take the same meaning from them. This isn’t true of abstract words. Two people are unlikely to argue about what an apricot is, but they may well disagree on what exactly ‘independence’ means.

When your writing is built on a lot of abstract nouns, you are generalizing. Even when you’re writing an opinion or philosophical piece, too much abstraction doesn’t fire the imagination. A lot of business writing strikes readers as dull and uninspiring for this reason.

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.

While you probably won’t be called on to rouse your countrymen as Churchill was, writing in a concrete way pays off for you too. It brings your writing alive. Aim to get down to earth in what you say and how you say it.

Using short words goes a long way toward this goal. Notice 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 preceding section ‘Applying readability guidelines’) predicts at least a 12th grade reading level to understand the business-speak with only 2 per cent of readers understanding it. By contrast, Churchill’s lines require only a fourth grade reading level and 91 per cent of readers understand them.

You may often find yourself tempted to write convoluted, indirect, abstract prose – because it’s common to your corporate culture, or your technical field, or the Request for Proposal you’re responding to. Don’t do it. Remind yourself that nobody likes to read that kind of writing, even though they may write that way themselves. Take the lead in delivering lean lively messages and watch the positive response this brings.

Finding action verbs

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:

All of the department heads were invited to the celebration by the CEO.

The CEO invited all department heads to the celebration.

A decision to extend working hours was reached by the talent management office.

The talent management office decided to extend working hours.Or: The talent management office is extending work hours.

The idea is an improvement on the original design.

The idea improves the original design.

The annual report numbers were contradicted by the auditors.

The auditors contradict the annual report numbers.

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:

There is a company rule to consider in deciding which route to follow.

A company rule determines which route to follow.

There are guidelines you should use if you want to improve your writing.

Use the guidelines to improve your writing.

For most dull passive verbs the solution is the same: Find the action. Be clear about who did what and then rework the sentence to say that.

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:

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 unnameable force made it happen.

To help you remember why you generally need to avoid the passive, here’s my favorite mistake. I asked a group to write about their personal writing problems and how they planned to work on them. One person contributed:

Many passive verbs are used by me.

Take the time to identify the passive verbs and indirect constructions in all your writing. Doing so doesn’t mean that you must always eliminate them. You may want to use the passive because no clearly definable active subject exists – or doesn’t matter:

The award was created to recognize outstanding sales achievement.

Or you may have a surprise to disclose which leads you to use the passive for emphasis:

This year’s award was won by the newest member of the department: Joe Mann.

Using the passive unconsciously and often undermines your writing success. Substitute active verbs. They can be short and punchy, such as drive, end, gain, fail, win, probe, treat, taint, speed. Or they can be longer words that offer more precise meaning, such as underline, trigger, suspend, pioneer, model, fracture, crystallize, compress, accelerate. Both word groups suggest action and movement, adding zing and urgency to your messages.

Crafting comparisons to help readers

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:

Poets use metaphors like painters use brushes – to paint pictures that help people see under the surface.

Winning this award is my Oscar.

Life is like a box of chocolates.

The new polymer strand is 10 nanometers in width – while the average human hair is 90,000 nanometers wide.

From 15,000 feet up the world looks like a peaceful quilt of harmonious colors where no conflict could exist.

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Whatever device you use, effective comparisons

Create mental images. You can give readers a different way to access – and remember – your ideas and information.

Align things from different arenas. Using the familiar to explain the unfamiliar can be especially helpful when you introduce new information or change.

Heighten the impact of everyday practical writing. Just as in well-written fiction, a great comparison in a business document engages the reader’s imagination and boosts your message’s memorability.

Make intriguing headlines that grab attention. I saw a blog post recently titled, ‘How Learning to Ride a Bike is Like Working at Home’. I read it just to find out what the two things have in common.

Using Reader-Friendly Graphic Techniques

Good written messages and documents are well thought out, as I cover in Chapter 2, and presented clearly and vividly, as I show you in the preceding sections of this chapter. But I have one more aspect to highlight. Your writing must not only meet audience needs and read well; it must look good.

Whether your material appears in print or online, every message and document you create is a visual experience. More than readability is at stake; others judge your message’s value and credibility by how it looks. Whether you want to write an effective résumé, proposal, report – or just an email – design can make or break your writing.

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.

Building in white space

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.

Help your writing breathe by providing plenty of empty space. The eye demands rest when scanning or reading. Don’t cram your words into a small tight space by decreasing the point size or squeezing the space between characters, words, or lines. Densely packed text is inaccessible. If you have too many words for the available space, cut them down. I show you many ways to do that while also improving your impact in Chapter 4.

Always look for opportunities to add that valuable emptiness 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, column width, and graphic devices such as subheads, sidebars, and integrated images.

Toying with type

Type has numerous graphic aspects and effects. Following are some of the most powerful, as well as easiest to adjust.

Fonts

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.

You need to choose your font according to your purpose. For long print documents serif remains the better choice for the same reason that books still use it – ease of reading. But you can to some extent mix your faces. Using sans-serif headlines and subheads can make a welcome contrast. (For example, Times New Roman and Helvetica work nicely together.) But generally, resist the temptation to combine more than two different typefaces.

Avoid fancy or cute typefaces for any purpose. They’re not only distracting but may not transfer well to someone else’s computer system. They can end up garbled or altogether missing in action. Recruitment officers sometimes find a candidate’s name entirely missing from a résumé because their systems lack a corresponding typeface and end up omitting these very important words.

And never type a whole message in capitals or bold face, which give the impression that you’re shouting. Avoid using italics on more than a word or two because such treatments are hard to read.

Point-size

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 up 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. I once had to persuade the top 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 I showed him what his message would look like in the 6-point type we needed to run the whole thing. He quickly slashed half his copy to create a better presentation.

Margins and columns

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 very hard to read and annoying visually.

Be selective in how you justify text. The text in this paragraph is justified on the left, which 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. Worse yet, full justification eliminates a good way to add white space through uneven lines.

Keeping colors simple

Using color to accent your document can work well, but stay 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 and/or subheads.

Using a lot of different colors – even on a website – strikes people as messy and amateur these days. Designers prefer simple, clean palettes that combine a few colors at most. So should you. And do not place any type against a color background that makes it hard to read. This means that backgrounds should be no more than a light tint. Dropped or reversed-out type – for instance, white type on a black or dark background – can look terrific but only in small doses, such as a caption or short sidebar. A whole page of reversed-out type, whether in print or onscreen, makes a daunting read.

If you’re producing a substantial document or website in tandem with a graphic designer, never allow graphic impact to trump readability and editorial clarity. To most designers, words are just part of a visual pattern. If a designer tells you the document has too many words, certainly listen; it’s probably true and you do want the piece to look good. But ‘just say no’ if playing second fiddle to the visual undermines your copy. Graphics should strengthen, not weaken, your message’s impact and absorbability.

Adding effective graphics

On the whole, if you’ve got good images and they’re appropriate, flaunt them. This doesn’t really apply to an email or letter, but certainly, graphics 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.

Of course, 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. Your computer can help you produce a good chart or graph. It may take some imagination and research.

Images must feel appropriate to your readers. If not, you create a negative reaction. Even with websites, research shows that people value the words most and are put off by images unrelated to the subject. And generally stay away from clip art that’s packaged with your word-processing software or other design tools. Clip art must be totally appropriate to your medium and message or cleverly adapted to look original or else it instantly cheapens your message in the viewer’s eye.

Breaking space up with sidebars, boxes and lists

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. I show you how to write these bits in Chapter 9. But you must also pay major attention to writing:

Captions accompanying photos and other images

Sidebars and boxes offering additional background, sidelights or information

Interesting quotes or tidbits used as ‘pullouts’ in the margins or inside the text

Small tight summaries of the article, or introductions, at the beginning

Bulleted or numbered lists of examples or steps

Icons (such as the Tip and Remember icons in this book) that denote something of special interest

All these devices serve three important purposes.

Along with images, they break up unrelieved blocks of type that discourage the eye. In fact, on a printed page, some print editors use the ‘ten-dollar note test’: if you can lay down a note on a page and it doesn’t touch a single graphic device, then add one in.

They offer different ways to capture a reader’s attention. You may be drawn by a summary, a caption, or a box to read the whole piece, or at least some of it.

Using graphic devices helps to convey ideas and information more clearly and effectively. People absorb information in different ways. Taking lessons from the online world, today’s editors offer readers choices of what they want to read, and where they want to start.

All these graphic techniques should be part of your writing repertoire. Do you need them for every email you write? Of course not. But strategies like subheads and bullets can still help get your message across. For long documents and materials intended to be persuasive, draw on all the techniques that suit your goals and audience.