Sharpen Your Writing Skills - Take the Stress Out of Business Writing
Writing the Wrongs
If writing is eating up your time or if your emails, proposals and reports are not being then it’s critical to sharpen your writing skills. Here Clive Lewis, MD of Illumine Training, outlines a three step approach designed to take the stress out of business writing.
Don’t read this article! You are too busy. You have a pile of other written documents to get through and what I’m about to say is probably as dull as ditchwater anyway.
Well alright, this isn’t true, or not all of it. However, I hope it will start you thinking about how you can capture a reader’s attention. You see writing is all about persuasion and the hard truth is that only 10-15% of what people write in their proposals, reports, letters, emails and brochures ever gets read. So how can you make your writing work harder for you? How can you engage people from the first sentence? How can you hold their attention?
…90% of all business transactions involve written communications…
Now you may be thinking that you write perfectly well already or, indeed, that writing is not really a key business competence for you because you are only relaying information. If you believe this then you are almost certainly wrong. Let me give you a few facts.
- It has been estimated that 90% of all business transactions involve written communications
- The 2003 E-Mail Rules, Policies and Practices Survey from the American Management Association, Clearswift, and the ePolicy Institute found that the average employee in the US spends about one hour and forty-five minutes a day dealing with email
- Text communication is also a growing phenomenon with over 2 billion texts being sent every month (The Mobile Data Association June 2004)
- The annual CBI-Pertemps employment trends survey (Sept 2004) revealed that 33% of firms found that they needed to give school-leavers basic training in literacy and numeracy
So is business writing important? I would say it is essential and one organisation that has recognised this and which we have been helping in this respect is the International Cricket Council (ICC).
Whether it is reporting on playing conditions, drafting rules for international tournaments or stating codes of conduct for players and umpires, the ICC clearly depends on the effectiveness of its written communication. And the Council recently asked Illumine Training to run its Writing Dynamics™ programme to help managers develop some of the key techniques used by professional writers.
…it provided useful advice on clarity of content and ways in which we could make our writing more concise and energetic…
John Moore is HR Manager at the ICC and he explained why the course was needed. “Our job is to promote the game of cricket and we are responsible for the global expansion of the game. Naturally enough we are communicating all the time with our member countries and other stakeholders. The reports and papers that we write have to be exceptionally clear and this course gave us an insight into how to improve the quality of our thinking and writing using some very practical techniques.
“In particular it provided useful advice on clarity of content and ways in which we could make our writing more concise and energetic. It certainly improved our skill levels and gained very positive feedback from our managers,” he said.
…professional writers spend more than twice the amount of time in planning compared to nonprofessional writers…
Now of course the people we teach on such trainings are already good communicators but typically they have never been shown how to increase the impact of their writing. Explaining to them what they need to do and then giving them the opportunity to try out new techniques is usually a revelation for them. So what exactly is involved?
The Three Step Solution
There are three basic steps that are guaranteed to make writing easier for you and for your readers - and they are these:
1. Planning. It is no surprise to find that planning comes first - but it may surprise you to hear that professional writers spend more than twice the amount of time in planning compared to nonprofessional writers. Now let me be clear about this. Planning is key both because it helps the writer to gather all their ideas and information and because it helps stimulate creative thinking. In this context there are a number of powerful techniques which you can use. Mind Mapping is one and you can find out more about how to use this planning tool on www.mindmapping.com Another is the Cluster technique which, like Mind Mapping, allows you to put down on one page all the various associated thoughts that you have around your subject. Both these techniques also help you to consider your audience. How much do they know about the subject? How much detail do they need? What style of writing is appropriate? Start answering these questions and you will have a much better chance of composing a piece that is appropriate and engaging.
2. The quick draft. Of course once you have constructed a plan it is far easier to draft your document. You know where you are starting, you know where you are going and you have some key milestones for your journey. However, when drafting a good piece of advice is to dismiss the editor part of your mind. Do not revise as you go along and once you have started don’t stop - keep going. If you make an error then leave it. If you can’t think of a word or phrase then leave a space to fill in later. Remember that nothing comes out perfectly the first time so instead of perfection aim for a draft that contains everything you want to say.
Furthermore if you are one of those people who finds that they can’t get started then begin anywhere. It doesn’t matter where you start as long as it is all included at the end. And one final hint with rough drafting; keep a notepad to hand. Every writer gets good ideas when drafting; ideas that don’t belong to the sentence or paragraph under construction. Note them as they occur and keep them for later use.
…the effectiveness of your communication is measured by what your reader takes in and understands…
3. Editing. Once you have drafted your piece you are ready for the most important step of all - editing. And invariably this means cutting down on your text, not adding to it. You may think that you have 1000 wonderful things to say but the effectiveness of your communication is measured by what your reader takes in and understands. Editors know this and that is why they are so ruthless with their red pen! Here are three areas to which they pay particular attention.
- Are you managing your readers’ attention? If your sentences are too long or too complex then break them down. Shorter sentences will help you to be clear and concise and make it easier for readers to follow what you are saying. Additionally, add variety. If the first sentence in every paragraph you have written starts with the same word e.g. ‘I ‘or ‘The’ then your readers’ attention will start to waver. Vary the length of your paragraphs and vary the words you start with.
- Create movement with more active writing. Most passive sentences contain some form of the verb ‘to be’. So if you want to develop a more active style of writing then look out for these words Š am, is, was, were, be, being, been. Once you have spotted that you are using the passive voice then change it. Put the ‘doer’ before the verb and the ‘doee’ after the verb. So ‘The director wrote the report’ is active while ‘The report was written by the director’ is passive.
- Create more energy by finding the action. Replacing long nouns with verbs will enliven your writing still further. Here is an example. ‘We would appreciate your signature on the contract’. This is terribly slow compared to ‘Please sign the contract’. Similarly ‘We’d like your clarification of the matter’ can be replaced by the faster ‘Please clarify the matter’. So your challenge is to spot problem nouns and be more direct.
How clear is your writing?
There are a number of ways you can test whether your writing is as clear as you want it to be. First try
reading it aloud. If it flows and has a logical structure then you are probably on the right lines.
Alternatively you can use the fog index to check whether your text has the clarity you require. To calculate your fog index take a passage of about 100 words and divide it by the number of sentences. This will give you an average sentence length (A). Now total the number of words which have three or more syllables (avoiding proper names, nouns or words with prefixes or suffixes). Call this total B. Add the totals A + B and multiply by a factor of 0.4 and this figure will be your fog index.
The figure you have for your fog index represents the minimum reading age required by your reader in order to make sense of your writing. And just to give you a feel for the fog index of the British press, The Sun has a fog index of 6-8, The Mail has an index of 10-12, The Times, The Guardian and The Telegraph have an index of 14-18 and The Independent an index of 20-24.
Now this article won’t make you a writer. Training and coaching in the planning, drafting and editing skills are essential. But you can start today to ask yourself how interesting or impactful your writing is. If it isn’t, or you want to improve it, then your challenge is to take action now.
Tags: International Cricket Council, Writing Dynamics™ (Training), Writing with impact, Written Communication