Writing to inform and impress

Writing can seem like a chore, but unless it’s clear and impressive, says Patrick Forsyth, it’s a wasted opportunity. So make sure that the way your project is written and presented is the icing on the cake.

The end is in sight, and you’re about to embark upon your final challenge: writing up your project.

Everything you write presents you with an opportunity. Whether you are writing a final year project, a report, proposal or business plan, a letter, memo or email – all must be clear. Any confusion, even just a slight confusion, can end up causing delay and frustration. It can waste time while things are clarified. It may result in a wrong action, or in inaction that costs money as well as time, or in losing marks on your brilliant project. At worst, an inappropriate document can cast you in an inappropriate light, returning months afterwards to haunt you.

Get it right and the reverse is true. Good writing is truly a career skill – one that no one in business can afford to be without. It can smooth operations with its clarity and positions you as competent and authoritative. Clarity – rather than a profusion of unexplained jargon – is especially powerful, not least in technical areas. However good verbal communication may be, the written form often lags behind. Somehow writing is more difficult. People originate material that is at best pedestrian and at worst formulaic, banal or full of jargon and gobbledegook. Why?

Most often it is through a lack of thought and care. Writing takes place with an eye on the clock. Messages may be drawn from standard material (sometimes dating back years and never having been good) or it may reflect bad writing habits of a lifetime, which perhaps started with no real guidance as to what was best. I find, when critiquing material on business writing courses, that the worst examples are rarely defended. No one says, ‘You’re wrong. I thought long and hard about that and I believe it is the best way to say it’; more likely they admit something is unclear or gives the wrong impression and readily seek a better turn of phrase. It is not that wrong decisions are made, rather that thought and care is inadequate as writing takes place on ‘automatic pilot’.

Making it right

Good writing – of any document, long or short – starts with clear intentions. If you cannot say why you are writing, then it is unlikely that you will create something satisfactory. Writing must reflect clear intentions in four main areas:

the message: what it is, how it can be made clear, what effect it should have on the reader, what restrictions or opportunities the form of writing reflects
the nature of the message: must it inform, persuade, change attitudes or motivate; or all three or more?
the readers: what are their expectations, not only for the message but also for the written form (will they expect it to be long or short, clear, descriptive, jargon-free, etc.)?
the image projected: what impression should it give of you? Maybe you need to appear experienced, helpful, well organised – such a list is long and you can doubtless add more.

The complexity here is clear. Many factors must be borne in mind and all demand an active approach; in other words it is not enough to be well organised – you have to appear so. And just maybe your intention is to appear better organised than you actually are!

Common mistakes

The following are all important:

Punctuation: this must be used correctly – and there must be enough of it. Anything you cannot read out loud without running out of breath needs more punctuation;
Simplicity: short words, short sentences and short paragraphs are to be preferred. Actually a mix of sentence length works well, and makes the text seem more manageable. Like this. It was the American writer Mark Twain who said, ‘I never write ‘metropolis’ when I get paid the same for writing ‘city’’. It remains a good thought;
Adjectives: many business documents contain far too few. If description is important – then describe. There is all the difference in the world between saying something is ‘very slippery’, and saying that it is ‘as slippery as a freshly buttered ice-rink’. Nothing you propose is ever ‘very practical’; if there is nothing better to say about it than that, forget it;
Style: language is a powerful thing. It is more important to be clear; to put a picture in someone’s mind or bring something to life, than to fit some academic vision of what ‘business writing’ should be like. Especially so if, as too much is, writing is replete with galimatias and sesquipedalian (that’s gibberish and overly long words). So use words that work and beware of reducing impact with excessive verbiage;
Annoying: words and phrases can annoy. I hate seeing ‘at this moment in time’, written rather than ‘now’. Or ‘due to the fact that’ instead of ‘because’. Words can be too new (and sound pretentious), too old (and sound old-fashioned), or too complicated (and sound inconsiderate if you are writing too much jargon for your reader’s level of technicality). Choose words and phrases carefully and avoid the overused: ‘user friendly’ has long since become bland rather than descriptive;
Correct: this is not the place for a treatise on grammar and syntax, but English contains many pitfalls. One example: the delightfully named tautology – unnecessary use of words that mean essentially the same thing like ‘exporting overseas’ or ‘future planning’.

If you write in a natural style (close to how you would speak), that is well organised (with a clear structure and logical flow), and if you always keep your readers (whoever they may be) in mind, then you are more likely to impress. Remember that writing is a fragile process.

The difference a word makes

Choosing even one wrong word may confuse, annoy – or worse. The following examples are designed to show the danger:

‘Continuous’ (unbroken or uninterrupted); ‘continual’ (repeated or recurring) – a project might be continuous (in process all the time), but work on it likely continual (unless you never sleep);
You might want to do something ‘expeditious’ (quick and efficient), but saying it is ‘expedient’ might not be so well regarded (meaning only that something is convenient – not always a good reason for action);
‘Fortuitous’ implies something happening accidentally; it does not mean fortunate.

No inaccurate use of language will help your case, even if it only annoys rather than confuses – as adding just one inappropriate word – very – to unique might do (unique means unlike anything else and cannot be so qualified).

Improvement and change

Improvement may demand developing new habits. One common fault is that promotional writing is ‘introspective’: every thought (even every paragraph or sentence) in a brochure starting with the words ‘We’, ‘I’ or ‘The firm’, when concentration would be better focused on the customer. Resolve to twitch every time you do this; and try to express the same thought starting with ‘You’ (or ‘your’) to help kick start a different, and more reader-oriented, style.

The written word is not transient like speech. In writing, first impressions last. Look again at some recent documents you have written. How well do they work? Be honest. Creating words with real impact – that will explain, impress and differentiate – can be a striking, low-cost way to improve business results. The effort involved will pay dividends.

Patrick Forsyth runs Touchstone Training & Consultancy. He is the author of a number of successful business books, including ‘Powerful Reports and Proposals’ and ‘Persuasive Business Writing’.

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