Writing, Clear and Simple

Why you should write things down. I especially like this one, which resonates with something I’ve said before—that better writing leads to better thinking:

Clearer thinking. You can’t hold that many thoughts in your head at once. If you want to solve a problem it can be helpful to write down you thoughts, facts and feelings about it. Then you don’t have to worry your mind about remembering, you can instead use it to think more clearly. Having it all written down gives you an overview and makes it easier to find new connections that can help you solve the problem.

10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking. Creativity is not thinking outside the box; it’s forgetting all about the box.
Wayne Schiess has been writing a series called Legal writing isn’t what it should be. There are several reasons for the situation Wayne describes; for example:

When you are in law school, you read lots and lots of judicial opinions. These judicial opinions were not chosen for their writing style; they were chosen for their content. Once you begin practicing law, you continue to read judicial opinions. After all, this is a common-a law nation, and the rule of precedent requires you to research and read judicial opinions to answer many legal questions.

But many judicial opinions are poorly written, and most are mediocre at best. One commentator has said that lawyers, in their reading, are exposed to “the largest body of poorly written literature ever created by the human race.”

He’s up to number 4, and they’re all good. I can’t pick just one to link to, so head on over and read them all.

 

Yesterday, my wife and I received the following letter from a company that manages some of our investments:

Dear Shareholder:
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is responsible for the oversight of financial services companies acting as broker-dealers to ensure investment recommendations are suitable. Any company that has registered representatives working as financial advisors soliciting investment and insurance products based on the financial status and investment objectives of its clients is classified as a broker-dealer. [Company Name], Inc. is considered a broker-dealer acting n this capacity and is therefore required to confirm certain information to you at least every three years or when information listed on the attached form changes.

The enclosed Confidential Data form contains information specific to you. Please be assured this information is kept in strict confidence and used only for the required maintenance of our records. If any information is incomplete or inaccurate, please add or update the information and return it in the enclosed envelope.

Note: No action is required on your part if the information is correct.

Please direct any inquiries and/or concerns to X-XXX-XXX-XXXX or write to the address below:

[Company Name and Address]

Sincerely,
Client Services Division

OK, Gentle Reader, take out a clean sheet of paper and a Number 2 pencil. What do you think is the biggest problem with this letter? Share your answer in the Comments. 

UPDATE 19 September 2007: Ray Ward, of the (New) Legal Writer blog, nails it:

You have to do an awful lot of reading before you find out why they’re writing you. The first mention of “you,” and what this letter has to do with “you,” doesn’t come until the 75th word. If I got this letter, I might have stopped reading before I found out what its point was.

Exactly. I’m guessing that the response rate for this letter is close to zero. Most people are going to read the first line or two, and then say to themselves “This is just some more of the legal mumbo-jumbo that these people send out all the time. I don’t have time to decypher this.”

Remember the inverted pyramid? Use it. It’s vital in business communication like this letter to let the reader know immediately why they’re getting a letter. In this case, something like this:

Please check the information on the enclosed Confidential Data form. If any of it is wrong, missing, or out of date, note the corrections or additions on the form and return it in the enclosed envelope. If it is all correct, you don’t have to do anything.

From there, the letter can go on to explain  that the information is kept confidential, and that the SEC requires them to verify this type of information periodically.

Put the main point at the beginning. This really isn’t hard to do, which makes me wonder why so few companies do it. 

I’ve written before about using metaphors to help make abstract concepts easier for readers to grasp.

However, you have to be careful not to overload your writing with metaphors, as The Wall Street Journal’s online editorial page illustrates with a Metaphor Alert in today’s Best of the Web:

“The bears would have us believe the sub-prime credit virus heralds the end of the world. They are wrong. The stock market—which I still believe is the best barometer of the health of business and the economic future—has behaved surprisingly well during this difficult stretch of turbulence.. Yes, profits are getting sloppy. And yes, there are some credit shocks out there yet to be revealed.. The animal spirits may have had their wings clipped a bit by the credit crunch, but there is still plenty of sizzle and juice in that story. It’s very easy to be totally pessimistic and bearish right now. That is precisely why I will avoid falling into that trap.”

—Larry Kudlow, National Review Online, Sept. 14

Fifteen metaphors in 123 words. That’s overdoing it, I think.

Five steps to technical documentation. First and foremost: “Identify the central question/subject.”

The Impotence of Proofreading. Yes, it says impotence, and not importance.

 Here’s a helpful manifesto from Change This!: When You Absolutely, Positively Should NOT Use Email: A Civilized List by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe.

Here’s a linguist, Steven Pinker, giving a talk that begins to explain why the messages we send are more than just the words we say, but how we say them.

In my last post, I said the way to be a better writer is to write. Many people leave it at that, and that’s fine.

But to take it one step further, as you write—and rewrite—begin to pay attention to how you’re using words, and how changing the order of those words changes things.

One of Pinker’s examples was this pair of sentences:

Give a mouse a muffin.

Give a muffin to a mouse.

They mean the same thing, right? Well, yes, but they’re not exactly the same. The emphasis is on different things, and they’re not the same rhythmically. 

Explore the differences, the nuances and subtleties that you can achieve with your writing.