Writing recommendations
It sounds basic to ask for what you want when you're writing a recommendation, but a common complaint I hear is that many recommendations are too vague.
I think the problem is twofold. First, I think we often get so immersed in the detail we fail to stand back and see the bigger picture. This happens to all of us at times and it often helps to talk to someone not involved in your project or else try writing a summary paragraph and then a summary sentence.
The second problem is the wording of the recommendation and knowing how much detail to include. In my opinion, a recommendation should be sufficiently detailed to stand alone, i.e. make sense without the accompanying text. For example, a recommendation to lease office premises in Brisbane should propose a lease at X site for three years for $y with a maximum fitout cost of $z.
Such recommendations can then be copied and pasted into the minutes as resolutions and everyone will have the same understanding of their meaning. The person who has the responsibility to follow up understands their responsibilities, and the resolution is also a historical and legal record.
So next time you write a recommendation ask yourself:
- Is it clear what I am asking for?
- Is it sufficiently detailed (but not too detailed)?
- Does it make sense without the accompanying text?
- Will it stand the test of time if taken out of context?
- Is it clearly and concisely written?
Labels: recommendations, writing
Creating flow between paragraphs
One way of creating flow between paragraphs is by telling your readers something ‘old’ before you tell them something ‘new’. By telling your readers what they already know (as long as you’re not too long and boring about it), you engage their interest. They agree with what you’ve written and so are receptive to what you have to say next.
Great speech makers use this technique of ‘old before new’ to great effect. Martin Luther King began his ‘I have a dream’ speech by talking about the indisputable past before moving to talk about the present.
‘Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
‘But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of the American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.’
I got this idea from a new Australian book on business writing — Writing at Work by Neil James. It's an excellent book.
Applying the ‘old before new’ technique to a work situation, a writer was seeking approval to trial a new waste management technology. Before talking about the proposed trials, which would cost a considerable amount of money, the writer described preliminary trials that indicated the technology had great potential.Labels: paragraphs, writing
Write effective paragraphs
Paragraphs break our writing into manageable pieces. These days we've become used to short paragraphs and most are only four to six lines. We even occasionally use a one-sentence paragraph; in fact, press releases mainly consist of one-sentence paragraphs.
In business writing, your main idea must go in the first sentence. In fiction writing, you have more leeway. A common mistake is treating paragraphs as mini-essays with the conclusion at the end. One way of checking whether your main idea is at the beginning of each paragraph is to re-read your first sentences, either as you're writing or at the end.
After your topic sentence, the rest of your paragraph then explains and expands on your main idea and links to your next paragraph. A useful acronym is TEEL (topic sentence, expand, explain, link).
Many writers struggle linking paragraphs together and fall back on connecting words such as however, therefore, accordingly. These words are useful, but in my opinion are often overused. If your writing is well structured you can often delete several uses of however or therefore without any loss of meaning or flow. Try it and see. Or you could use simpler words, such as also, and, so.
Another way of linking is to use pronouns such as they and it to refer back to the noun in the previous sentence. This works as long as it's obvious what they or it refer to.
Visual aspects of paragraphs
We all make instant decisions about how easy a document will be to read based on visual cues. Paragraph length is one of the most important cues. Long, dense paragraphs scream 'difficult to read'.
Short plus variety
Most of your paragraphs in business and government writing should be fairly short, but you also need variety because if all your paragraphs are the same length they look monotonous. Varying the length of your paragraphs gives them greater rhythm.You can occasionally have a one-sentence paragraph for emphasis.
Word stacks
We sometimes get a particular word or phrase on our mind or maybe we have a term we have to repeat for clarity. Whichever is the case, you need to make sure that the words or phrases don't land on top of each other in sentences that are close to each other.
You also need to vary the words you use to start new paragraphs. For example, if every paragraph starts with I, your eyes are drawn to that word. You have to change your word order to avoid this.
Widows and orphans
If you split a paragraph after the first line at the bottom of a page or column, this single line is known as an 'orphan'. When the last line of a paragraph is at the top of a new page, it is called a 'widow'. Orphans and widows disrupt the flow of a document. Sometimes the flow is also disrupted by a single word on the last line of a paragraph. Labels: paragraphs, writing
Use specific language for clarity
Specific words are precise and clear. On the other hand, generic words, sometimes known as ‘fat’ or ‘fuzzy’ words, can be vague and ambiguous. At best, they are meaningless, at worst, they are misleading.
Some examples of fuzzy words are:- communication (what type of communication?)
- deal with, handle (how?)
- profound, significant, deep, extensive, intensive (by what measure?)
- in a timely manner, recently (when?)
- experts say (what experts?)
- research shows (what research?)
In ?owerful Questions, Christo Norden-Powers urges writers to be very critical and wary of fuzzy words. One example he gives is two sentences from an internal National Australia Bank (NAB) market risk report in November 2003. This report to an executive committee was written several months before the bank’s Forex trading losses of $360 million were made public. The NAB’s losses were associated with rogue trading, where trades were made outside the bank’s guidelines over a period of time.
"At the time of writing, [Global Markets Division] trading operations continue to manage risk responsibly in changing market conditions. Adherence to risk discipline is good."
Christo Norden-Powers takes these sentences apart and questions what words and phrases mean. For example, he asks questions such as: What trading operations specifically are you referring to? Which market conditions are changing? How specifically are they changing? What specifically are you doing to manage those changing conditions responsibly?
Labels: specific words, writing
Everyday words aren't always the best
Familiar everyday words aren't always the best choice. In most cases they are, but sometimes an unfamiliar word is more precise or has more impact.
Precise unfamiliar words may be more concise'Albedo' is an unfamiliar word, but if you were writing about climate change or the landscape it could be a very useful term as it means the amount of sunlight reflected back by a portion of the earth.
Unfamiliar words may have more impact'Woolly' thinking is a more common phrase than 'flocculent' thinking yet Winston Churchill, who was a great fan of simple words, used the expression 'flocculent thinking'. According to Sir Ernest Gowers, author of The Complete Plain Words, 'flocculent' conveys an extra ounce of contempt "perhaps because the combination of 'f' and 'l' so often expresses an invertebrate state, as in flop, flap, flaccid, flimsy, flabby and filleted".
New words creep into our language all the timeThe above examples both come from an interesting article by James Meek. But I started thinking about this topic when someone in a writing course suggested that we're dumbing down our language by using familiar words.
I'm not sure I agree as we're so inventive with our language. New words in the Macquarie Dictionary this year include: credit card tart, tanorexia, salad dodger, floordrobe, silent disco, Chindia and carbon footprint.
I bet you don't know them all! Their meanings: credit card tart = someone who transfers a loan from one account to another; tanorexia = skin tan obsession; salad dodger = an obese person; floordrobe = my son's bedroom floor; silent disco = dancers wearing headphones to eliminate noise pollution; Chindia = India and China; carbon footprint = our carbon dioxide emission impact on the environment.
New phrases include 'the green shoe brigade' (groups who cash in on environmental concerns in a dubious way), 'arse antlers' (tattoo just above the bum) and 'man flu' (man with a minor cold who exaggerates the symptoms).
ReferencesJames Meek, 'From albedo to zugunruhe', Guardian newspaper, Dec 07, http://tinyurl.com/2g3zsaErnest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words, http://tinyurl.com/26ackhTony Stephens, 'Linguists put the shine on Strine', SMH, http://tinyurl.com/26wy7jLabels: everyday words, precise words, writing
