Principles of clear, effective writing

1. Use short words rather than long ones.

2. Prefer familiar words over unfamiliar ones.

3. Be precise. Be sure that each word conveys its precise meaning. Use your dictionary
and thesaurus.

4. Use strong verbs, and prefer active over passive voice.

5. Watch use of qualifying words and phrases. Check your adjectives, adverbs and
prepositional phrases. Are they needed? If not, strike them out. Be especially alert for long
strings of prepositional phrases. Prefer the use of nouns and verbs to adjectives and
adverbs.

6. Use short sentences. Try not to average more than 20 words a sentence.

7. Vary sentence length. Balance long sentences with short ones. Monotony in sentence
length puts the reader to sleep.

8. Be straightforward. Rambling sentences, filled with qualifying clauses, cause the reader
to lose the train of thought. You should take the most direct route between subject, verb
and object.

9. Avoid wordiness, jargon, pompous phrases and generalities.

10. Use restraint. Sound facts speak for themselves. An understatement is often more
effective than flamboyant words and phrases.

11. Revise. Read and reread what you have written. Then revise and rewrite until you have
achieved clarity and a pleasing style.

12. Use transitions. Weave the copy into a coherent whole by using transitional words,
phrases and paragraphs to bridge any gaps that would jar the reader. Avoid abrupt shifts
from one topic to another in a story.

13. Read your story aloud. This will help you hear how the story will sound to the reader
and make it easier to catch lapses in grammar or phrasing.

14. Before turning your story in and after you’ve completed all of your revisions, read your
masterpiece one final time for grammar and style only. Often grammar and style errors that
may have crept into your copy in the heat of composition will be corrected on this final
read-through.
 by Paul B. Thornton

Managers and leaders must express their ideas clearly, concisely, and completely
when speaking and writing. If your written messages aren't clear or lack
important details, people will be confused and will not know how to respond. In
addition, if your written messages are too lengthy, people simply don't read them.

The process of good writing involves three basic steps - preparing, writing, and
editing. Practicing the following 16 principles will help you be a more effective
writer.

1. Know your objective

Think before you write. What's your goal? Make sure you fully
understand the assignment. Are you writing a one-paragraph
executive summary or a five-page report? Try answering this
question: What specifically do I want the reader to know, think, or
do?

2. Make a list

Write down the ideas or points you want to cover. Why? This helps
you get started in identifying the key ideas you want to discuss.
If you have trouble getting started, try discussing your ideas with
someone else. "Kicking an idea around" often helps you clarify your
objective and fine-tune what you are trying to accomplish.

3. Organize your ideas

Just as it's difficult to find what you want in a messy, disorganized

desk drawer, it's hard to find important ideas in a poorly organized
message. Here are a few ways you can organize your ideas:

 Importance
 - Begin with the most important piece of information and
then move on to the next most important.
 Chronological order - Describe what happened first,
second, third.
 Problem-Solution - Define the problem, then describe
possible alternatives or the solution you recommend.
 Question-Answer - State a question and then provide
your answer.

Organize your ideas so the reader can easily follow your argument
or the point you are trying to get across.

4. Back it up

Have an opinion but back it up - support with data. There are a

number of ways you can support your ideas, including explanations,
examples, facts, personal experiences, stories, statistics, and
quotations. It's best to use a combination of approaches to develop
and support your ideas.

5. Separate main ideas

Each paragraph should have one main point or idea captured in a

topic sentence. The topic sentence is normally the first sentence in
the paragraph. Each paragraph should be started by an indentation
or by skipping a line.

6. Use bullets or numbers

If you are listing or discussing a number of items, use bullets or
number your points like I have done in this paper. Here's an
example of using bullets.

Join the Business Club to:

 Increase sales
 Gain new marketing ideas
 Make new friends
 Give back to your profession

7. Write complete sentences

A sentence is about someone doing something - taking action. The

someone may be a manager, employee, customer, etc. The "doing
something - taking action" can include mental processes such as
thinking, evaluating, and deciding, or physical actions such as
writing and talking. A good rule to practice is to have subjects
closely followed by their verbs.

8. Use short sentences

Sentences should be a maximum of 12 to 15 words in length.

According to the American Press Institute, sentences with 15 or
fewer words are understood 90% of the time. Sentences with eight
or fewer words are understood 100% of the time.

9. Be precise and accurate

. Words like "large," "small," "as soon as possible," "they," "people,"

"teamwork," and "customer focus" are vague and imprecise. The
reader may interpret these words to mean something different than
what you intended.

Reduce communication breakdowns by being specific and precise.

Define terms as needed. The reader may not understand certain
acronyms and abbreviations.

10. Use commas appropriately

Use a comma to separate the elements in a series of three or more
items:His favorite colors are red, white, and blue.

Use a comma to set off introductory elements: After coffee and

donuts, the meeting will begin.

Use a comma to separate adjectives: That tall, distinguished, good-

looking professor teaches history.

11. Use the correct word

Here are several words that cause confusion.

 You're is a contraction for "you are" Your means

possession, such as "your coat."
 It's is a contraction for "it is." Its indicates possession.
 Their means possession/ownership-"their
house." There means location. They're is a contraction for
"they are."

12. Avoid redundancies

It is a redundancy to use multiple words that mean or say the same

thing. For example, consider the following:

 Redundant - My personal beliefs… Beliefs are personal,

so just state, My beliefs...
 Redundant - I decided to paint the machine gray in
color. Gray is a color, so just state, I decided to paint the
machine gray.

13. Numbers

When using numbers in the body of your paper, spell out numbers
one through nine, such as "Three men decided…" When using
numbers 10 or above it's proper to write the number, such as "The
report indicated 68 customers…"

14. Have a conclusion

Would you really enjoy watching a movie or sporting event that had
no conclusion? No. The conclusion ties your points together. The
reader wants to know the final score - the bottom line message.

15. Edit your work

Read what you have written several times.

 On your first read, focus on organization and sentence

structure. Shorten long sentences. Cross out unnecessary
words and phrases. Reorganize material as needed.
 Read it again and make sure commas are used
appropriately and that there is a punctuation mark at the
end of every sentence.
 Read it a third time and focus on word choice. Are there
certain words that are vague or unclear? Replace them
with specific words.
 Read what you have written aloud to yourself or to a
friend to see if he or she (and you) can understand it
and improve it in any way.

A significant part of good writing involves editing. Very few people

can sit down and write a perfect paragraph on their first try. It
requires multiple rewrites.

16. Get help

There are several web sites that can help you improve your writing.
Check out the following: This very website has useful articles
on business writing. Dictionary.com helps with spelling and making
sure you're using the word correctly, and also has links to lots of
other resources.

Summary

You don't have to be a great writer to be successful

manager/leader. However you must be able to clearly and succinctly
explain your thoughts and ideas in writing.

Strive to be simple, clear, and brief. Like any skill, "good writing"
requires practice, feedback, and ongoing improvement.
 Paul B. Thornton is an author, consultant, trainer, and professional speaker. His company, Be The Leader
Associates designs and delivers seminars and workshops on various management and leadership topics.
His latest book Leadership and Leadership - Seeing, Describing, and Pursuing What's Possible is
available at www.amazon.com and www.bn.com. He can be reached atpthornton@stcc.mass.edu.

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5 steps to writing an effective  paragraph

We have already discussed whywriting an effective title is the key

to getting your paper read. But the title of a paper is paint and
trim on your house. The paragraph is its bricks and mortar. Each
paragraph is a self-contained logical argument, crafted to stand
on its own (like an abstract, or a letter to the editor of Nature) or
to be strung together to form a larger thing of persuasive beauty:
a well-written scientific manuscript. All the best writers in science
write gorgeous, tight paragraphs. Most of the good science
writers I know personally take great pride in the fact that they
write well. Furthermore, they are constantly on the lookout for
ways to hone their style. Here are some key principles toward
making your paragraphs sparkle.

1) Have a compelling and descriptive topic sentence. You saw this one coming, didn’t you?
Most of teaching can be summed up in one directive: tell’em what you’re going to say, say it,
and then tell’em what you said.  The topic sentence is the guidepost that tells the reader what to
expect. It sets up the coming argument. The topic sentence needn’t necessarily be the first
sentence, but it should obviously come early. Here’s two ways of recognizing a good topic
sentence:
1) Is the rest of the paragraph about the topic sentence?

2) If you go through your manuscript, highlighting just the topic sentences, is the manuscript
still coherent?

2) A paragraph has an inevitable logic. The topic sentence raises expectations. Now you
follow through with the meat of your argument: a set of logically connected sentences that
clearly and concisely builds your case. If you’ve slaved over a paragraph and are still not getting
the response you want from your readers, it’s often the case that your logic is flawed. Put
another way, writing is one of the best ways of discovering what you do not understand about
your topic. But a logically well-constructed paragraph is worth slaving over. Nothing else makes
you feel so much like, well, an academic.

3) The juicy example. Remember, you are teaching your reader about something. The logic
may be exact and true, but sans a compelling example that connects in multiple ways to your
logic, your argument risks being a perfect, abstract thing: lovely to look at but without
substance. Adding a juicy example to a paragraph is akin to scotch-taping a wolverine to the
cover of this book.

(Note added in proof:  Wolverines-Animal Scavengers   reminds the uninitiated that the brown
food web can be a pretty dicey neighborhood.)

4) Mixing up your sentence structure–One knock on scientific writing, besides the jargon
(more on that later), is the interminably long, latinate sentences. Yet when constructing a logical
argument full of if/then/or statements it is inevitable that the sentences can go on, and on, and
on… The solution is not to go all Hemingway (unless you are really, really good). You know what
I mean by that. Just spitting out a staccato series of noun-verb-noun sentences hoping that your
reviewer doesn’t secretly enter you in some faux Hemingway contest. But you can mix it up a
bit. Give your readers some opportunities to catch their breath as your brilliant logic rolls over
them like the waves in From Here to Eternity.

5) Summary sentence. Sometimes your example is so stunning in its power that it will seal the
deal. More often than not a strong summary statement is required. It serves two purposes. First,
the summary sentence is your opportunity to introduce some repetition precisely where your
reader is expecting it (remember: tell’em, teach’em, tell’em again). Second, the summary
sentence can point the reader to where you want to go next. The best science writers do both in
a single provocative sentence. In short, the topic sentence telegraphs your manuscript’s logic,
but the summary sentence gives your manuscript its flow.

So when you’re working on your next essay, remember that the best manuscripts are built one
paragraph at a time. Writing an effective paragraph is perhaps the single most
important communication skill to acquire in your first years of grad school. It is a skill that the
best scientists hone and one that we all universally admire. And that’s a big step toward getting
your ideas out there.

We close with the a quote gleaned from Copyblogger’s Ernest’ Hemingway’s top 5 tips for writing
well:

“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit,” Hemingway confided to F. Scott
Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

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