business writing: write today

If you suspect that your reports, proposals and email messages aren’t being read, you may well be right.

History Syndrome ensures people put your writing aside

Many business writers have what I call History Syndrome. They take forever to get to the point they’re making. The cover all the details of a bid, or a client relationship, or a sales campaign, before they get to the meat of the document.

This is fatal, because your readers put the material aside to read “later”.

Whatever you’re writing, put the point you want to make up front. Right within the first (or the second, if you’re writing email) paragraph.

This is your summary, in a paragraph or less. Sum up the situation and your position on it. Then you can include some history if you must – just enough so your readers can orient themselves.

Get to the point: if you don’t, your readers will never discover just what your point was.

[tags]business writing, documents, summary, reports, proposals, email[/tags]

Email, blogging and Web pages need white space, because people scan online, they don’t read, and if something looks uninviting, they click away.

Unfortunately we’ve all got email correspondents who wouldn’t recognize a paragraph if it walked up to them introduced itself. An email message from one of these poor souls is just one long endless paragraph. You have to edit the message so you can decipher it. Of course, few people bother to do this – it’s easier just to hit the delete key.

If you’re working with people like this, show them this eye-tracking research study, which notes:

Shorter paragraphs performed better in Eyetrack III research than longer ones. Our data revealed that stories with short paragraphs received twice as many overall eye fixations as those with longer paragraphs. The longer paragraph format seems to discourage viewing.

[tags]business writing, paragraphs, eye-tracking, formatting, online writing, Web writing[/tags]

I’m exhausted. I’ve just read a news article by a writer who feels that if one exclamation point is great, one per paragraph is even better. This has a very tiring effect on a reader.

Here’s what the Columbia Guide To Standard American English has to say about exclamation points/ marks:

The exclamation point (!) is the punctuation mark used to give the sort of emphasis to a word, phrase, or sentence that suggests loud, vigorous, forthright delivery. Never! Free at last! Never darken my door again! In English it always goes at the end of the locution to be emphasized. But stridency is seldom approved in speech, and so in writing too be sparing of the exclamation point. Rely on your words, not your punctuation, to make your passion ring forth.

Do you ever need exclamation points?

Exclamation points are usually redundant. For example, contrast:

“Shut up!” She shouted.

and

“Shut up!”

In the first example, “she shouted” is redundant.

I once had an editor who suggested that you should only use one exclamation point per book. I think that’s about right – one exclamation point per 100,000 words.

It’s rare that you need them, but they’re beloved of writers who lack confidence. Visit eBay anytime. Exclamation points rule there. All are redundant, and most are downright silly.

[tags]language, English, exclamation point, exclamation mark, usage, redundant[/tags]