Top tips for writers
By: AGR | Posted: 06th June 2008
Think of the reader
With internal communications, staff newsletters and team briefs, you don't have to prove you can write like a best-selling author or gain prizes for intellectual ability. Your job is to communicate effectively. That means brevity, accuracy, simplicity. It means knowing your audience and thinking of the reader from the word go. Put your points in a logical sequence - give the facts in a descending order of importance.
Brevity rules OK
Keep stories to a maximum of 250-300 words. Line after line of text unrelieved by paragraph breaks is boring. Keep sentences to 25-30 words – at the 50-word mark you are being long-winded. Insert a paragraph break after a change of thought or tack. Aim to keep paragraphs to three or four sentences. Only let paragraphs run longer for a detailed or technical explanation. Keep quotes short too.
Plain is best
Plain, simple, English gets your message over best. Go for the short word rather than the long. Don't use flowery descriptions, particularly in news items - stick to the facts.
Write tight
Avoid repetition. Check for synonyms. Don't insert words that add little or nothing to sense or meaning. Don't put i.e., e.g. or etc. Don't start two sentences the same way. Use bullet points for long lists or put them under separate headings. Don't use an ampersand in text. Study newspapers to see how journalists condense a mass of facts.
Get the grammar right
Keep to the rules of grammar. But don't be pedantic. Don't be afraid to introduce journalistic licence for internal communications.
Punctuation essentials
Use commas sparingly: three in a sentence may be one too many. Get the apostrophe (if one is needed) in the right place. Use a colon to introduce a quote, not a comma. Don't overuse brackets . Don't use a hyphen for a dash which is twice as long. An exclamation mark is hardly ever necessary.
Make it readable
If your words are hard to read you've wasted your time. Headlines, bullet-points, sub-headings and captions all help to liven the page. Make reading as effortless as possible. A tired eye means a lost reader. For good.
Accuracy first
Be extra careful with names, figures and with unfamiliar or technical words. Check that days of the week coincide with dates. If you say a certain number of points follow, ensure there are that number.
Avoid flabby prose
Needless words and phrases obscure the point of your writing. For example, look at the difference between:
Banish the weak expletive
Starting a sentence with the weak expletive There is or There are wastes reading time and puts the reader on hold until the sentence topic finally appears. Compare:
Don’t be dated
Never start a story with a date – it is unlikely to be the most important fact and using the date upfront will make your story read like the contents of a policeman’s notebook and bore your reader rigid.
Out with clichés
Learn to recognise the cliché. Don't acknowledge you have written one by putting it in quotes. Out go having said that, of the fact that, and hundreds of other awkward, worn words and catch phrases. As soon as you realise you have used an expression you have read many times before think of something shorter and original instead.
Kill the gobbledygook
Much the same goes for jargon, the language of a trade, business or profession. Write with words and expressions your readers will understand: what makes sense to a particular group may be gibberish to others. Information for a wide readership must be clear to all audiences.
Slang is out too
Much slang comes from jargon. You can get away with it in speech, say at a conference, but not in print. Some comes from advertising and is accepted as part of modern culture, but is often criticised. The best place for slang is the sales leaflet.
Avoid awkward syntax
Although they maybe (strictly speaking) grammatically correct, words such as ‘amongst’ and ‘whom’ sound pompous and old-fashioned in any publication and you won’t find them in a newspaper.
More at Writing for Internal Communications.
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Tags: hyphen, headings, repetition, bullet points, punctuation, knowing your audience, logical sequence, internal communications, brevity, rules of grammar, long don