Improve Your Writing in Five Steps!

Create stronger prose for your target audience with these five quick tips!

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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These ideas universally apply to all forms of writing. But they are essential for clear business and technical communications. We take the time to improve in every other aspect of our career; this should be no different. If we can’t communicate the excellent work we do clearly, we are wasting the client’s time.

Think about what you (and your team) are trying to say and to whom. Write with those ideas in mind. If you feel stuck, continue writing anyway. Sometimes, simply allowing yourself to write down what you are thinking can make an enormous difference.

Most of these techniques can feel cumbersome when writing. However, for us to improve, we have to practice reading other sources, work on writing more effectively, budget time for reviewing and revising, and stop reinforcing the same bad writing habits.

It may also help to focus on these techniques when revising. Once you’ve put words on paper, revise your writing ruthlessly! Revision is the essence of great writing.

Successful technical and business writing is easy to read, comprehend, and recall. It is also engaging, trustworthy, and interesting. Just because we are writing about technical services does not mean we cannot motivate our audience to keep reading. Keep it alive with strong verbs, precise nouns, and short chunks of text.

Take out every word that adds no meaning—even if we think it sounds “professional,” and especially if it sounds “fancy” or elevated. Elevated writing is dense, hard to read, difficult to comprehend, and impossible to remember.

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” It takes practice.

The five tips outlined below will help you organize your thoughts and command them to paper. Remember, writing is simply talking to someone else on paper. Keep it simple, and budget enough time for writing and formatting, self- and peer-review, and revising and editing. ?

1) Write to your reader.

Tell compelling stories and create engaging content. Careful writing not only provides clear information; it also creates interest. Everything we write should tell a story—even if it’s technical. In the industry, we call this practice “writing a technical narrative.”

• Audience and purpose should inform your writing. Knowing your audience is half the battle! The other half is recognizing every potential reader has different life experiences which diversify the way we receive and perceive information. Aim to make this process easier for everyone. Often, bad writing is lazy writing.
• Use what you know or can infer about the reader to create content that reaches beyond the evaluation criteria. This demonstrates passion for our services and a real investment in the final product.
• It also creates trust. Try to be relatable. If you're talking to another subject-matter expert, be as precise and technical as you'd like. But if you're talking to a prospective or current client, take a more layperson approach.

2) Use shorter sentences.

• When possible, avoid two long sentences in a row. Long sentences might be easier for you as the writer, but the reader needs short ones.
• Sometimes your point can be lost in a long sentence, whereas short sentences tend to make your point clear.
• Alternating sentence length can improve the flow of your writing and effect the reader’s experience.
• ?Avoid long lists, especially lists within lists. Either break them up into several sentences or use bullets.
• This is not a rule you can follow all the time, but it is a good tip if you or your technical team struggle with long, wordy sentences.

Note: Some experts use the “every other sentence” rule to help regulate their sentence length.

3) Use shorter paragraphs.

Long paragraphs are hard to read and look uninviting. Notice that documents with shorter paragraphs are easier to read. The first thing the reader notices is the document setup. They see the words before they read them. Long, lagging paragraphs in small, squished font create a barrier for the reader the moment they open a document and long before they start reading.

• Long paragraphs distract the reader and leave them feeling suffocated. Make it easy for the client!
• Short paragraphs encourage readers, believing they can finish reading quickly and effectively. (Even if the proposal or document is quite long).
• Negative space improves comprehension.
• Left justification also improves comprehension.

4) Set paragraph expectations.

Set an expectation for each paragraph. Ensure your paragraphs always provide an answer and/or create a question for the next paragraph to answer.

• Interesting content—of any kind—carries readers along for a journey. We need to give them a reason to keep going. There must be something gained in every line.
• Many writers will purposely end paragraphs with a short sentence to invite the reader to move to the next one.

5.?????Use precise, correct language. And keep it simple!

This is difficult! As writers, we are often blind to how complex we make our words. Choose your words carefully! And remember, you're writing to serve the reader, not your ego! So, leave out elevated language that serves no purpose. Leave the "coming to the realizations" to the lazy writers. Instead, just "realize".

• Not every synonym means the exact same thing. Connotation changes meaning.
• It is important to write around a 10th-grade reading level. Above that, there is a fair chance the reader will get mentally tired. There are some exceptions, but the simpler, the better.
• Reread your work aloud. You will catch errors and poor sentence structure much faster.
• Ask others to review your writing.
• Practice reading other technical documents. Reading is the listening of written communications.