Using document reviews to improve clarity

Well-written bids and proposals are vital to the success of your business. Review is an important step in the writing process. In review, you take the raw material of the first draft and hone it to give it greater sharpness, focus and, of course, clarity. Editing takes ideas that might be missed and ensures that they are clearly seen and understood by your audience. 

In most circumstances within bidding, it is advisable to have your subject matter experts write as much as possible. After all, they are the people who understand their topics the best. However, subject matter experts may struggle when trying to convey that understanding to others. These challenges can be especially problematic when they are not writing in their native language. 

In my previous article, I discussed techniques to adjust the level of your writing that improve the clarity of communication with your audience. In this article, I will discuss how to review, edit and improve clarity in the writing of others. 

Take it in stages

Careful, manual, end-to-end proofreading is almost always needed. Spelling and grammar tools are helpful for informal documents like emails but good enough for professional documents like bids. They focus on detecting words that are not present in their dictionary and use of grammar that breaks a predefined set of rules. Assuming the basics are right, clarity is improved through strategic choices of which words to use and which grammar rules to apply. Spelling and grammar tools have little to offer in this respect. 

In reviewing a document, you need to consider the different reading approaches that your audience might take. This also provides a helpful process with which to conduct your review. First, consider the needs of a scan reader. Is the overall structure of the document logical? Is it easy to identify the key sections and what each of these contains? Any issues that you find at this stage will need to be addressed first, as you may need to reorder sections, or request additional content to resolve them. 

Next, skim-read it end-to-end, but don’t change anything yet. Is the style consistent? Is the terminology clear and uniform? Are the arguments well made? Did you get lost in places? Make a note of any recurrent issues as you go, as a reminder to look out for them as you edit. 

You now have a sense of many issues there are in the document, and how big each of those issues is. This means that you are able to prioritise the editing work. One immediate decision to be made is that you may choose to resolve the structural issues now, or you may choose to tackle them as you go, along with the rest. Which is best depends on how significant the structural issues are. You will need to rescan the document after major structural changes, restarting the review process. 

Only now are you ready to review the document in detail. Read the document from end to end, in detail (as an analytical reader would do) and make the edits that you have identified in previous steps or find as you go. 

Things to look out for

Last time, I discussed the following areas of avoidable complexity:

• Long sentences and sentences with more than three clauses 
• Statements of features without links to clear benefits
• Use of different terms (names) for the same thing
• Jargon, colloquialism, simile, idiom and metaphor

Identifying and resolving these will greatly assist in the improvement of the clarity of the document. If you have one, your corporate style guide will provide information on the appropriate writing style. If your organisation doesn’t have one of these, you can always use someone else’s to help you as you conduct your review process. 

Also, be aware of and note ‘learnt errors’, where the author makes the same mistake again and again, believing it to be correct. These might be spelling, grammar or punctuation, and as they repeat are easily located using search. 

Avoid proofing your own work

Proofreading your own work is hard. Optical illusions are when our brains make false assumptions about what we are looking at. We know from these how easily we can fool ourselves, especially if what we are looking at is familiar to us. Wrods can be sitll be unredtsood if the frist and lsat ltetres are crrocet, so errors like "from” vs. “form” are particularly challenging to spot. Even the best spelling tools may miss these, so using text-to-speech software is the only reliable method of catching such issues. Most packages have this functionality, though you may have to change your accessibility settings to activate it.  

Having an independent proofreader is always best. Where this is not possible, take a break from your document and come back to it fresh. Even then, take it slowly and make sure that you ... actually ... read ... every ... word. 

Second languages introduce new challenges

Where the author is not writing in their native language, there are further issues that can arise. See the postscript at the end of this article for some reasons why, in spite of these issues, writing in a second language might be desirable. These issues can be specific to both the mother tongue and the language being used, but general examples include:

• Application of mother-tongue grammar rules to second-language writing
• Incorrect preposition choice (e.g. in most European languages one rides in a train and so it can seem odd to non-English native speakers that the British ride on them)
• Writing in a monotonous style by using only a few sentence structure types repeatedly
• Excessive formality due to learning the language at school rather than through immersion 

Within English, the cultural exposure for many non-native speakers is via US film and TV, so watch out for American names and spellings (this is a useful summary). These exist in many other languages too, for example, Austrian German or Brazilian Portuguese. 

These issues are important because they shift the audience’s focus from what is being said to how something is being said. This is an unwelcome distraction for your audience in what is, after all, a competitive environment.

Over these three articles, I have reviewed how to measure, write and review bid content with clarity in mind. Expressing your ideas clearly in writing is not easy. It takes time and patience, care and consideration. Within bidding, it is vital that you are as clear as possible as, ultimately, your audience will make decisions based on your words that drive the success of your business. Invest the time and you will see the rewards.

P.S. Why not translate?

Why ask an author to write in a second language, when external translation services or machine translation are possible? The challenges of accuracy, cost and time all play a role. 

Machine translation is currently insufficiently accurate for business use. Even when the source writing is error-free (which it often is not!), the translated text will almost certainly contain errors. These errors might be a source of confusion for the audience or even change the meaning completely. 

Unless a professional translator is an expert in the product or service, it is possible for them to change the meaning of your document. The work of a translator should always be checked by someone who understands the details of your solution. 

Another important factor is cost. Bid documents are usually large and good translation services are not cheap. However, time is usually the biggest challenge when using translation services within bidding. Having a large document translated can take several days. A team of translators working in parallel can introduce inconsistencies in style and terminology. These destroy that vital, single ‘voice’ of your document, as well as undoing all the work done to ensure that your document reads clearly.  

Due to these challenges, your reliance on translation in the middle and end of a bid process should be minimised. Supplying example texts of similar content (drawn from a content library) will help your authors. It is also a good idea to ask an internal, native-speaking colleague to review the document for errors in the product or service description. Activities like these will reduce the volume of writing to be translated. This will not only improve the clarity of your document but also release time that can be invested in making the solution even better. 

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