Manage Your Writing

This week: Don't throw good money after bad

In poker, I'm told, it's important not to think of any of the money in the pot as your money. If you put $10 in the pot before the draw, you just have to forget that fact. If, after the draw, you keep thinking of that $10, you'll be betting to protect your investment. And you'll make bad decisions. There's even a common phrase expressing that advice: "Don't throw good money after bad."

In writing, the principle is the same. If you think of the time and effort you've invested in a piece of writing, you're bound to be reluctant to change anything. To be an effective business writer, however, you simply have to lose that reluctance. As poet John Berryman said, "One must be ruthless with one's own writing or someone else will be."

This week: Do the alphabet shift

This week, each time you've drafted something, go back and choose a word you've written beginning with a letter from the first half of the alphabet. Replace it with a more effective word beginning with a letter from the second half of the alphabet.

OK, there's nothing special about the second half of the alphabet. But the exercise trick will help you learn that you never have to settle for the first word that occurs to you.

This week: Respect your customer

Every reader is a customer: an actual external customer, an actual internal customer, or at least a customer of your writing.

This week, as you plan and revise each message, think about treating your reader/customer with the same respect you want when you are a customer. Make reading your message as easy and as stress-free as possible.

My friend Oliver E. Nelson, Jr., account exec at Energy Systems Group, taught me what I've begun to think of as "Nelson's Golden Rule": "Write unto others as you would have them write unto you."

This week: Go "which-hunting"

This week, as you revise, follow the advice in Strunk and White's Elements of Style, and go "which-hunting." That is, look for places you have used the words which, who, or that to introduce a subordinate clause, and see if you can eliminate the need for that clause.

For example,

Count the chairs which are in the room

can be revised to

Count the chairs in the room.

Not only have we eliminated two words, we have kept the reader's brain from having to process a whole extra clause.

As Dorothy found out, not all whiches are bad. But watching for them is still a good idea.

This week: Put first things first

This week, after you draft each piece of writing, look at the first few words of each sentence. Ask yourself, "Do most of my sentences begin with the main point?"

If not, try revising at least some of them to put the main point at the beginning. You may find that your writing gets its point across better.

This week: Try numbers and bullets

This week, after you draft each piece of writing, try to find places where a numbered or bulleted list could be substituted for an ordinary sentence or paragraph. You may find that your writing becomes much easier to read.

This week: Persuade

Psychologist Robert B. Cialdina, after 30 years of research into what makes people comply with requests, identified six human tendencies that can lead to compliance:

1. Reciprocation. People more likely will give you something if they get something back.
2. Consistency. If people comply with one request, they more likely will comply with others.
3. Social validation. People more likely will comply if others are complying.
4. Liking. People more likely will comply with requests from people they like.
5. Authority. People more likely will comply with requests from people they see as being in authority.
6. Scarcity. People more likely will comply with requests when they see what they will receive as scarce.

This week, anytime you write to persuade someone to do something, check Cialdina's list. See if you can use one of his principles to improve your odds of getting things done.

This week: Add up the cost

At his blog Writing, Clear and Simple, Roy Jacobsen has a great post on figuring the cost of a piece of writing and balancing that cost against the value to your reader. He writes:

Assume you’re writing an email message that you’ll send to a company distribution list. The message isn’t long, so let’s say it takes five minutes to read. Only five minutes; that’s no big deal, right?

Well, how big is the distribution list? 100 people? In that case, if we assume the value of their time averages $60/hour, your single email costs the company five dollars per person, or $500. (That is, ($60/12)*100.) 

Now, add on a 10 page whitepaper that you’ve attached (because it contains valuable background information). How long does it take to read and digest that?

We haven’t added the cost of your time and resources here, but remember that there’s no multiplier effect magnifying those costs. (This analysis also disregards the cost of the delivery channel, which might be significant.)

You see, the cost of even a little thing like an email can add up to a sum larger than you expected.

This week, read the rest of Roy's article and follow his closing advice:

Before you begin writing, ask whether the value of the content outweighs the cost. Think about it: How much time do you spend sorting out the really valuable kernels from all the email chaff in your inbox? Multiply that amount of time across your organization, and then decide whether you want to create more kernels of value, or chaff.

This week: Form a subversive cell

I often advise writers to read, and revise, their drafts as though they were written by someone else. Such objectivity makes for better revision.

But what if someone else really did write the draft?

This week, think about setting up an underground, subversive writing team, in which you and a coworker routinely revise each other's drafts. You'll both end up writing better, and looking better to your readers and your boss.

This week: Follow Iacocca's Rule

One of former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca's "Eight Commandments of Good Management" is "Say it in English and keep it short."

This week, as you revise, ask yourself two questions: (1) Is this in English? (the English that people speak, not the pseudo-English of too much business writing) and (2) Is this as short as possible?

Enough said.