When you write a report, guidance or insight, it’s because you have something important, useful or interesting to say. But what if no one actually reads it? Your important, useful or interesting information goes unnoticed, and your work is all for nothing.
This article is here to maximise the chance of your work being read – and your information getting out there. It offers big-picture advice to help you change the way you approach writing and specific, practical advice you can implement straightaway.
Get into the right mindset
At school, every time we wrote, it was always to show off how much we’d learned and understood. We needed to show off how many words we knew, how much knowledge we’d amassed, how deeply we’d thought about a subject.
When we write in a professional context, the goal is never to show off how much we’ve learned. It’s to share our understanding. We write to give people important information about the organisation we work for, the cause we’re advocating, the insights we’ve found.
Rather than trying to impress people with our knowledge, we’re trying to impart it. At school, we were the student. At work, we’re the teacher. This shift is central to making our writing more readable because we want to help other people rather than impress other people.
Write person to person
In a professional context, we’re often writing on behalf of our organisation. This feels like a weighty responsibility – and it’s easy for this sense of responsibility to seep into the way we write. We instinctively want to write more formally. Our writing wears a suit not a pair of chinos, if you like.
It can also feel concerning to imagine the hundreds or even thousands of people who may read your work.
But we write as an individual, even when we’re writing on behalf of our organisation. We read as an individual too. So while your work may be read by many people, they won’t be reading it all together.
So rather than imagining you’re an organisation talking to hundreds of people, imagine yourself talking to another person. You can still be formal – as if you were a line manager giving an appraisal to a member of the team (or vice versa), say – but you’re less likely to over-elevate or over-complicate your language because you know you’ll fail to make your point if you do.
Avoid using nominalisations
Or, to give them a dramatic term: ‘zombie nouns’. They’re typically verbs with suffixes like -ment, -tion or -ance attached, which have turned them into nouns.
Here are three examples:
The management of all cases is handled by senior staff
The interventions were seen to lead to a reduction in the number of people admitted
The results will be subject to analysis in due course
They sound exactly like the sort of thing you’d read in any professional context, don’t they? But don’t they also sound dull and abstract?
Here’s how they could be rewritten:
Senior staff manage all cases
The interventions reduced the number of people admitted
We will analyse the results in due course
By replacing the zombie noun with the original verb, the writing becomes more immediate, more engaging and more human.
(For a proper rant on zombie nouns and the problems they cause, I recommend academic Helen Sword’s Zombie Nouns.)
Use short sentences
The shorter the sentence, the easier it is to follow – and therefore take on board.
My favourite piece of research on this topic is from the American Press Institute. It looked how sentence length related to reader understanding. It found:
- When the average sentence length is less than eight words, readers understood 100% of the story
- At 14 words, comprehension is more than 90%
- At 43 words, comprehension is less than 10%
It means if you routinely use long sentences when you write, people won’t be able to follow what you say and will glaze over. Or, to put it another way, you needn’t have bothered writing at all.
This is not to say all sentences need to be eight words or less. Mixing up sentence lengths makes your writing more enjoyable to read because it sounds more musical. Just be wary when they routinely stretch beyond 25 words (gov.uk’s recommended limit).
A good rule of thumb is one idea per sentence. If you’re struggling to break something up into shorter sentences, it’s often because you haven’t quite worked out in your head what it is you’re really trying to say. Take a deep breath and a step back to unpick it.
If your sentences still feel long, consider if there are words you could cut. For example:
We called the owner so that we could let him know we had found his cat
We called the owner so we could let him know we had found his catIn the event that no one is here, wait for further instruction
If no one is here, wait for further instructionIt is important to clean your teeth twice a day in order to prevent cavities
It is important to clean your teeth twice a day to prevent cavities
Use short, simple words
If you have a choice of word, always choose the simplest and most straightforward option.
Think ‘use’ not ‘utilise’, ‘start’ not ‘commence’, ‘a year’ not ‘per annum’ and so on.
Choosing the simpler word will help to make your writing easier and more engaging to read.
Shorter words are more accessible for people with lower literacy levels too. (This may be more people than you think. The National Literacy Trust reports that 18% of adults aged 16 to 65 in England can be described as having “very poor literacy skills”. That’s 6.6 million people.)
But even if you’re writing for highly literate people, remember that most readers are short of time. If your writing is easier to read, it will be quicker to read. People will also be happier to devote time to reading it because they aren’t having to work as hard.
If you worry it will make you appear less intelligent, don’t. Research shows writers who use long words needlessly are seen as less intelligent than those who use basic vocabulary.
Happy writing
These are the tips I keep top of mind when I’m writing. They’re also the tips I share with the people I train. I hope you find them useful too – and enjoy putting them into practice next time you sit down to write!
