In business writing we should adhere to the standards that the most educated English speaking authors have adopted for the last few centuries. As a matter of philosophy, that’s not radical; as a matter of practice, it’s absolutely radical.
In the next few paragraphs I’ll provide you with ten reliable guidelines you can use immediately to make your own business writing more compelling, more credible, and easier to read.
Keep It Simple and Avoid Technical Language
Business writing should be straightforward and easy to read. Always avoid long words when short ones will do. Avoid technical language unless it’s absolutely required – and usually it’s not. Authors of business documents should expect their executive readers to be busy and impatient. They should never expect them to be technical experts.
Use Lots of Graphics
Business writers should allocate at least a quarter of their report space to graphics: pictures, logos, graphs, maps, diagrams, charts … anything that will help get their messages across. Words appeal to one hemisphere in the brain, graphics appeal to the other. A document with both text and powerful graphics will drive its points home. It will be far more compelling than a document with words only.
Don’t be afraid to use 50% or more of the report space for graphics. Interestingly, some of the best Web sites today allocate up to 80% of their real estate to graphics. That’s not a sin.
Use Colour – But Don’t Overdo It
Use colour and page design with deliberate thought. Preformatted report styles are readily available; colour laser printers are affordable today. They should both be used to advantage. Personally, I like the page designs that Apple provides in its proprietary software Pages. If you don’t have an Apple, find someone who does and take a close look at its page layouts. You can reproduce them in Word without much effort.
I like to use colour in my section and subsection headings. Use the same colour in all your headings. I use bright blue or dark brown. They both have an “executive” look to them and make the page look more interesting.
Charts should always be in colour.
Deliver on What You Promise – No More, No Less
I’ve read too many management reports with headings something like Findings that go onto talk about analysis, conclusions, and recommendations. If your report heading is Findings, then the only thing you’re allowed to discuss is your findings. Nothing else. Nada. That’s a rule and you’re not allowed to break it.
At the same time, all of your findings should be included under this heading. In other words, you should never introduce your findings in any other part of the report.
Keep It Short, Stupid
Keep your reports short. The shorter, the better. Busy executives are quite likely to throw short reports or proposals into their briefcases to read on a plane; they’ll rarely pick up heavy tomes to study on the train ride home.
I’ll take a risk and say that a business proposal shouldn’t be more than 25 pages long. I already know what you’re going to say: “My plan is so complex that it needs at least 40 pages – probably more – to make the points clear.”
Well, that’s simply not true. If your message is complex, put it in an appendix. Appendices can be as long as you like. Your business report, though, should include just the summary of your complex message.
Write an Interesting Table of Contents
The Table of Contents is an excellent place to tell your story. Most authors squander this opportunity by writing boring tables of contents. Here’s the Table of Contents for the Executive Summary I wrote for a client I’ll call the XYZ Company.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
An Opportunity to Generate More Than $800,000 US over Five Years
The Patents Have Just Been Extended for Another 17 Years
Three Manufacturers Already Produce These Products
The New Owner Can Easily Improve Profitability by Making a Few Tactical Changes
There Are New Off-Shore Opportunities
We Are projecting 5% Annual Growth in Demand from Current Markets
We Project More Than $800,000 in Cumulative Profit – After Paying the $500,000 Debt and the Interest on That Loan
XYZ Needs to Borrow $500,000 US To Fund This Acquisition
We See Low Risk and High Reward in This Acquisition
You can see that the Table of Contents itself is interesting. Each line makes a bold claim that begs to be justified. The justification, of course, is in the body of the report. However, the reader is left with the clear impression that if he were to read the text, he would be satisfied with the justification.
Reports should have tables of contents that tell the story of the report itself. In an ideal situation, the reader wouldn’t even need to read the report. He could read just the Table of Contents and understand the essence of the report.
Start With Your Conclusions
Every good comedian holds his punch line until the end of his joke. The punch line is funny because the comedian has set it up to be funny.
In fact, we’re generally accustomed to providing our justifications before we provide our conclusions. Good creative writing will tell a story that leads its readers to a conclusion.
Good business writing calls for the author to do just the opposite! He needs to give his conclusions right up front. In fact, the Executive Summary should be dedicated to conclusions and recommendations with only a passing mention of the data that was collected and the analysis that led to those recommendations.
Executives are action oriented. They want to know what they should do. They recruit good people and they trust them. Executives don’t have the time nor the interest to revisit the entire rationale their trusted staff has already churned through. They just want to know what they’re supposed to do. A good business report will tell them exactly that – and it will do it right away.
If an executive feels uncomfortable or curious about a point, he should be able to flip to the part of the report that deals with that issue. Generally, though, the executive wants to be reassured that his trusted advisors have done their homework; executives don’t want to step through that homework themselves.
Putting the recommendations for action at the beginning of a report is one of the most challenging adjustments for new business writers to make.
Use the Active Voice
The sentence “The police shot the thief,” is in the active voice. The sentence “The thief was shot by the police” is in the passive voice. Always use the active voice unless there are compelling reasons to use the passive voice. There are not many compelling reasons.
Readers can understand statements written in the active voice far more easily than those written in the passive voice.
The writer can manipulate the passive voice to hide responsibility. For example, an author could write “The thief was shot,” and the reader would never know who did the shooting. The most famous case of this obfuscation was Nixon’s pronouncement that “Mistakes were made.” By phrasing his claim this way, he failed to take responsibility for his mistakes and looked even weaker for it.
Avoid Sentence Clutter
We often write phrases that simply don’t add value. Look at how I’ve eliminated clutter in these sentences.
It should be noted that my budget for $600,000 for next year is a 12% decrease from …
It would be helpful to view the annual performance review as an …
It is understood that during the prison sentence, he …
I feel slightly miffed when I see sentences started with phrases like these:
As per our earlier conversation, …
Enclosed please find …
Please be advised …
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In general, we should write with the same style we use when we speak. Our manuscripts will be far more genuine and credible.
Learn the Basic Rules of Grammar and Observe Them
If you bungle basic grammatical rules, you’ll lose credibility. Let me give a few examples:
Incorrect: Charlie and myself founded the company.
Correct: Charlie and I founded the company.
Incorrect: The consultant’s report recommended we upgrade our computer, improving our documentation, better software, user participation in determining system requirements.
Correct: The consultant’s report recommended we upgrade our computer, improve our documentation, build better software, and ensure user participation in determining the system requirements.
Incorrect: The economics professor discussed the high cost of living with two young female students.
Correct: The professor discussed with two young female students the high cost of living.
I encourage you to revisit these sentences to discover exactly why they needed to be changed.
Ask Someone Else to Read Your Piece
I know I promised to give you ten points, so this one is a bonus.
When I first got into consulting I was interested to learn that the partners in the firm made it a practice to give both their proposals and reports to another partner for review. The key criterion for reviewing a manuscript was clear: the reviewer must have no background in the subject matter.
This meant that a partner who focused on Information Technology would critique proposals from the Human Resources partner. The Financial Services partner would critique the Natural Resources partner’s work.
At first, this struck me as odd. But it took me only a moment to see the wisdom of the practice. This review provided some assurance that the report was sufficiently clear and direct that a client executive would be able to follow it without ambiguity.
All of us should adopt this practice.
Jan Wall has worked with Fortune 500 companies, global management-consulting firms and has led major development projects that called for business plans and technical writing. He has mentored senior business executives and critiqued graduate business students’ theses. It is a pleasure for synaptici.com to feature Jan as a guest author.
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