Category Archives: Organizing Content

You want to explain first. But should you keep readers waiting for your point?

If you’re writing to readers from Western cultures, don’t make them wait! Western attention spans are short. We value efficiency–most of the time.

But I need to explain when efficiency is (and isn’t) paramount to offer helpful guidance. Here’s my point in this post: Delay only if your point meets all the following criteria for sensitivity:

Your primary message communicates negative news (e.g., the program announcement and rejection but not the meeting announcement found below).
That message focuses negativity primarily on the reader (e.g., the program announcement and rejection but not the apology below).
That message conveys negative news that is both personal to the reader and rare (e.g., the rejection but not like the program announcement below).

Sensitivity is the key to effective placement of your point, which I like to call the bottom line. But we need to think about sensitivity in a little detail. Keep reading for that explanation and some simple examples. If you’re not sure how to identify the bottom line in a written message, you may want to view the video tutorial in Improve Your Reader’s Efficiency before you continue.

Positive vs. Negative Messages

The first component of sensitivity is obvious. Is the bottom line negative? Consider the meeting announcement below.

University Colleagues:
The Business Communication Roundtable will meet at noon on the first Friday of every month, beginning September 6. We’re especially interested in reaching out across the University and into our community.
Bring a business communication challenge and your lunch to Bidgood Room 15. Is your challenge writing a business plan? Creating web content? Planning an elevator pitch? Communicating performance feedback? Getting people to respond to your email? Or something else? Any topic related to communication in the workplace is appropriate. Everyone with a challenge is welcome whether you are a business person, faculty member, staff member, or student.The group will share resources — and laughs.

This document conveys the bottom line: “The Business Communication Roundtable will meet at noon . . .” That bottom line communicates not negative but neutral news to its readers. (Sidebar: We are going to attempt generalizable guidance; there are always idiosyncratic situations we can think up that violate our general principles.) When the news is not negative, there is no excuse for delaying where/when the bottom line appears within the document. It should appear, as it does in the meeting announcement above, at the very beginning. That will satisfy the efficiency needs of Western readers.

Now consider the program announcement below.

TO: College Faculty and Staff
FROM: Senior Associate Dean
SUBJECT: Business Leadership Academy
The Business Leadership Academy has been run at a deficit since its inception. Last year the loss was approximately $55,000, which was less than many previous years. To make this endeavor self sustaining would require a significant increase in fees to the attendees. We were concerned that such a large increase in fees would reduce enrollment, resulting in even more deficits. [Administrative Finance Person] and I discussed this at length with [Faculty Leader Person] as well as alternatives to prevent further deficits. We mutually agreed that none of these would preclude deficits.
I decided that, while this program has been a great success, it did not seem prudent in a financial sense to continue this program.

The program announcement conveys the bottom line: “it did not seem prudent . . . to continue this program.” That’s negative news. The emotional response to negative news involves a process of moving from shock/surprise to acceptance. And that means it might be advisable to delay. But we have to consider more components of sensitivity to make the best choice.

Reader vs. Writer Sensitivity in Negative Messages

The second component we need to recognize is the locus of sensitivity about the negative news. Is the message negatively affecting the reader? Consider the apology email below.

TO: Volunteer Editors
FROM: Director of Editorial Operations
SUBJECT: Journal Schedules
I am writing to you to give you an update on the status of our journal schedules for this year’s issues. Some of you may have already been contacted individually by your staff editor regarding our ability to meet scheduled mail dates this year. Our analysis of our performance to date is disappointing at 8% of all issues mailing either on or before their scheduled date through September. This is compared with our 20% target established for this year. The majority of these delays (approx. 64%) were internal to our Operations Center, while 27% of the delays resulted from receiving material late from the Volunteer Editors. The internal delays are a result of three major challenges we’ve faced this year.
[lengthy description of the three challenges is omitted to save space]
I would like to express my apology for the internal delays and to assure you of our commitment to resolve our performance issues.

In this email, the bottom line message is “I would like to express my apology . . .” Note that it is the writer — not the reader — who is most negatively affected by that message. Apologizing can be uncomfortable to both the person offering and the person receiving the apology. But it is MOST uncomfortable for the person doing the apologizing.

So what about delaying the bottom line message? There’s no excuse for decreasing efficiency by delaying just because you, as the writer, are uncomfortable with your message. That means the writer of the apology email should not have delayed. Instead, that bottom line apology should have been stated in the first sentence or so. (As well as signaled in the SUBJECT line.)

Compare that apology email to the program announcement from above. The bottom line message, “it did not seem prudent . . . to continue this program,” is negative primarily for the readers. While the writer may have been uncomfortable making the announcement, the readers who are hearing the news are most affected because someone discontinued a program they care about. The emotional response to negative news is a process of moving from shock/surprise to acceptance. Again, it might be advisable to give readers a chance to move toward acceptance by delaying in the program announcement. But we have to consider more components of sensitivity to make the best choice.

Personal & Rare vs. Impersonal & Common Negative Messages

The final components of sensitivity relate to how personal and how rare a bottom line message is. Basically, impersonal and common messages are more likely to be perceived as neutral. In contrast, personal and rare messages are more likely to be perceived as negative (or positive). Consider the rejection email below.

Hi, [Student’s First Name].
I enjoyed meeting you last week. You certainly demonstrated skills that will be relevant to my work with First Tee of Tuscaloosa. Your out-going personality and interest in PR are valuable assets in doing this type of community outreach project.

Amazingly, another faculty scholar applicant has experience both identifying funding sources and writing grant proposals for non-profits. Because his experience is such a close match with my immediate needs, I have offered him the position.

I regret I cannot offer you a position as well. But the person I have hired will graduate next May so, if you’re still interested in a position for 2014-15, I hope we can talk again. I see a very bright future for you.

Wishing you great success,
Dr. Kim

The bottom line message is definitely a negative one: “I regret I cannot offer you a position . . .” While I, as the writer, was not happy to convey that message, the reader is more sensitive to it than I am. Most important to this post, the bottom line of the rejection email is both personal and rare for the reader. That means its bottom line is highly negative, and the reader is likely to be highly sensitive to it. As a writer, I signaled my awareness of this level of reader sensitivity by delaying my bottom line message within the document. I judged that the reader’s sensitivity to my bottom line was greater than her desire for efficiency.

Once more, let’s consider the program announcement email. It is neither personal to nor rare for the readers to hear about a program change. (The document notes that the personally affected reader was involved in the decision.) That means its bottom line is somewhat but not highly negative. That level of reader sensitivity does not ordinarily warrant a delay.

When Should You Delay?

The visual below summarizes the guidance I’ve illustrated with examples above. You can predict that, of the examples provided above, only the rejection email is highly sensitive (like “You’re fired” in the visual). It’s the only example in which you should definitely delay stating the bottom line message.

**Gauging Your Reader’s Sensitivity to Your Bottom Line**

For the program announcement then, readers from Western cultures are likely to prefer efficiency. You shouldn’t delay unless you know your reader well enough to know he or she expects greater sensitivity than the average Western reader. FWIW: There is some evidence that, as a group, Western women take longer to accept bad news than Western men. Most of the relevant research on sensitivity to messages takes place in health care settings.

Here’s the program announcement, with the bottom line message in boldface below to show its location near the beginning of the document.

TO: College Faculty and Staff
FROM: Senior Associate Dean
SUBJECT: Business Leadership Academy
The Business Leadership Academy has been run at a deficit since its inception. Last year the loss was approximately $55,000, which was less than many previous years. I decided that, while this program has been a great success, it did not seem prudent in a financial sense to continue this program.
To make this endeavor self sustaining would require a significant increase in fees to the attendees. We were concerned that such a large increase in fees would reduce enrollment, resulting in even more deficits. [Administrative Finance Person] and I discussed this at length with [Faculty Leader Person] as well as alternatives to prevent further deficits. We mutually agreed that none of these would preclude deficits.

Placing an emphasis on efficiency in the documents you write for Western readers at work will pay big dividends. Don’t delay stating your bottom line in situations where it isn’t warranted.

Related Research

Amare, N., & Brammer, C. (2005). Perceptions of memo quality: A case study of engineering practitioners, professors, and students. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 35(2), 179-190.
Campbell, K. S. (2016). Flipping to teach the conceptual foundations of successful workplace writing. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 79(1), 54-67.
Fielden, J. S., & Dulek, R. E. (1984). How to use bottom-line writing in corporate communications. Business Horizons, 27(4), 24-30.I
Suchan, J., & Colucci, R. (1989). An analysis of communication efficiency between high-impact and bureaucratic written communication. Management Communication Quarterly, 2(4), 454-484.

Amateurs (and lawyers) beat around the bush (proswrite.com)

Another lesson on the bottom line

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A quick story…I was working from home on slides for a presentation this afternoon. As I got ready to head to campus, my phone alerted me to a text message from a co-worker:

This state needs to invest in trucks. And salt. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow!

It took a minute, but I finally figured out the campus was closing because of winter weather. (AGAIN….sigh)

I thought it was odd that I hadn’t seen the customary email announcement. Then I remembered I had just deleted an email about a “winter weather advisory.” I recovered it from my Trash folder and edited the bottom line placement as recommended by research–and (un)common sense.

Happy Thursday from Tuscaloosa, where we have icy roads today after 80 degree temperatures yesterday!

Create logical flow between sentences to promote accurate and efficient reading

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I have argued that sentence variety is the enemy of efficiency. People read more accurately and efficiently when all the elements of a document are tightly connected. This includes the connection between consecutive sentences. I refer to this as cohesion (sometimes referred to as Functional Sentence Perspective by linguists).

My experience is that most adults are able to create cohesive prose at the sentence level without explicit instruction. But, for those without this skill, the problem is truly critical. Their readers struggle to read their prose and make comments about awkwardness, lack of logical “flow,” or–the most damning–the quality of the writer’s education. The kicker is that few writing teachers I’ve known understand how to help. Responding as a reader or editor is not the same as teaching.

Cohesion is briefly explained in Chapter 8 of Revising Professional Writing in Science and Technology, Business, and the Social Sciences (3rd edition). If you’re using that book in an academic setting, you’ll find many exercises in that chapter, requiring you to identify and fix problems with the logical flow of information. But here are some additional resources to help anyone master this critical skill:

a sample document, including both an original and revised version
a brief video tutorial
a list of research articles supporting my guidance

Enter feedback in the comments below if there’s something else you’d like to see.

Sample Document

Review a copy of the letter to a supplier. It was adapted by me based on a sample from ForestEthics (forestethics.org). The document was written within the following context:

Writer: the owner of an office supply store
Readers: representatives of the store’s suppliers of wood-based products
Bottom line message: the suppliers need to provide information about the sources of their products

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Here’s a revised version of the letter, with more effective cohesion.

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Video Tutorial

The letter to a supplier is included in this <12-minute video about cohesion in workplace documents.

For more on flow, check out this video from the writing center at the University of North Carolina.

Lead your reader through your content with transitions

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Readers understand a message better when writers use explicit signals of what they want readers to get out of a document. Transitions like “unfortunately” are one type of explicit signal. (Headings are another — see Think long-term and be kind to readers with well-formatted documents.) In fact, transitions are also sometimes called logical connectives. Maybe that makes their function more obvious.

Consider two versions of an excerpt from Costco’s 2011 Summary Plan Description (SPD).

For those who don’t enter revised elections within the 30 day deadline, certain automatic changes will apply. If you have declined healthcare you will not be automatically enrolled. If you do have healthcare coverage and you are:

Reclassified from “full-time” to “part-time,” your current medical plan will switch to Choice Plus for Part-Time Employees (HMSA HMO in Hawaii). If you’re currently in the Premium Dental Plan, you will switch to the Core Dental Plan.
Reclassified from “part-time” to “full-time,” your current medical plan will switch to Choice Plus for Full-Time Employees but you will continue to be covered by Core Dental.

When your status changes, your Life and AD&D Insurance coverage will change to the level available to other Employees with the same benefit status and years of Service as you.

For those who don’t enter revised elections within the 30 day deadline, certain automatic changes will apply. For example, if you have declined healthcare you will not be automatically enrolled. However, if you do have healthcare coverage and you are:

Reclassified from “full-time” to “part-time,” your current medical plan will switch to Choice Plus for Part-Time Employees (HMSA HMO in Hawaii). If you’re currently in the Premium Dental Plan, you will switch to the Core Dental Plan.
Reclassified from “part-time” to “full-time,” your current medical plan will switch to Choice Plus for Full-Time Employees but you will continue to be covered by Core Dental.

Also, when your status changes, your Life and AD&D Insurance coverage will change to the level available to other Employees with the same benefit status and years of Service as you.

The version at right, with those three transitions I’ve highlighted in red, will increase comprehension of the content over the version at left. Why should Costco care? Because U.S. (ERISA) law requires that employers deliver SPDs that explain employee benefits “in a manner calculated to be understood by the average plan participant.”

Transitions are briefly explained in Chapter 9 of Revising Professional Writing in Science and Technology, Business, and the Social Sciences (3rd edition). If you’re using that book in a formal setting, you’ll find lots of exercises in that chapter that help you to identify opportunities to use transitions to control a reader’s interpretation in workplace documents. Here are some additional resources to help you learn about their use:

a sample document, including both an original and revised version
a brief video tutorial
a list of research articles supporting my guidance

Enter feedback in the comments below if I can provide you with better resources.

Sample Document

Review the executive summary for a consultant’s report. The document was adapted for instructional purposes from a report produced by TishlerBise.

Writer: employees of the planning consultant
Readers: representatives of the city of Orange Beach, as well as interested citizens and businesses
Bottom Line Message: specific fees on real estate development are recommended to support municipal services on newly developed land

View this document on Scribd

Here’s a revised version of the executive summary with more effective transitions.

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Video Tutorial

The executive summary is used in this 12-minute video about transitions in workplace documents.

Think long-term and be kind to readers with well-formatted documents

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It’s something of a paradox. But the space you leave blank in your documents matters. Compare these two forms discussed in an article about the importance of white space by the Nielsen Norman Group. (They help clients make users of their websites, applications, and products happier.) As the article says,

The recreated Walgreens.com registration form (right) is easier to complete than the original (left) because related fields are grouped together, making it seem like 3 short forms.

Source: Nielsen Norman Group based on a Walgreens web form

Now you may say that the difference between the two forms is too small to worry with. But, if your reader has to stop to think about what you mean or what to do, they may quit reading. Small changes matter when you’re competing for readers’ attention with everything else available to them!

If your audience must read your document, then you haven’t been kind. And they’ll reciprocate. Trust me.

White space — along with other categories of document format like typeface — is briefly explained in Chapter 10 of Revising Professional Writing in Science and Technology, Business, and the Social Sciences (3rd edition). If you’re using that book in an academic setting, you’ll find many exercises in that chapter, requiring you to identify and fix problems with document format. But here are some additional resources to help anyone master this critical skill:

a sample document, including both an original and revised version
a brief video tutorial
a list of research articles supporting my guidance

Enter feedback in the comments below if I can provide you with helpful resources.

Sample Document

Review the glossary on page 6 of this technology consultant’s report. The document was created by me based on a sample from David A. McMurrey’s Online Textbook for Technical Writing to show ineffective formatting.

Writer: a technology consultant
Readers: managers for the client, a brewing company
Bottom line message: a specific product is recommended for the company’s use

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Here’s a revised version of the glossary, with more effective format.

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Video Tutorial

The glossary (along with other examples from the consultant’s report) is included in this ~13-minute video about format in workplace documents.

Use parallel structure in lists to increase reading efficiency

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Source: sensingarchitecture.com/tag/gestalt-principles/

Those offering advice to professionals who write have long suggested that similar ideas should appear in similar (or parallel) form. In fact, the advice appears in one of the earliest business writing textbooks, first published in the U.S. in 1916. But I’m committed to offering you guidance for writing successfully at work based on quality evidence about the effects of writing choices on workplace readers. Not on tradition. Not (only) on my personal experience. Not even on my own pet peeves. I’m a descriptive — not prescriptive — linguist.

That preamble signals that I had to tweak my recommendations for using parallel structure based on some recent research I learned about last fall. Parallel structure definitely appears to make reading more efficient. And, when combined with the use of a stacked list, it also enhances recall of information. But there appear to be limits to its effectiveness: do not use parallelism alone within a paragraph format to improve accurate identification and recall of information.

Parallelism is explained in Chapter 12 of Revising Professional Writing in Science and Technology, Business, and the Social Sciences (3rd edition). But the newest research won’t appear there until we publish the next edition. If you’re using that book in a formal setting, you’ll find many exercises in that chapter, all designed to help you recognize and fix parallelism problems in workplace documents. Here are some additional resources:

a sample document, including both an original and revised version
a brief video tutorial
a list of research articles supporting my guidance

Provide me with feedback in the comments below if I can provide more helpful resources.

Sample Document

Read this page from the Report on Economic Recovery from Disasters prepared by Entergy, America’s Wetland Foundation, and American’s Energy Coast (entergy.com). and adapted by me for instructional purposes.

Writer: Entergy employees with input from individuals at America’s Energy Coast, America’s Wetlands Foundation. and Swiss Re
Readers: a diverse group of stakeholders along the energy Gulf Coast in the US
Bottom Line Message: quantitative measures of economic risks associated with climate hazards

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Here’s a revised version of that document excerpt with parallel structure.

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Video Tutorial

The report excerpt is included in this ~11-minute video about parallelism in workplace documents.

Manage what your readers think you mean with effective paragraphs

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TextBlob is Steven Loria’s Python library for processing textual data.

Paragraph construction affects whether — and how fast — readers get a writer’s intended meaning. But getting the visual units (white space surrounding lines of text) to match the semantic units (what linguists call “episodes” made up of sentences) in a message isn’t that easy. Research shows readers aren’t good at dividing a document back into the paragraphs originally produced by its writer. Pro workplace writers care about all of this because, once readers start organizing your content in ways you didn’t intend, you’re no longer in control of your message.

Paragraph unity is explained briefly in Chapter 7 of Revising Professional Writing in Science and Technology, Business, and the Social Sciences (3rd edition). If you’re using the book in a formal setting, you’ll find many exercises in that chapter which require you to break information into bite-sized chunks of semantically related content and craft effective topic sentences. Here are some additional resources to help you understand why paragraph construction matters and what you can do to use paragraphs effectively in your own documents:

a sample document, including both an original and revised version
a brief video-tutorial
a list of research articles supporting my guidance

If you think you’re past worrying about anything as basic as paragraph construction, I encourage you to consider whether Michael Phelps thinks he’s beyond worrying about anything as basic as leg kicks. (Get a <4-minute explanation of my comment with 3 Lessons from Great Performers for Workplace Writers.)

Enter feedback in the comments below if I can make the resources more helpful to you.

Sample Document

Read this memo about health insurance plans, which I adapted based on a student’s response to an assignment in the 1999 textbook, Scenarios for Technical Communication, by Stone & Kynell.

Writer: one of the owners of a small company
Reader: the other owner
Bottom Line Message: a discussion of specific pros and cons for each of the two health insurance plans they are considering for their employees

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Here’s a revised version of that memo, with more effective paragraph unity.

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Video Tutorial

The health plans memo and other examples are included in this ~9-minute video about paragraph unity in workplace documents.

Improve your reader’s efficiency — and win their gratitude — with bottom line placement

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Photo Credit: Irman Fauzi via Compfight cc

I’m reorganizing some materials published earlier on Pros Write. And I’m starting with bottom line placement because no guidance for writing successfully at work is more important. If you want to win readers’ gratitude. . . If you want them to see you as competent and respectful. . . Then state your bottom line message clearly and immediately. While workplace readers say they want short messages, research has shown us that what they really want are well organized messages; readers have little patience with even brief ones in which they cannot quickly determine the bottom line. And they can accept long ones when the bottom line is easy to identify.

Bottom line placement is explained in Chapter 6 of Revising Professional Writing in Science and Technology, Business, and the Social Sciences (3rd edition). If you’re using that book in a formal setting, you’ll find dozens of exercises in that chapter, requiring you to hone your ability to identify, state, and place a bottom line message. But here are some additional resources to help anyone master this critical skill:

a sample document, including both an original and revised version
a brief video tutorial
a list of research articles supporting my guidance

Enter feedback in the comments below. The whole point is to provide you with helpful resources.

Sample Document

Read this email job update with ineffective bottom line placement. The document was created by me based on a student’s response to an assignment from a 1999 book titled, Scenarios for Technical Communication, by Stone & Kynell.

Writer: a project manager for a construction company
Readers: the company’s owner
Bottom line message: one project is over budget and behind schedule

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Here’s a revised version of that email message, with more effective bottom line placement.

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Video Tutorial

The email job update, along with other examples, is included in this <15-minute video about bottom line placement in workplace documents. (The video also helps you identify those exceptional circumstances when your bottom line should not be stated up front.)

Cut your email into three chunks for better digestion

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Photo Credit: 27147 via Compfight cc

Travis, a former student who now works as an IT consultant, asked for a summary of what we taught him about developing and organizing content in emails ’cause he wants to share it with his project leaders. (Seems they had asked him how he knew what the majority of new grads don’t.) Although I’ve written here about email requests and different aspects of organizing content, I couldn’t find a single post to meet his needs. So I whipped up this one.

Let me start by showing you an announcement I recently received at work. It was NOT easy to digest.

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This message was a blob I couldn’t begin to swallow. I mean I could read the words. It had well-formed sentences. It had three short paragraphs. But I had no clue what it meant. Because it was sent by a top administrator, I felt some obligation to figure it out. I actually read the entire message. And I talked to fellow employees. No one had a clue. Most had simply trashed the message without reading more than the first few words.

Note the problem isn’t one of brevity. The announcement was brief.

Here’s a revised version of the announcement I’ll use to describe the three chunks needed to help your readers digest an email easily.

View this document on Scribd

Chunk #1: State your bottom line message clearly as an obligatory appetizer.

The bottom line message in the revised version of the announcement is stated early. And twice.

Subject line: Directions for Office of Internal Audit Requests for All University Employees
First sentence: I want to clarify the role of the University’s Office of Internal Audit on our campus and direct all University employees to cooperate with their staff fully.

The first chunk of your email must establish your purpose in communicating with your readers. Stating it clearly requires that you can actually verbalize it before you hit the send button. The critical problem with the original announcement was that it did not explicitly state the bottom line message. There was a required chunk of information missing entirely!

Stating the bottom line in the first chunk of your email requires you to take responsibility for making the message easier for your readers to digest. Even if the writer had included a bottom line message at the end of the original announcement, it would have created indigestion. Believe it or not, there are few situations when a delay in stating your bottom line is warranted. (See the video tutorial on placement of the bottom line for more help.)

Chunk #2: Provide details or other information supporting your bottom line as the main course.

The details in the revised announcement are nearly identical in content to the original. The details about cooperation for all employees appear in one paragraph. The details about cooperation for all managers appear in a separate paragraph. The content here is brief. But you can provide a load of detail in the second chunk of your email if you make it easy for readers to skim and scan. (See the video tutorial on format for help.) The more complex the second chunk is, the more important it is to provide a wrap-up, further analysis, justification, or something else to tie the details together.

In the revised announcement, I also altered the writer’s style from the original to make it more personal. I couldn’t stop myself.

Original bureaucratic tone: University personnel are expected to collaborate with the Office of Internal Audit during an audit review.
Revised personal tone: As a University employee, you are expected to collaborate with the Office of Internal Audit during an audit review.

That personal tone is more likely to succeed if you want readers to interpret what you have to say as directions. (See the video tutorial on tone for more on this topic.)

Chunk #3: Include a call to action for dessert.

Readers of the original announcement received nothing after their main course. Readers of the revised email received just a little something as the third chunk of the writer’s message. Call it lagniappe. They were thanked. And they were told where to go if they had questions.

This chunk isn’t strictly necessary in a downward message like the announcement email (where the writer has more power relative to the readers). But it makes sense to create goodwill that may help you get readers to pay attention to what you say in the future. After all, the language you use with subordinates determines whether they will follow you.

The original announcement was not easily digested because it used three paragraphs, but not the three-chunk format. Thanks to Travis for requesting this summary guidance for writing emails. We’re delighted he’s not the cause of indigestion in his workplace . . . Oh, how we LOVE confirmation that we’re teaching the right stuff!

Research Support

If you’re interested in the research that backs up our guidance, you could start with the following.

Fielden, J.S. & Dulek, R.E. (1984). How to use bottom-line writing in corporate communications. Business Horizons, July-August, pp. 25-30.

Evans, S. (2012). Designing email tasks for the Business English classroom: Implications from a study of Hong Kong’s key industries. English for Specific Purposes, 31, pp. 202-212.

Unexpected results of research on format and parallelism

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I regularly advise writers to use grammatical parallelism and visual formatting to influence document quality. (Use the links if you don’t know what I mean.) But I saw some evidence presented by colleagues at a recent conference that led me to refine that advice. Here’s the bottom line for those who don’t want the details:

Use both parallelism and format to improve ~~readability~~ reading efficiency and accurate identification and recall of information.
Use format alone to improve ~~readability~~ reading efficiency and accurate identification and recall of information.
Don’t use parallelism alone to improve ~~readability~~ accurate identification and recall of information.

It pains me to offer you #3. It runs counter to what I’ve long held to be true. I suspect that’s true for many of you as well. But I can’t ignore the evidence. Ugh. Details below.

July 22, 2014 Update: I’ve tweaked the wording of my guidance based on more investigation of related research. See this post for details.

Some Background on the Research

The researchers did two studies where they asked people to read documents and then tested their recall by asking multiple-choice content questions without allowing them to look back at the documents.

Study 1. To test the effect of grammatical parallelism and visual formatting on readability, 100 people read a version of a passage from Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy from 1866. (This limited the possibility of influence based on previous knowledge.) There were 4 document versions: (a) parallel [P+] and formatted [V+], (b) parallel and unformatted, (c) nonparallel and formatted, and (d) nonparallel and unformatted.

They found that accuracy was most affected by visual formatting and not much at all by grammatical parallelism. These results are the basis for my first two pieces of advice at the beginning of this post.

Study 2. To test the effect of grammatical parallelism and visual formatting on emotional response, 87 people read one of the four versions of the same passage from Study 1 followed by a question measuring their emotional response and then received either (a) parallel [Q+] or (b) nonparallel multiple-choice content questions again followed by a question measuring their emotional response.

They found the greatest inconsistency of emotional response in document versions without visual formatting and with grammatical parallelism of both the reading text and the multiple-choice questions. These results are the basis for my third piece of advice at the beginning of this post.

So What’s Wrong with Inconsistent Emotional Response?

If you’ve read this far, I’m pretty sure this is the question you’re asking. Here goes.

Unity is a fundamental quality of human perception. Humans actively seek and prefer experiences that we can interpret as unified. This idea from Gestalt psychology is one I wrote about extensively in a 1995 book on document design. The lack of unity or consistency in color is the reason Smashing Magazine used the website shown at right in its Ugly Showcase.

My colleagues, Nicole Amare and Alan Manning, argue that unity or consistency is especially important for types of textual elements they call “decoratives.” That includes grammatical parallelism (and color). Decoratives are aesthetic. Parallelism does not convey information itself. Rather, it evokes a feeling about that information. Many people describe parallel text with terms related to organization: tidy, orderly, tight, neat, uncluttered, etc. As Manning said,

Parallel but visually unformatted text evidently disrupts that unified feeling and is therefore less desirable.

Visually formatted but nonparallel text was not a problem, confirming visual format is far more salient to readers than parallelism. I suspect inconsistent feelings slow down cognitive processing and distract us from our quest for comprehension. I’ve long believed parallelism affects efficiency more than effectiveness in documents with a primarily informative function. But that research hasn’t been done — yet.

References

Amare, N. & Manning, A. (October, 2013). Grammatical and visual parallelism in business communication pedagogy. Association for Business Communication Convention, New Orleans, LA.

Amare, N. & Manning, A. (2013). A Unified Theory of Information Design: Visuals, Text & Ethics. Amityville, NY: Baywood.

Campbell, K.S. (1995). Coherence, Continuity & Cohesion: Theoretical Foundations for Document Design. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Positive vs. Negative Messages

Reader vs. Writer Sensitivity in Negative Messages

Personal & Rare vs. Impersonal & Common Negative Messages

When Should You Delay?

Related Research

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Sample Document

Video Tutorial

Sample Document

Video Tutorial

Related Readings

Sample Document

Video Tutorial

Related Readings

Sample Document

Video Tutorial

Related Readings

Sample Document

Video Tutorial

Related Readings

Sample Document

Video Tutorial

Related Readings

Chunk #1: State your bottom line message clearly as an obligatory appetizer.

Chunk #2: Provide details or other information supporting your bottom line as the main course.

Chunk #3: Include a call to action for dessert.

Research Support

Some Background on the Research

So What’s Wrong with Inconsistent Emotional Response?

References