No grammatical construction raises the ire of writing “experts” like the passive. Geoff Pullum (a regular contributor to Lingua Franca at the Chronicle of Higher Education) provided two marvelous examples in a research paper titled “Fear and loathing of the English passive.” The passive voice liquidates and buries the active individual, along with most of the awful…
Know your audience. This would count as a platitude for good writing without some specifics. So this post provides a specific system for analyzing a workplace audience. That system requires writers to assess two aspects of their situation–the context of their message: (1) their relationship with the audience and (2) their audience’s readiness to accept the message. An…
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…
Which should you write: “Jane is an adequate team member” or “Jane is an OK team member”? The adjectives in the two options are synonyms. So how do you choose? Are you wondering about “OK” in a written message at work? Here’s a list of readers’ attributions made about writers based on a choice to use one of two different…
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…
Pro workplace writers are strategic. Period. They begin a document with a predetermined goal and a plan for achieving it. Bryan Garner, author of the HBR Guide to Better Business Writing, makes the point when he says, Many people begin writing before they know what they’re trying to accomplish. As a result, their readers don’t know where to focus…
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…
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…
Workplace readers often say they want short documents. But shorter doesn’t always equal an easier reading experience. Consider these jury instructions: A fact is established by direct evidence when proved by documentary evidence or by witnesses who saw the act done or heard the words spoken. A fact is established by circumstantial evidence when it may be fairly and reasonably…
A couple of months back, Forbes.com published 10 Tips For Better Business Writing. Tip #3 was “Omit needless words.” The author echoed the time-honored advice of William Strunk, Jr., in The Elements of Style published by Cornell University, where he worked as an English professor, in 1919. (You may be more familiar with later editions of the book by Strunk…