Finding the 'Write' Words

If you want to maximise the impact of your insights, they need to be communicated properly. Documents such as newsletters and bulletins are particularly useful tools – but their effectiveness will be limited by the quality of the writing.

 

For optimum impact, writing needs to be both simple and clear. The style you adopt will depend upon your audience. For senior executives, fairly formal and factual reports may be needed. In most other situations, a more effective style is one that is informal and light-hearted (without being flippant). If people enjoy reading an article, they are more likely to understand it.

 

We have been very gratified to receive positive feedback about 5 Minute Insights. Comments include: “Easy to navigate and easy to digest the important bits”; and “I love the way these are written. Light and easy to read without being frivolous.” However, writing is a subjective art, and there will always be someone who prefers a different style. Your main aim should be simply to get the right message across to your readers in the most effective way. Most of them will be busy people who don’t have the time (or the inclination) to read through reams of unintelligible text!

 

One key tip when writing a newsletter or bulletin is to follow a typical tabloid newspaper style (without resorting to sensationalism!) Use a catchy headline wherever appropriate, and sum up what you are about to say in a sentence or two at the beginning. This immediately signposts the whole topic to the reader, so they don’t have to wade through several paragraphs before they realise what the article is about. You can then expand upon the subject in the rest of the article.

 

Tabloid journalists use a friendly, informal style with short sentences. So, break up any long sentences into shorter ones, otherwise you risk boring your readers, or at the very least making them give up halfway through the article because if you tend to write long sentences it can get very confusing as by the time the reader has reached the end of the sentence they may have to go back to the beginning to read it all over again so that they can make sense of it. I hope that makes the point! Try and keep your sentence length down to an average of 20 words or less.

 

On slightly longer articles, use sub-headings, comments (where appropriate or available) and bullet points (which can help to accentuate key messages). These all help to break up the text and make it more interesting to the eye. Reading a long page without any of these can seem quite hard going. Here are a few other tips: 

 Ask your friends or colleagues for comments on your first drafts. Better still, come along to our course on March 15th to hear Helen James of Insight Partners sharing a lot of expertise on: “How to Communicate for Maximum Impact.” Please click here for further information. Please remember - the more you learn about writing (and the more you apply these skills), the greater impact your newsletters and bulletins will have!

Leave a comment on this article

Your Name:
Your Email:
Your Message: